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At first I read this post and thought we were talking about home generators.
With the recent hurricane near my area, this would have been a great thing to have, since most of the roads were flooded and gas was very hard to come by.
A vertical windmill generator would be great to have in a hurricane ( if you could anchor it well )
Now ... on to automotive aplications - Popular Mechanics ( or was it Popular Science ?) had a little write up on a company that was attempting to produce the very thing you are talking about.
I don't have the magazine anymore, but I remember it had the bold title " Detroits' new 80 MPG cars " ( What a joke -here we are almost a decade later ... ) The magazine was circa 1999-2000.
Anways back to the idea. The vehicle that was modified was an electric van with what looked like a large shop fan turned sideways mounted on the roof. As the van moved forward, the wind spun the blades and charged the batteries. To overcome the drag penalty, the blades turned flush as the revolved.
Like almost everything Popular Science/Mechanics touts as the next greatest thing, this idea went nowhere.
Good luck finding the article and the company that was going to produce this thing.
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