from the I'm-waiting-for-the-super-mega-ultra-version dept.
Our friends at The Mind Unleashed, are reporting that the 900+ horsepower, zero-emmissions-breathing Supercar, the Quant e-Sportlimousine, has just gained approval for its ‘salt water’ powered car in Europe. Built by the German company Quant, it runs on an electrolyte flow cell power system made by NanoFlowcell that generates a staggering 920 horsepower, goes 0-62 mph in 2.8 seconds, and propels the car to a top speed of 217.5 mph!
Over at Gizmag, they're reporting "After an in-depth inspection of the car, the German TÜV Süd in Munich handed over the official registration plate this week. Now the company will be able to test the car on public roads in Germany and Europe as it prepares it for series production."
Supposedly making this possible is the electrolyte flow cell power system made by NanoFlowcell, who I hope makes a better car than they do website.
Here's an article from last March with some more information on the batteries and technology involved.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Wednesday September 10 2014, @03:35PM
Power for nothing! With fuel cells!
Let's try citing someone who's NOT the alleged manufacturer and IS a reputable journalist before repeating breathless claims.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by subs on Wednesday September 10 2014, @03:49PM
If I read this correctly, the electrolytes aren't pure saltwater, but rather an aqueous solution of metallic salts, so they still need processing ("charging") after use. The important difference is that this can happen off-line outside of the vehicle. The vehicle, instead, just pumps in new fresh "charged" electrolyte and can keep on going. If this is the case and they're really able to achieve 5x the specific energy of a lithium-ion battery, then this is the technology that's really going to make EVs mainstream. Range similar to fossil-fuel vehicles, similar fill-up times, ability to reuse existing infrastructure (gas stations). If their claims are true and if they can get the price down reasonably well, they've got a winner a on their hands.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday September 10 2014, @04:23PM
Cynical me is wondering which lawmaker will get campaign contributions, so that it becomes illegal to ask about the toxicity of the solution, both when it's new (accidental spill) or used (final disposal/recycling)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by subs on Wednesday September 10 2014, @05:02PM
Would be interesting to know, true, but I'd hazard a guess it's not going to be worse than the methanol in certain alcohol-gasoline composite fuels. Even plain gasoline is pretty nasty stuff that you wouldn't want to see seeping into your municipal water supply, but we still manage mostly ok. Anyway, I'll keep an eye on this project to see if it holds up to the manufacturer's claims.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @07:23PM
For one contributor worried about the toxicity there is the coal gas and oil industry worried about the atoxicity. I wouldn't worry about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @03:50PM
Yeah this has 'scam' written all over it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @04:26PM
I tend to agree.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday September 10 2014, @09:19PM
Power for nothing! With fuel cells!
Further, TFA may claim that this is a Salt Water Powered Car, but our submitters and our editors don't have to stoop that low.
An electrolyte is not a power source.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday September 10 2014, @03:54PM
"of its newly-developed, and unspecified, electrolytic fluids, made up of metallic salts at very high concentration."
This is ridiculous and makes it sound like patent medicine. Here's a link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery [wikipedia.org]
"In 2014 a technology was announced that used lithium-sulfur chemistry arranged in a network of nanoparticles. The network eliminates the requirement that charge moves in and out of particles that are in direct contact with a conducting plate. Instead, the nanoparticle network allows electricity to flow throughout the liquid. This allows more energy to be extracted.[1]
In August 2014, the Quant e-Sportlimousine was approved for testing on public roads using the nanoFLOWCELL® system with a claimed energy or power density of 600 Wh per kilogram (per litre of salt water electrolyte).[21]"
Usually lithium batteries have problems with aqueous electrolytes, so this is interesting.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday September 10 2014, @04:05PM
Wait a second, something doesn't add up here
"claimed energy or power density of 600 Wh per kilogram"
Thats about 15% higher than the highest reports of lab scale work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93sulfur_battery [wikipedia.org]
Why is beyond cutting edge research being announced as part of a shipping car rather than in research papers at lab scale.
My guess is we have the journalist filter to blame, and some scientist was pressed for a reasonable theoretical maximum goal, and now thats declared to be shipping by an art history major. Just like happens in programming projects when sales guys just make stuff up on the fly.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 10 2014, @09:35PM
TFA (and the GP) speaks of flow batteries (so the battery doesn't modify during recharge) - in particular one based on lithium-sulfur chemistry i.e. same reactions, different way to exploit them - maybe that's where they managed to squeeze more juice from the same mass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Interesting) by MrGuy on Wednesday September 10 2014, @04:06PM
And no one ever wiki-salts, right?
Of the section of the Wikipedia article you pasted in (thanks!), I note the first citation is to what appears to be a non-existent page (and which in any case only purports to be a definition for the term "electroactive substance"), and the second citation is to (you guessed it!) the press release from the company behind this "innovation."
I have a lot of money riding on that company ALSO being the ones who added this section to the wikipedia page.
(Score: 1) by cout on Wednesday September 10 2014, @06:17PM
If you look at the page history, that section was added by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lfstevens [wikipedia.org], who to my untrained eye, appears to not work for said company.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Wednesday September 10 2014, @07:24PM
made up of metallic salts at very high concentrations.
This is rediculous and makes it sound like patent medicine."
I imagine it makes perfect sense if you tell yourself that it is radioactive metalic salts. Where else would they get that power density?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Wednesday September 10 2014, @04:08PM
I know everyone loves to hate on wikipedia, but it at least has some information on flow batteries that isn't clearly explained: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery [wikipedia.org]
For example, the last link in TFS left me sort of confused on rechargeability ( http://www.greencarcongress.com/2014/03/20140305-quant.html [greencarcongress.com] ):
So you fill up with electrolytes? Like gas?
This makes it sound rechargeable. The wikipedia article notes that the electrolytes can eat away at the membrane separating the fluids, but not made clear with respect to this car, is whether a "charging cycle" means connecting it to power and reversing the chemical reactions, or refilling the tanks with charged electrolytes like you'd fill up with gas or diesel.
And as for the car itself, it seems so amazingly over-designed, in the "made pretty" sense (e.g., translucent wood panels through which digital controls glow) that it makes me wonder about their particular type of flowcell -- why would they spend so much extra on glamor when what is of most interest is the battery?
From wikipedia:
Who knows, maybe this battery has amazing energy density and is rechargeable in the way people typically imagine when they think of "recharging" ... but it sure is hard to tell because of the flash and hype.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday September 10 2014, @04:26PM
any time i see the word "nano" nowdays , I think "graphene".
The tricky part of this is membranes - it needs to be impermeable electrochemically quite specifically for the active ions.
i am willing to guess that once this setup is release to an independent setting, we might get some more honest interpretations.
The reaction is like all batteries you need to have a chemical reaction that is energetically favourable and will yield an electron-ion pair.
Until I see a publication I am not so bothered - science by press release usually hides a fatal flaw...
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @04:11PM
It's got what cars crave!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday September 10 2014, @04:47PM
QUANT e-Sportlimousine with nanoFLOWCELLs®
1. It's got "e" prefixed on it, for god knows what reason. Presumably to tell us it has electronics in it? Because everybody knows cars don't have computers in them at all. Maybe you're supposed to game on the center console while you drive?
2. "Sportlimousine"? The fuck is that supposed to mean? It's as luxurious as a limousine but it's a sports car? Don't tell me sports cars *haven't* been comfortable until now. All that money had better damn well pay for a car that's comfortable.
3. Slap "nano" on the front. That makes everything better!
4. Oh yeah, let's lowercase the front and then make the rest ALL CAPS! We're hip and edgy now!
If I were going to buy a sports car, you can be sure I'd want it to have a classy name like the Honda MaxPimpin' Line Xtreme Sport OrgasmMobile 98000 MOE (Maximum Overcompensating Edition).
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Wednesday September 10 2014, @05:20PM
Just a guess, but I think 'e' stands for electric. If it's running off a fuel cell or battery the motor is probably an electric motor, not an internal combustion engine (ICE). The 'e' designation is to differentiate between a car that uses a battery to start an ICE vs a car that uses a battery for all the power to run it. Again, just guessing.
Everything else you said I agree with.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Wednesday September 10 2014, @06:41PM
Yeah, the naming is very Web 2.0 and obnoxious. The whole thing seems very snake-oilish from the get-go. I stumbled on a slick but incredibly uninformative marketing video about this vehicle a few weeks back while perusing a website that focuses on alternative energy and electric and hybrid vehicles. But the "e" prefixing is easily explained as it's quite common in the EV (Electric Vehicle) market. Volkswagen has their "e-Golf" and "e-UP!" names for instance to distinguish the all-electric models from their regular fossil-fuel powered counterparts.
So this is an electric car, just like a hydrogen fuel cell car. The fuel cell creates electricity that drives an all-electric power train, just like any battery-powered Tesla or Nissan LEAF. I have to wonder if this technology also suffers from similar problems to hydrogen fuel cell cars, such as being at the stage where each prototype vehicle still costs millions of dollars to create, and the fuel cells having terrible durability and cold weather performance. Adding a requirement for some kind of proprietary mysterious "electrolyte" fuel just makes it all the more likely the technology will never go anywhere, unless the "fuel" has a dramatically lower cost to the consumer than hydrogen or gasoline and is very easy to integrate into the standard fueling infrastructure. Hand-waving about the fuel being "saltwater" does not immediately fill me with confidence.
Even if it works this may never go anywhere in the market, since we appear to be hovering around an inflection point where improvements in battery technology, battery cost, charging speeds and fast-charging infrastructure are combining to cause a slow but steady snowballing of BEV (battery-powered electric vehicle) and PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle) sales over the last half decade. The opening of Tesla's and other manufacturers' gigafactories is poised to bring the cost of batteries down substantially and allow the EV market to really take off like a rocket within just a couple of years, leaving all other EV technologies like fuel cells to play catch-up. Cost-wise I see nothing that can effectively compete with pure electric battery vehicles for at least two or three decades. Certainly nothing even close to zero-emission. Meanwhile battery technology is a hair's breadth away from already being cost-competitive with fossil fuels even without government incentives. The CEO of Nissan has said that the EV market only needs to sell about a million vehicles per year to reach cost parity. This will happen within a year or two, even before the new gigafactories ramp up production and further drive down EV costs.
So even if this "saltwater" fuel cell is a legitimate and cost-effective technology the likelihood of any such vehicle succeeding in the current and near-term consumer vehicle market seems quite low. But it's an interesting development for the future, just like hydrogen eventually may be.
For anyone interested in electric vehicles (and everyone here certainly should be) you may want to watch a YouTube channel called "FullyChargedShow" (starring of all people Robert Llewellyn, the guy who played the robot Kryten in Red Dwarf), and the movies "Who Killed the Electric Car" and "Revenge of the Electric Car". That alone will give a good taste of what's been happening in EVs over the past decade or so. EVs are becoming mainstream these days, and not just because of Tesla.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 11 2014, @03:06AM
As person who owns a boat and keeps it in saltwater, let me just say that short of concentrated sulfuric acid or a nuclear detonation, there is nothing in this world quite so damaging to anything and everything as saltwater. Stainless steel rusts just fine. Plastics deteriorate too as anyone who has had to fix osmosis blisters on fiberglass boat hull can attest. Basically, if you want to ruin something, just get it somewhere within a 100 yards of saltwater.
(Score: 2) by RedBear on Thursday September 11 2014, @04:47AM
It's funny, living near the ocean for many years I debated saying something almost identical to what you've just said. Anything but 300-series stainless steel just gets eaten alive by marine environments unless it's kept spit and polished, oiled or painted on an incredibly regular basis. This is another reason I highly doubt that this fuel cell would end up being any more durable than hydrogen fuel cells or lithium-air batteries. Anytime you allow something from the outside environment to interact with micro- or nano-sized structures you allow for the possibility of contaminants entering and corrupting the fuel cell (or battery). This is all that's really holding back lithium-air types of batteries, for instance. They work fine in the lab, they just require an ultra-purified supply of oxygen molecules with everything else in the "air" filtered out to avoid contaminating the internal molecular structures of the battery. It's a nearly impossible engineering task, at least if you want to do it quickly, reliably and cheaply in real-time starting with the normal dirty "air" around a vehicle. The same sort of purification is required for the hydrogen that powers hydrogen fuel cells, and I'm assuming the same holds true for these "saltwater" fuel cells. The fuel will need to be so highly purified it will probably be cost prohibitive to produce even if the raw material is free.
So once again we're back to the current completely sealed battery technology being the only available practical, cost-efficient and relatively durable power source for electric vehicles right now.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by skullz on Wednesday September 10 2014, @06:06PM
Digging around a bit found this:
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/03/04/geneva-2009-nlv-quant-by-koenigsegg/ [autoblog.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koenigsegg_Quant [wikipedia.org]
The Autoblog folks mention the same Elvis hair style guy as the head of NLV Solar which had a super battery that could be recharged in 15 minutes but I can't seem to find a website for NLV. And Koenigsegg doesn't seem to be branding this new Quant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 10 2014, @06:50PM
My 'this is a scam' sense is tingling
"the German TÜV Süd in Munich handed over the official registration plate this week"
Ah get an air of legitimacy by saying they got a license plate. Most custom cars can get one. Even if they do not work very well. Your car has to be wildly dangerous for them not to give you one. As long as you hit the specs (lights in the right spot, right color, and tires of the right type for the size, etc).
(Score: 4, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 10 2014, @08:00PM
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