RE: Electrified son-of-Elise now testing on road
Discussion
And when they bring out the 50 mile range version, you can get to 80% charge in the same time as you can get 400 miles with petrol…
It’s very misleading saying you can get to 80% range in minutes when that range is so low, it sounds amazing but is actually pretty rubbish when taken in context of the range.
It’s very misleading saying you can get to 80% range in minutes when that range is so low, it sounds amazing but is actually pretty rubbish when taken in context of the range.
Misanthroper said:
It’s very misleading saying you can get to 80% range in minutes when that range is so low, it sounds amazing but is actually pretty rubbish when taken in context of the range.
I dunno. 108 miles at steady motorway speeds will be about 90 mins driving, and maybe closer to two hours on variable country lanes and going though villages.Stopping for 10 mins total at those time intervals doesn’t seem like such a big deal?
Yes, you’d be absolutely correct in pointing out that you can go much further when stopping for a similar time in a petrol car, but this article wasn’t about that.
Not really seeing the point to be honest. Not fully getting why the desire to make it look like a car that while absolutely iconic never sold and got a price point buffer very swiftly. Also not seeing the point in a car that's usability is the opposite of how a true sports car is projected to be used, not being shackles to urban use.
Many good and interesting EVs now appearing but battery tech remains years away from being the ideal way to shove a lightweight car down lanes free of the need for fat power cables.
Many good and interesting EVs now appearing but battery tech remains years away from being the ideal way to shove a lightweight car down lanes free of the need for fat power cables.
DonkeyApple said:
Also not seeing the point in a car that's usability is the opposite of how a true sports car is projected to be used, not being shackles to urban use.
Yes, that’s potentially a problem for the urban dweller. Not so much if the driving roads are on your doorstep and like mine it’s used more like a jetski than a yacht. otolith said:
DonkeyApple said:
Also not seeing the point in a car that's usability is the opposite of how a true sports car is projected to be used, not being shackles to urban use.
Yes, that’s potentially a problem for the urban dweller. Not so much if the driving roads are on your doorstep and like mine it’s used more like a jetski than a yacht. Unless, of course, one just so happens to be in the elite group of higher income earners who like nothing more on a Sunday than hypermiling up the M1 for for lunch at Watford Gap services.
EVs all day long for the working week. But it's still petrol for the weekend.
otolith said:
DonkeyApple said:
Also not seeing the point in a car that's usability is the opposite of how a true sports car is projected to be used, not being shackles to urban use.
Yes, that’s potentially a problem for the urban dweller. Not so much if the driving roads are on your doorstep and like mine it’s used more like a jetski than a yacht. Newbie2023 said:
It could very much work for many of the people that I know, including myself, as a concept but I wonder how many of us would realistically wish our occasional weekend toy to have an EV drive train when there are still so many options availble for ICE? I am far from being 'anti EV' but I'm not sure that they are going to be a particularly desirable alternative in this particular segment at this stage. Hopefully they find a market to keep them ticking over though; it will be nice to have a manufacturer with a model that has had a period of development behind it if/when the time comes where they become the only real option.
While petrol cars exist and we have an absolute smorgasbord of choice for fun and silly it definitely strikes me that the sweet spot is Monday-Friday is EV time but leisure time remains so much better catered for by burning petrol for noise, smells, mechanical inefficiency etc. That said, Nyobolt aren't actually a car company nor plan to be. They're a handful of researchers in Cambridge who have been granted funding from the Faraday Battery Challenge pot of cash to try and develop cells that don't explode from dendritic growth as Lithium grows off the anode under heavy and fast charging to eventually spike through the wet membrane and ignite. So they're just a research team that happens to be based in Cambridge and Coventry so not far from either Hethel or Warwick to find some people with an Elise they've stuck an electric motor in who will try their battery and BMS systems so that everyone gets a load of PR to help with the next funding rounds. The car got wheeled out 12 months ago after that funding round and wheeled out again now after last month's FBC funding round. We won't see it again until the next one.
But these funding projects are genuinely important as the West is massively on the back foot re battery research and China has a two decade head start, far more money going in and far superior manufacturing capabilities. The only way to get back in that race is to fund numerous research teams in a big gamble that one of them will accidentally stumble into a genuinely technological breakthrough on charge rates or charge density. Then all they have to do is break the habit of having it stolen which has been a twenty year student pastime.
Super fast charging isn't actually all that relevant to private EV use. This is because you are limited to the number of locations where that amount of electricity actually exists to be hurled into a car battery and of course cars are mobile objects that move all over the place. But it's hugely relevant for things like factory robots which are basically operating in a fixed location which either has that size of power feed already or it can be added and where robot downtime for recharging is an enormous time cost.
For cars it's much more about energy density, which this particular project isn't really about. By increasing energy density we can head more freely in two opposing directions, delivering cars with much higher ranges which are critical for countries with much large geography than little islands such as the U.K. that's completely covered in an electricity network already and the other news which is smaller, lighter, cheaper EVs that have usable ranges for the typical working week user. The latter being the critical advance the U.K. market requires. By the end of the 2030s the U.K. will be needing smaller, cheap EVs that have sufficient range to only need recharging once a week maximum if we are to start being able to get the last car users, those without driveways and bigger budgets to switch freely.
Going back to EV sports cars, they don't make any sense to me as they reveal the truth about sports cars that they aren't about freedom, the open road and just going where and when you want but are in fact just another car for trundling to shopping centres or regional offices with the occasional massive adventure down the motorway to somewhere different for lunch. And of course and EV systems can do exactly that all day long but it kind of shatters the illusion.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with the Boxster EV. VW sell most of their sports cars to people who just want a practical, easy commuting and shopping car that's a bit more fun looking than a conventional car. They are the people who put a diesel engine in one after all. And they have all the usage and mileage data of every single user of their products so they know the EV equivalent will work just fine for almost all of them just trundling along on local errands or plodding up the motorway for a bit but one wonders if the limitations of batteries might be too much for the illusion of freedom?
This article is s
te, it’s led to five pages of people saying they would/wouldn’t like to buy the car.
The car isn’t a car being developed for sales, it’s a technology demonstrator for battery technology.
Unfortunately the article doesn’t tell us anything about the technology, which is the whole point of the vehicle… the fast charging seems to be enabled by new/better anode materials in the cells. It says they have a ‘proprietary anode material).
The cars a sport car because it will get press, which is what the company want for their technology.
It’s based on an Elise because they’re easy to modify and light (good for range)
It’s styled like an Elise because it was styled by Julian Thompson who designed the first Elise.
You won’t be able to buy it.
Would be interesting to see ev conversions for Elise’s though.
Edit: just checked and one of the cofounders is Clare Grey, one of the UK’s (worlds) best battery chemists, at Cambridge.
It’s probably a tungsten oxide based/incorporating anode. One of the limiting factors for charging rates is rates of diffusion of Li cations through the cells/electrodes. This is much faster in some transition metal oxide type electrodes.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0347-0
te, it’s led to five pages of people saying they would/wouldn’t like to buy the car.The car isn’t a car being developed for sales, it’s a technology demonstrator for battery technology.
Unfortunately the article doesn’t tell us anything about the technology, which is the whole point of the vehicle… the fast charging seems to be enabled by new/better anode materials in the cells. It says they have a ‘proprietary anode material).
The cars a sport car because it will get press, which is what the company want for their technology.
It’s based on an Elise because they’re easy to modify and light (good for range)
It’s styled like an Elise because it was styled by Julian Thompson who designed the first Elise.
You won’t be able to buy it.
Would be interesting to see ev conversions for Elise’s though.
Edit: just checked and one of the cofounders is Clare Grey, one of the UK’s (worlds) best battery chemists, at Cambridge.
It’s probably a tungsten oxide based/incorporating anode. One of the limiting factors for charging rates is rates of diffusion of Li cations through the cells/electrodes. This is much faster in some transition metal oxide type electrodes.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0347-0
Edited by PlywoodPascal on Sunday 30th June 10:04
PlywoodPascal said:
This article is ste, it’s led to five pages of people saying they would/wouldn’t like to buy the car.
The car isn’t a car being developed for sales, it’s a technology demonstrator for battery technology.
Unfortunately the article doesn’t tell us anything about the technology, which is the whole point of the vehicle… the fast charging seems to be enabled by new/better anode materials in the cells.
The cars a sport car because it will get press, which is what the company want for their technology.
It’s based on an Elise because they’re easy to modify and light (good for range)
It’s styled like an Elise because it was styled by Julian Thompson who designed the first Elise.
You won’t be able to buy it.
Would be interesting to see ev conversions for Elise’s though.
Edit: just checked and one of the cofounders is Clare Grey, one of the UK’s (worlds) best battery chemists, at Cambridge.
Technically, it's just a rerelease of a PR article to support research funding. te, it’s led to five pages of people saying they would/wouldn’t like to buy the car.The car isn’t a car being developed for sales, it’s a technology demonstrator for battery technology.
Unfortunately the article doesn’t tell us anything about the technology, which is the whole point of the vehicle… the fast charging seems to be enabled by new/better anode materials in the cells.
The cars a sport car because it will get press, which is what the company want for their technology.
It’s based on an Elise because they’re easy to modify and light (good for range)
It’s styled like an Elise because it was styled by Julian Thompson who designed the first Elise.
You won’t be able to buy it.
Would be interesting to see ev conversions for Elise’s though.
Edit: just checked and one of the cofounders is Clare Grey, one of the UK’s (worlds) best battery chemists, at Cambridge.
Edited by PlywoodPascal on Sunday 30th June 09:56
The folks behind this are very smart people but they've no intention of building or selling a car that no one wanted when it had a petrol engine, despite how great it was and the fact that the article contains absolutely no information whatsoever about what they are actually working on its clear it's just part of the funding game. Nor does the website contain any information.
Meanwhile, CATL have allegedly produced a viable Na/Li blend cell that is cheaper than the current best Li cells by nearly 30%. Surpasses the best Li energy density by a similar 30%, getting pretty close to the projected density of the elusive solid state gamble but for a tenth of the cost and under super fast charging shows next to no dendritic growth.
And if that isn't just another of the very many research frauds for funding endlessly being perpetrated by the scientific community desperate to be the next techbro and finally be able to pay strippers to stay with them all day, then it is a very significant game changer and step forward for cars where the battery pack just needs to last as long as the car does, be cheap to buy, safer to use etc.
DonkeyApple said:
While petrol cars exist and we have an absolute smorgasbord of choice for fun and silly it definitely strikes me that the sweet spot is Monday-Friday is EV time but leisure time remains so much better catered for by burning petrol for noise, smells, mechanical inefficiency etc.
That said, Nyobolt aren't actually a car company nor plan to be. They're a handful of researchers in Cambridge who have been granted funding from the Faraday Battery Challenge pot of cash to try and develop cells that don't explode from dendritic growth as Lithium grows off the anode under heavy and fast charging to eventually spike through the wet membrane and ignite. So they're just a research team that happens to be based in Cambridge and Coventry so not far from either Hethel or Warwick to find some people with an Elise they've stuck an electric motor in who will try their battery and BMS systems so that everyone gets a load of PR to help with the next funding rounds. The car got wheeled out 12 months ago after that funding round and wheeled out again now after last month's FBC funding round. We won't see it again until the next one.
But these funding projects are genuinely important as the West is massively on the back foot re battery research and China has a two decade head start, far more money going in and far superior manufacturing capabilities. The only way to get back in that race is to fund numerous research teams in a big gamble that one of them will accidentally stumble into a genuinely technological breakthrough on charge rates or charge density. Then all they have to do is break the habit of having it stolen which has been a twenty year student pastime.
Super fast charging isn't actually all that relevant to private EV use. This is because you are limited to the number of locations where that amount of electricity actually exists to be hurled into a car battery and of course cars are mobile objects that move all over the place. But it's hugely relevant for things like factory robots which are basically operating in a fixed location which either has that size of power feed already or it can be added and where robot downtime for recharging is an enormous time cost.
For cars it's much more about energy density, which this particular project isn't really about. By increasing energy density we can head more freely in two opposing directions, delivering cars with much higher ranges which are critical for countries with much large geography than little islands such as the U.K. that's completely covered in an electricity network already and the other news which is smaller, lighter, cheaper EVs that have usable ranges for the typical working week user. The latter being the critical advance the U.K. market requires. By the end of the 2030s the U.K. will be needing smaller, cheap EVs that have sufficient range to only need recharging once a week maximum if we are to start being able to get the last car users, those without driveways and bigger budgets to switch freely.
Going back to EV sports cars, they don't make any sense to me as they reveal the truth about sports cars that they aren't about freedom, the open road and just going where and when you want but are in fact just another car for trundling to shopping centres or regional offices with the occasional massive adventure down the motorway to somewhere different for lunch. And of course and EV systems can do exactly that all day long but it kind of shatters the illusion.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with the Boxster EV. VW sell most of their sports cars to people who just want a practical, easy commuting and shopping car that's a bit more fun looking than a conventional car. They are the people who put a diesel engine in one after all. And they have all the usage and mileage data of every single user of their products so they know the EV equivalent will work just fine for almost all of them just trundling along on local errands or plodding up the motorway for a bit but one wonders if the limitations of batteries might be too much for the illusion of freedom?
Thank you for this post, I'll take the time to digest it properly a little later on when I've got a bit more time.That said, Nyobolt aren't actually a car company nor plan to be. They're a handful of researchers in Cambridge who have been granted funding from the Faraday Battery Challenge pot of cash to try and develop cells that don't explode from dendritic growth as Lithium grows off the anode under heavy and fast charging to eventually spike through the wet membrane and ignite. So they're just a research team that happens to be based in Cambridge and Coventry so not far from either Hethel or Warwick to find some people with an Elise they've stuck an electric motor in who will try their battery and BMS systems so that everyone gets a load of PR to help with the next funding rounds. The car got wheeled out 12 months ago after that funding round and wheeled out again now after last month's FBC funding round. We won't see it again until the next one.
But these funding projects are genuinely important as the West is massively on the back foot re battery research and China has a two decade head start, far more money going in and far superior manufacturing capabilities. The only way to get back in that race is to fund numerous research teams in a big gamble that one of them will accidentally stumble into a genuinely technological breakthrough on charge rates or charge density. Then all they have to do is break the habit of having it stolen which has been a twenty year student pastime.
Super fast charging isn't actually all that relevant to private EV use. This is because you are limited to the number of locations where that amount of electricity actually exists to be hurled into a car battery and of course cars are mobile objects that move all over the place. But it's hugely relevant for things like factory robots which are basically operating in a fixed location which either has that size of power feed already or it can be added and where robot downtime for recharging is an enormous time cost.
For cars it's much more about energy density, which this particular project isn't really about. By increasing energy density we can head more freely in two opposing directions, delivering cars with much higher ranges which are critical for countries with much large geography than little islands such as the U.K. that's completely covered in an electricity network already and the other news which is smaller, lighter, cheaper EVs that have usable ranges for the typical working week user. The latter being the critical advance the U.K. market requires. By the end of the 2030s the U.K. will be needing smaller, cheap EVs that have sufficient range to only need recharging once a week maximum if we are to start being able to get the last car users, those without driveways and bigger budgets to switch freely.
Going back to EV sports cars, they don't make any sense to me as they reveal the truth about sports cars that they aren't about freedom, the open road and just going where and when you want but are in fact just another car for trundling to shopping centres or regional offices with the occasional massive adventure down the motorway to somewhere different for lunch. And of course and EV systems can do exactly that all day long but it kind of shatters the illusion.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with the Boxster EV. VW sell most of their sports cars to people who just want a practical, easy commuting and shopping car that's a bit more fun looking than a conventional car. They are the people who put a diesel engine in one after all. And they have all the usage and mileage data of every single user of their products so they know the EV equivalent will work just fine for almost all of them just trundling along on local errands or plodding up the motorway for a bit but one wonders if the limitations of batteries might be too much for the illusion of freedom?
DonkeyApple said:
Technically, it's just a rerelease of a PR article to support research funding.
The folks behind this are very smart people but they've no intention of building or selling a car that no one wanted when it had a petrol engine, despite how great it was and the fact that the article contains absolutely no information whatsoever about what they are actually working on its clear it's just part of the funding game. Nor does the website contain any information.
Meanwhile, CATL have allegedly produced a viable Na/Li blend cell that is cheaper than the current best Li cells by nearly 30%. Surpasses the best Li energy density by a similar 30%, getting pretty close to the projected density of the elusive solid state gamble but for a tenth of the cost and under super fast charging shows next to no dendritic growth.
And if that isn't just another of the very many research frauds for funding endlessly being perpetrated by the scientific community desperate to be the next techbro and finally be able to pay strippers to stay with them all day, then it is a very significant game changer and step forward for cars where the battery pack just needs to last as long as the car does, be cheap to buy, safer to use etc.
I think it’s unfair to say scientists are endlessly perpetrating research fraud, by the way. Some do, sometimes. It happens when the external motivations for science/research become more valued than the intrinsic one(s) (curiosity). The folks behind this are very smart people but they've no intention of building or selling a car that no one wanted when it had a petrol engine, despite how great it was and the fact that the article contains absolutely no information whatsoever about what they are actually working on its clear it's just part of the funding game. Nor does the website contain any information.
Meanwhile, CATL have allegedly produced a viable Na/Li blend cell that is cheaper than the current best Li cells by nearly 30%. Surpasses the best Li energy density by a similar 30%, getting pretty close to the projected density of the elusive solid state gamble but for a tenth of the cost and under super fast charging shows next to no dendritic growth.
And if that isn't just another of the very many research frauds for funding endlessly being perpetrated by the scientific community desperate to be the next techbro and finally be able to pay strippers to stay with them all day, then it is a very significant game changer and step forward for cars where the battery pack just needs to last as long as the car does, be cheap to buy, safer to use etc.
Panamax said:
DonkeyApple said:
the battery pack just needs to last as long as the car does, be cheap to buy, safer to use etc.
"just"I guess the bottom line is that if it was easy everybody would be doing it, including Elon Musk whose resources must far outstrip most other contenders.
. It ultimately has nothing to with it being easy. It is an event that is going to happen and all that is up for discussion is when and how. Will it be achieved via traditional wet cells or solid, and what specific chemistry is used and it's material costs.
What's interesting currently is that for the last 5 years we have all mostly been assuming that the eventual big step change in charge times and energy densities would be delivered by the hugely more expensive solid state solution but as that avenue has repeatedly failed to deliver on time the wet cell market has just been steadily creeping up and last years' cell from BYD surpassed everything that we thought was achievable from old laptop cells just 5 years ago.
The CATL announcement re their blended Na/Li cells is actually immense if true as they deliver near solid state robustness and densities but for less cost than the cheapest automotive Li cells.
We have batteries and BMS lasting at least ten years now while retaining at least 70-80% of capacity so given the typical car lasts under 20 years we are potentially not too many years away from battery pack usable lifetimes being a match.
It seems fair to envisage that by 2030 we will potentially be at a tipping point in multiple areas for EVs as the 100+ years of motor hobbling by utterly rubbish battery technology finally improves to the point that a battery can actually be better than the insane workaround of digging up fossil fuels, shipping them round the world to refine then transporting them back around the world to be burned in the most comically complicated contraption just to get a car to move forward because since the 1860s the rechargeable battery has been a festering pile of dung that has comprehensively failed to technologically advance at anywhere near the rate the rest of mankind's creations have.
But the real question once we do crack efficient energy storage in transportable cells for all our normal cars, just what kind of monster wants an electric sports car!!!!! And what kind of other serious risks do these mentalists pose?
Nomme de Plum said:
All normal cars are white goods and have been from the days of the Model T in 1908 , excepting it was black of course.
I'd happily have an electric sports car.
My Exige was all but undriveable in hot weather. It had a radiator and charge cooler in the front and the engine just behind with the exhaust which ran red hot. It was like sitting in a sauna and was only fun on the track.
I don't feel the need to fiddle with gears as I've done that. At least my early sports cars were truly analogue, No traction control, ABS, active damping etc. and one had a straight cut sequential box which was unbelievably noisy. I wonder how many enthusiasts would tolerate that in their sports cars.
I guess most enthusiasts are on a scale which finishes well before EV…. At one end only a radical will do…. All the way to an M4 with everything inbetween…. But I’d wager most want an experience an EV can’t provide and for now new ICE is available.I'd happily have an electric sports car.
My Exige was all but undriveable in hot weather. It had a radiator and charge cooler in the front and the engine just behind with the exhaust which ran red hot. It was like sitting in a sauna and was only fun on the track.
I don't feel the need to fiddle with gears as I've done that. At least my early sports cars were truly analogue, No traction control, ABS, active damping etc. and one had a straight cut sequential box which was unbelievably noisy. I wonder how many enthusiasts would tolerate that in their sports cars.
My EV makes a fine replacement for my diesel (for the most part odd ballache charger/mileage issue aside)
But replacing a race/track/sports car…. That’s tough and for all the enthusiasm something like this or the caterham may bring…. I doubt they’d sell many.
I’ll be fascinated to see how well the EV cayman does.
Setting aside the research nature of this particular project, the question really for sports car manufacturers is how they are going to make compelling cars once they have to be electrified. I don’t believe that the end of the ICE will mean people only want dull SUV utility boxes. And nor do I believe that sports cars will necessarily have to be 2 ton behemoths because some abstract notion of the freedom of driving from central London to the alps requires enormous range. For GTs, for sure, but that’s not really what people buy Elises or Caterhams for, or really what they use the more long range tolerable cars for.
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