German duo travels 3,000 miles in a wind-powered car

Two Germans — engineer Stefan Simmerer and TV host Dirk Gion — recently set out on an epic 18-day road trip that saw them traveling over 3,000 miles across Australia. The coolest part? They did it in a vehicle powered only by a kite and wind turbine and broke three world records in the process.

To keep the electric Wind Explorer running, the pair charged it overnight using a collapsible, 20-foot wind turbine (it can also be plugged in in the absence of wind). They could also deploy a kite if the breeze was strong enough, and use it to pull the vehicle along as if parasailing (though this could make the car harder to steer).

As for those world records, the German pair logged three: one for crossing a continent with a wind-powered vehicle for the first time, another for traveling the farthest in a wind-powered car over a 36 hour period, and a final one for the most distance ever covered by a wind-powered land vehicle.