No one likes waiting, but it’s a common occurrence for EV owners traveling long distances. However, that could be a thing of the past as Nyobolt has unveiled a sports car prototype that can go from a 10-80% charge in 4 minutes and 37 seconds. The company claimed that is “twice the speed of most of the fastest charging vehicles today” and said the “first four minutes are at a constant current of 500A, [and] this would provide 193 km of range.” However, there are some important caveats that need to be mentioned. The biggest is that the prototype has a tiny 35 kWh battery pack. To give you an idea of how small that is, the Jeep Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrid has a 17.3 kWh battery pack while the MINI Aceman EV has 42.5 and 54.2 kWh batteries. This helps to explain why the sports car has a WLTP range of a mere 249 km.
While tiny battery means tiny range, Nyobolt tried to spin this as a positive. In particular, the company said the battery is lightweight and able to charge quickly. Of course, if other batteries were also shrunken down, the same could be said about them.
However, Nyobolt believes their batteries
– which use “next-generation patented carbon and metal oxide anode materials,
[an] innovative low impedance cell design, [and] integrated power electronics
and software controls – are better. In particular, they’re claiming to have
solved problems related to battery degradation as they said their “24.5Ah cells
have already successfully completed over 4,000 full DoD (Depth of Discharge)
fast charge cycles, equating to over 965,606 km if used in the
Nyobolt EV pack, while still retaining over 80 percent battery capacity.”
Getting back to the Lotus-based sports
car, it has a 350 kW DC fast charging capability and weighs a mere 1,250 kg. The model was designed and engineered with Callum in such a way
that low volume production is possible. There’s no word on whether or not this
is planned, but Nyobolt said they could begin low volume battery production
within a year.
