Poor old Affinity has been taking a bit of a beating this year:

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Affinity last night featured on The Gadget Show on Channel 5. Jason Bradbury drove our prototype solar car and appeared to thoroughly enjoy it! You can watch the feature on the FiveFWD site here.

Come on, you'll have to get out and push...

For more information and photos of Affinity’s Land’s End to John O’Groats journey (mentioned in by Ortis Deley in the feature), visit our End to End minisite. Thanks to Jason and Ortis for being so enthusiastic about the car!

 - Anthony

Had a fantastic morning in Birmingham filming Affinity for The Gadget Show (to be aired at 20:00 on Monday 4^th May). Presenters Jason Bradbury and Ortis Deley were filmed with the car and Jason drove Affinity around the park at breakneck speeds! Despite saying Affinity had “probably the worst steering I’ve ever encountered” (never mind, Martin…), Jason loved the car and there were quite a few times when he disappeared around a corner and we weren’t sure if he was going to come back.
- Anthony

Affinity was exhibited at CleanEquity Monaco last week, in front of the Monte Carlo Casino. Five members of the CUER team accompanied the car on its trip to Monaco, where it was displayed alongside other environmentally-friendly vehicles including a Tesla Roadster and Vectrix scooter, as well as the Place du Casino’s usual Ferraris, Bentleys and Lamborghinis.

The week passed by with minimal incident, although it seems that Lucy’s midnight sprint across London gave her the plague, and she was shut up in bed with warm drinks while the rest of the team were out partying with millionaires. This is no exaggeration. Except perhaps the plague part.

Affinity’s canopy finally copped it this week after a gentle freak gust of wind blew the upper shell clean off, into a couple of pedestrians, and pinned them against a fence (we maintain that they should be glad that they were incapacitated in such an eco-friendly way. Bet they’d have been a lot madder if someone’s Ferrari had been blown into them…) Her sorry internal structure of cardboard and gaffer tape was exposed to the world, but she was still interesting enough to draw a crowd.

Er...I don't suppose you could give me a hand getting out, could you, your Highness...?

HSH The Prince of Monaco closed the two-day conference, where he viewed Affinity and met members of the CUER team. Prince Albert II has long been a supporter of green technologies and it was an honour to meet him. Special thanks to Jade Summer and the Innovator Capital team for inviting us to the conference. (See also Cleantech Investor’s photo of the week.)

For more photos take a look at our CleanEquity Monaco gallery.

Affinity was driven up the green carpet by Piers Guy in Leicester Square yesterday evening, as part of the solar-powered premiere of ‘The Age of Stupid’ - a new eco-documentary starring Pete Postlethwaite. Celebs arrived on foot, bicycle, bike rickshaw, public transport and in electric and biodiesel cars. Every part of the event – from power sources, to food, to transport, to ink, to clothing – was genuinely green and the film was shown in a solar-powered tent in the middle of Leicester Square.

The truth is in there...

Numerous celebrities posed for photos with Affinity, including Gillian Anderson, Pete Postlethwaite, Vivienne Westwood, Ken Livingstone and Alastair Campbell. As an additional stunt, Ken Livingstone decided to try and play with Affinity’s canopy, causing many watching CUER members to attempt to frantically clamber over the barrier to stop him. Jonathan and Anthony were, of course, too busy rubbing shoulders with the stars to notice for a while. Not that we’re bitter.

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Members of the CUER team were delighted to be invited to the prestigious New Energy Finance Summit in London’s Vinopolis last week. During the three-day summit we were treated to speeches and discussions from leaders of the renewable energy and finance worlds, including Lord Browne, Ed Milliband, Shai Agassi and Sir Mark Moody-Stewart.

The team displayed Affinity on Bankside Pier before the Awards Dinner – a great opportunity to explain how CUER can play a role in developing the technologies of the future and changing public perceptions. Special thanks to Michael Liebreich and the New Energy Finance team for the invitation!

-Anthony