The Electric Super Car Race Heats Up:
The Lightning’s power figures are very impressive — 700 horsepower, and 4 second 0–60mph times to almost rival the Tesla’s 3.7 seconds. But it’s the GT’s revolutionary battery technology that might give it the upper hand: Nanosafe’s Li-ion cells using nano titanate structures instead of traditional graphite give the GT an incredible 250-mile range, a full recharge time of only 10 minutes, and a life expectancy of 12 to 20 years, or 15,000 charge cycles before the battery performance drops significantly.
If you’re not familiar with electric cars, the key point is that batteries have always been the weak link; otherwise, they’re fantastic:
Beyond the battery, the sky’s the limit to some degree — electric engines are incredibly compact and can be pretty much as powerful as you want them to be. Power to each wheel can be precisely measured and controlled. Maintenance is next to zero, since there are so few moving parts compared with a combustion engine, they’re clean, simple and, of course, very green.
So let’s talk batteries:
The GT uses an array of Nanosafe batteries, by Altairnano — which replace the graphite structures within the traditional lithium-ion cell with nano-engineered titanate materials which are much more effective along several axes. The stronger nanostructures resist breakdown over time far better than graphite, leading to a greatly increased life expectancy of more than 15,000 charge cycles before the cell drops below 85% of its original capacity.Battery safety has been a concern in the past with previous graphite-based Li-ion designs exhibiting dangerous overheating when subjected to overcharging, punctures, drops and crashes — to the point where under stress tests they can frequently smoke, ignite and even explode. The Nanosafe batteries show none of these behaviors, and seem thermally very stable.
The nano-titanate batteries also show extremely high levels of power density — as much as 4000W/kg compared to a good traditional cell’s 1500W/kg. And their well-ordered, low-resistance structure allows for exceptionally quick charging — as little as 10 minutes for a 100% charge.
While the battery technology is still in its infancy, the Lightning GT and electric supercars of its ilk will remain highly expensive — but since the battery is generally the major expense in their production, and battery technology is likely to become vastly cheaper as it matures, we can expect good, fast, long-range electric cars to be a genuine and compelling option for the average car buyer sometime in the next five to ten years.