A British-based engineering team reckons that its new experimental electric car can be recharged in as little as six minutes.
Ian Callum is the man who designed some of the most attractive cars of all time, from the original Ford Puma to the first-gen Aston Martin Vanquish, right up to the Jaguar F-Type. Since leaving Jaguar, Callum has set up his own design and consultancy firm, simply called Callum.
Collaboration with Nybolt
Having started out offering styling and bespoke modification services, Callum has now moved into the electric vehicle realm and, together with Cambridge-based battery manufacturer Nybolt has designed the Nybolt EV, which has some potentially revolutionary battery tech.
If it looks a bit familiar, that's because the Callum-Nybolt car is based on a Series 1 Lotus Elise, and Callum actually asked that car's original designer, Julian Thompson, to return to his design classic to give it a bit of a tweak to bring it into the electric era. EV historians will doubtless have noted that the original Tesla Roadster was also based on a Lotus Elise - is history repeating itself?
David Fairbairn, managing director at Callum, said: "Nyobolt's pioneering battery technology has provided us with a unique and inspiring opportunity to support in the design and execution of a vehicle set to mark the way forward for EV technology. The collaborative creativity, engineering capabilities and steadfast efforts of Nyobolt, Julian Thomson and Callum have resulted in an EV that is not only exciting technically for the industry, but something that is beautiful to behold, too."
Carbon body
The new car's proportions are slightly different from those of the original Elise. It's 100mm wider and 150mm longer than the original, and the wheelarches are a little wider and more flowing. Not least of all, there are new, high-tech light units - lensless, in a nod to the original - which use the latest LED technology. The body itself is now made of strong, light carbon fibre, and those are new and bespoke 19-inch alloy wheels.
"The aim was to evolve the design and bring it up to date while keeping that iconic sports car character that was so well received in the Elise," explains Aleck Jones, creative lead at Callum. "Typically, you run into feasibility issues with initial sketches and a design loses impact as it moves from concept into reality, but incredibly - and thanks to the close working relationship between Callum's design and engineering teams - we have been able to realise our early images and unique vision in the real world.
"Nyobolt's technology allows this car to tick all the boxes that made the original Elise such a desirable drivers' car with a cult following, but it's electric. These two things don't usually come hand-in-hand due to weight and battery packaging constraints."
Ultra-fast charging
What of that battery, though? It's a compact unit - just 35kWh of power - which allows the Nybolt EV to weigh slightly more than one tonne. Needless to say, Nybolt is being a little coy about how it gets the battery to charge so quickly, but it claims that it can be charged in just six minutes, giving a range of 250km thanks to the car's lightness and aerodynamic efficiency. The battery specialist firm says it has put the prototype battery through 2,000 fast-charging cycles with no observed degrading of its performance.
Nybolt claims that its battery tech represents the 'holy grail' of EV battery design and that it's ready for 'immediate application and rapid scale-up' of production. Sai Shivareddy, CEO at Nyobolt, said: "Unlocking the challenges faced by electric vehicle designers has been key to the development of our breakthrough fast-charging batteries. Previously, enabling a light weight fast-charging vehicle was not possible without compromising its lifetime and so people have been relying on costly and large battery packs in the vehicle. With our unique technology we have achieved a six-minute charge car, and developed smaller battery packs that can deliver more power and charge in less time.
"Our partnership with Callum shows how adoption of system-level technology innovations can transform the future of electric vehicles and increase accessibility of EVs, including to the 40% of UK households who can't charge their vehicle at home overnight."
What we don't know yet is how powerful the car's charger needs to be to get that battery topped up in just six minutes. Callum and Nybolt's photos show the car hooked up to a bespoke Nybolt charging point, and the company has made allusions to the potential of incredibly rapid chargers, far more powerful than the fastest 350kW DC charging points we have (in very limited numbers) today. "Nyobolt technology is not limited to small batteries," said the company. "Larger packs, e.g., batteries as large as those employed in any luxury EV, truck or bus used today, can also be made and could be charged in a few minutes, once One-Megawatt chargers become available."