Nyobolt Elise

[svensktoppen]

Someone please make this, lol

It's a design study for a battery maker, so the usual story - unlikely to ever see a forecourt, charging will be very different from the claims, etc. But hey, good effort

Bit more here:

Woah, Nyobolt’s Elise-based EV charges in six minutes

Julian Thomson takes a stab at a sporty EV with ultra-fast charging tech

www.topgear.com

 

[andy9eleven]

The working prototype is being assembled right now. It is actually being built on an Exige donor. And yeah the battery tech is pretty much what it says there. Heat management is the tricky part atm. Will it enter production - stranger things have happened.

 

[FM155]

Must be something pretty different in the battery chemistry and construction to get those sort of charge and discharge times. Probably helps a lot that it's a relatively low capacity unit. When I was working for an e-vtol startup, the whole job was really about balancing performance in critical cases with heat management which meant weight was the only variable. It was a nightmare as the numbers just didn't add up.

 

[svensktoppen]

Well, here's hoping. Building off an Exige chassis makes sense.

On the charging, it would still need a lot more current to charge in minutes instead of an hour. Tenth of charge time means ten times the current. It's one thing that the battery might be able to swallow that kind of current, but there are barely any "normal" fast chargers around as it is. Never mind ones that can do 10x what they do now.

Still a great looking car if they can make it work. Imagine it would be into six figures by the time it did though

 

[svensktoppen]

Must be something pretty different in the battery chemistry and construction to get those sort of charge and discharge times.

Had a look at their website. It's still a lithium battery, but uses a Niobium-Tungsten anode. Apparently that's the clever bit but we'll have to take their word for it because I don't have a clue what that means

Yes, reducing charge time by a factor ten means scaling everything else up by a factor ten as well. That's basic physics. From the national grid through the delivery network, the charger, the packaging in the car, and the actual battery. They claim to have made one part of that chain work, which is great.

The really good thing I think is that with shorter charge times there's no need for massive batteries. So better packaging, lower weight, etc. And that's a really good thing.

But the charger infra and the power delivery network are still the bottlenecks.

 

[ahannigan]

It's still a lithium battery, but uses a Niobium-Tungsten anode. Apparently that's the clever bit but we'll have to take their word for it because I don't have a clue what that means

ChatGPT to the rescue

A Niobium-Tungsten anode refers to a type of electrode used in lithium-ion batteries, specifically those that are used to power electric cars. The use of this kind of anode can potentially lead to batteries that can store large amounts of energy in minutes rather than hours, thus speeding up the charging process significantly.

In a traditional lithium-ion battery, the anode is a crucial component where lithium ions flow from the anode to the cathode during discharging, and from the cathode to the anode during recharging. One method to improve the speed of this ion flow, and thus battery charging and power, has been to use nanoparticles to shorten the distance that lithium ions have to travel. However, using nanoparticles can introduce challenges, including difficulty packing them tightly, unwanted chemical reactions with electrolytes, and complicated, costly production1.

The researchers who developed the Niobium-Tungsten anode used a different approach. They worked with niobium tungsten oxides, which have rigid open crystalline structures that they reasoned lithium ions could quickly flow within, even when large micron-sized particles of the oxides were used instead of nanoparticles. They analyzed the performance of two different kinds of niobium tungsten oxide anodes and found that lithium ions moved hundreds of times as fast in these oxides than typical anode materials, suggesting a potential for higher-power and faster-charging batteries1.

However, while these anodes can lead to lithium-ion battery cells with higher power, they also result in lower battery-cell voltages, meaning lower amounts of energy moved per unit time compared to conventional anode materials. That said, this could also result in safer batteries, as higher battery-cell voltages in current lithium-ion batteries can lead to the formation of spindly lithium-metal fibers known as dendrites, which can trigger short circuits and cause batteries to catch fire or possibly explode1.

One potential drawback of these new materials is that niobium and tungsten are heavy atoms, leading to heavier batteries. However, the researchers note that niobium tungsten oxides can store about twice as many lithium ions per unit volume or more than conventional lithium-ion battery anodes. Thus, niobium tungsten oxides can store a similar amount of charge per unit weight as conventional lithium-ion battery materials, potentially avoiding the complexity and cost of nanoparticles1.

The researchers are now working on finding the best cathode and electrolyte materials to accompany niobium tungsten oxide anodes, suggesting that there may be other promising materials with similar structures and properties yet to be discovered1.

 

[andy9eleven]

Thos of you at Goodwood will be able to have a nosy.