Mygreenwheels

Now this is what I really call news.

Some extremely bright guys in San Francisco who are "only talking to venture capitalists these days" have seriously brought out an inflatable electric car AND they're planning to price it from below $3,000 in some markets. That's less than the cost of the battery in most other EVs.

It's called the Whisper from XP Vehicles and just get a load of what it can do.

Apart from using it as a rescue boat in a flood, you can drive this thing off a 25 foot cliff - safely - a few times in a row, if you really want to. Not so outrageous when you consider that NASA dropped an inflatable vehicle containing delicate instrumentation a distance of about a mile onto the surface of Mars and it all arrived safely.

But there are more everyday practical claims too. The cars can be folded up flat-pack style for shipping. You can plug them into your house but they don't need an extension cord to be charged (how does that work? Do you take them into the kitchen and charge them off the kettle socket or what?)

The vehicle, reportedly similar in appearance to rounded edged sports cars (this is the only picture I can find on the XP site), will be configurable online by each customer much like you build and customise personal computers online today. Colours, trims, features and styles will be user-configurable on four different body-types.

There's a great FAQs page on the XP website that answers many of the obvious questions that spring to mind. For example, apparently a metal car won't protect you better because metal is the largest cause of death and injury. Two adults of average education level should be able to unpack and inflate their flat-pack delivered Whisper in less than two hours. Even a married couple? Ikea should take lessons from this.

And if somebody decides to stab your inflatable car, don't worry. The material is tough to pierce and is made up of multiple chambers, so they'd really need to have a proper go at it. You can apparently repair it yourself anyway, so just make sure you have that Halford's bicycle tyre repair kit handy.

For those like me who live in windy climes, the car's also unlikely to blow away because of special ballast and aerodynamic design features. I'll be carrying so much stuff in it anyway that there'll be no chance of my Whisper floating off on the breeze.

As if all this wasn't exciting enough anyway, I just love what I'm reading about the team behind this. "XP is a pre-revenue start-up developing a new kind of car, a new kind of manufacturing process and new kind of distribution system." That's just so far ahead of the GMs and Fords of this world.

"XP Vehicles - the world's most innovative, affordabel, long range alternative vehicles." That's how they define themselves. Just go on their website and read the visionary bit about the Xprize. It's totally inspiring and I can't wait to hear more about their progress.

If I were a VC, I'd want a chunk of this and I'd be looking to email them right now - they're already far too busy to answer the phone.