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I live in the Netherlands. This part is well below sea level. Without wind power half the country wouldn't exist. There wouldn't be Europeans living all over the globe if it wasn't for wind power. Long before that the Chinese had sail boats, the Egyptians the Sumerians etc. (?) I thus conclude A wind powered car is not my delusion rather an oxymoron. The biggest problem is to fit the sailboat into existing traffic.

Imagine a windmill fixed onto a cart. We lock the wheels in place and use the wind to charge a battery. We then use the electricity to move the cart.

If there is energy available it will always be enough to move the cart. It might not go fast (jet) it will absolutely move.

The windmill however doesn't become less efficient if we move it up the wind. On the contrary. Moving the cart is equal to moving the windmill. The availability of the wind is exactly the same as when standing still.

The difference is that more units of wind pass though the mill and there is drag. The drag doesn't seem useful but it represents most of the losses, regenerating 50% of the drag would roughly give us 150% of the engine power (ignoring the mass)

We may overcome the (big) losses from converting the energy to electricity by using the mechanical energy straight away.

Just like with the battery mechanical energy is always enough to move the vehicle. It might not go fast (jet) if there is wind it will always move. And it can move in any direction we want it to move in.

To get the most out of the smallest surface we have to use a turbine with a large contact surface. Such turbine will have only one active side.

We can shield this side like so:

But it would be better to bend the airstream onto the active area like this:

This ornament increases the efficiency of the wind turbine but it also allows us to "hide" the passenger in the turbine without suffering any additional aerodynamic drag.

This would make the vehicle look something like this.

We normally tend to leave a vehicle alone for say 8-14 hours then we use it for 30-60 min. Over that time charging the battery would be more interesting again. A combination of both would give us best of both worlds.

Having electric motors would also allow us to use the magic of regenerative breaking. Our motors would end up much to small and even if they could absorb the breaking energy the power surge the electric motors are trying to ram into the battery (& capacitors) would be much to big.

The perpetual car could have a belt driving a small flywheel in enormous gear ratio. Such can absorb most of the breaking energy. Because it's small it can only maintain a little bit of power over small a duration. It should however be big enough to cut down the breaking power surge sufficiently. Belt 2 in reverse and in equally enormous gear ratio could feed the energy back onto the wheels in case the vehicle is allowed to accelerate straight away.

It should however be small enough not to have a negative effect on the wind propulsion.