Konstantinos Adraktas, the man who invented and implemented the Enfield 8000, the small electric car model that was manufactured in Greece in the early 1970s, and is generally considered the first electric car in production worldwide, has died.

The news of the death of the Greek engineer was made public by Vassilis Apostolopoulos, the managing director of the Athens Medical Group, in a post on his Facebook page in which he wrote:

“Konstantinos Adraktas is the inventor of, among other things, the first modern Enfield electric car (one day I may recount how financial interests buried it). The deceased was a friend of my father and mine, and a neighbour in London during my student years. We had a great relationship and appreciation of each other. A graduate of MIT in astronomy and astronautics he worked for NASA and I personally rate him as the man with the highest IQ I have ever known. Have a good rest “.

The Enfield 8000 was a two-seater battery-electric city car, introduced in 1973 and developed in the United Kingdom by Isle of Wight company Enfield Automotive, owned by Greek millionaire Giannis Goulandris. The car was designed by a group of Greek and British engineers headed by Constantine Adraktas (Chairman and Managing Technical Director of Enfield) and production, immediately after its introduction, was moved to the Greek island of Syros. A total of 120 cars were built, of which 65 were used by the Electricity Council and electricity boards in the south of England.