From the moment the innovative DeltaWing racer first turned a wheel in anger in 2012, it seems it also spawned ideas of a road car. Plans for a DeltaWing-inspired street vehicle have been proposed not once but on two separate occasions, and Nissan (the company that originally worked with DW on the car) has hinted at its own take with the BladeGlider concept. In this head-to-head race to get the DeltaWing into production it looks like Nissan might have just eked out a lead. We know, what a shock that is, right.

At first glance, the new Nissan BladeGlider doesn't look like a major step forward from the stunning design study we first glimpsed at the Tokyo Motor Show in 2013. The McLaren F1-style seating position has been carried over, as has the concept EV powertrain. Hell, even the styling is pretty much the same as before. What's getting us pumped over this particular iteration of the BladeGlider is that it's not just a show stand star. According to Nissan, the BladeGlider you see in these pictures is a fully working prototype that can genuinely run under its own power. It'll do just that for the first time in public in Rio de Janeiro to commemorate the opening of the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil.

In spite of being a prototype, the Nissan BladeGlider surprisingly appears to be production-ready. The subtle design revisions do look a bit more feasible for a road car, and a lot of serious development work has clearly gone on here. After all, you don't bring on board Williams Advanced Engineering (the same company that co-created the C-X75 hypercar with Jaguar) to develop an all-electric 268-hp powertrain for a prototype sports car just because you can. Of course developing a prototype doesn't mean a road car will emerge from the project (see the aforementioned C-X75), but it certainly gives us hope that, if the official DeltaWing scheme falls through, we'll also have the Nissan basket to place our proverbial eggs in.