Lightning strikes Tesla at London motor show
A new all-electric GT sports car was revealed by automaker Lightning Car at the British International Motor Show on Tuesday.
The Electric Lightning GT is an all-electric car with no emissions that can accelerate to speeds "over 130 mph," according to company specs.
The guilt-free sports car is poised to be a competitor to Tesla Motors' 135 mph-riding Tesla Roadster, which began production in mid-July in the United States.
The Lightning GT at its unveiling Tuesday at the British International Motor Show.
(Credit: Lightning Car)The Lightning GT can go from zero to 60 mph in 4 seconds, just like the Tesla Roadster, and has a range of 200 miles per charge, compared to Tesla's 220-mile range.
The Lightning GT has a technological advantage over the Roadster, or so it seems, depending on whether recharge time is an issue for owners. The company says the car takes 10 minutes to recharge, if charged from a three-phase power supply (those found in industrial buildings, compared to the residential single phase). The Tesla Roadster has an estimated 3.5-hour charge time from a residential outlet.
The Lightning GT's motors are in the wheels.
(Credit: Lightning Car)The company claims that its 30 onboard 10-minute charge batteries, NanoSafe batteries supplied by the Phoenix-based AltairNano company, can last up to 12 years before needing to be replaced. The NanoSafe batteries will also still maintain a charge capacity of 85 percent after 15,000 charges, according to Lightning Car.
But that impatience tax is steep. The Lightning GT, available for preorder with a 15,000-pound ($30,000) deposit, is estimated to sell for between 120,000 pounds and 150,000 pounds (roughly between $240,000 and $300,000), according to reports. Lightning Car promises a 2009 delivery and offers customization service that includes a "made to measure" interior, as well as any minor body style requests.
U.S. drivers, however, will have to wait. The company said in a statement that it has applied for certification requirements to sell the car in the United States but has not yet gotten federal approval.
The car's drive train includes what the company calls "Hi-Pa Drive" technology (the British and their puns), a system of four 120-kilowatt power motors located inside each wheel of the car that can make 700 horsepower.
The Lighting GT also has all the accoutrement you'd expect with your sports car, including traction control, an entertainment system, tinted windows, and LED lights. Being electric, it also offers regenerative braking, a system in which your car is given a charge every time you brake. As is customary among British car manufacturers, air conditioning is optional, not standard. Built-in satellite navigation is also optional.
The British International Motor Show is open to the public July 23 to August 3 at the ExCel exhibition center in London.
While luxury favorites like the Hummer are on display, it's the green cars generating buzz as must-sees at this year's show.
(Credit:
Lightning Car)
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. E-mail her at candacelombardi@gmail.com. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET. 
Why can't GM or Ford buy these guys and start mass producing the crap out of it (and therefore the price will go down due to economy of scale factors)?????
When they manage to get the price down to a practical reality, then it might be worth a second look, but right now, they toys for the filthy rich.
When you can only make 10 or 12 cars per year, you need to charge quite a bit to pay your rent and 10 or 20 full time workers.
PS. What is this about the filthy rich? People with a great deal of money take as many or more showers as those who just scrape by.
Have you seen the Toyota Sequoia? Reminds you of a brick doesn't it?
And you need to look again. This thing will cut through the air.
Pedestrians won't hear it coming ......
Although some of the ?conventional? look hood and tail area obviously holds batteries, you must also consider that people might want a trunk. This gives a lockable place to put your shopping when you stop to get lunch.
The Volt is a serial hybrid not a battery electric. You can talk all year about EREV, but the fact that it has an onboard generator means serial hybrid. Both the Tesla and the Lightning are battery electric cars without the need of a gas driven generator. Their intended customers are not the same people anyway.
As already mentioned, electric cars are not silent. The electric motors and noise of the tires are more noticeable than you would think. Even my e-bike makes more noise than I would have thought and it?s only 600 watts.
I applaud both companies who think they have a viable business model. These are ?upstart? car companies since the main stream auto manufacturers have left their customers hanging with wimpy economy vehicles. The technology has existed for over 10 years to build these kinds of cars even if they would have only had 130 to 150 mile ranges. The second generation vehicles will be cheaper and more in line with what a family would be looking for.
I also applaud the ?early adopters? who are paying for these limited edition vehicles. They are the ones that will show that electric vehicles have a use and will drive down the price of the next generation of electric cars. With the cost of petroleum only going up in price, electric drive vehicles will start to take over as people look for a cheaper way to get around. My first question when I go to a car dealer is ?What have you got with a plug?? When more people see this as an alternative, most manufacturers will start making them.
Tesla plans a 240 volt 70 amp home charging connection that can recharge the 53 Kwh Roadster battery in just 3.5 hours. The same type of connection for the Lightning would complete the charge in under 2.5 hours.
All-electrics ARE a lethal problem that will have to be addressed very soon. It's all very well to say that pedestrians can look out for themselves, but out here in less fuel-dependent countries, many people still walk, and you haven't lived till you've had to leap out of the way of an oncoming Toyota Pious approaching around a blind corner in a markedly SILENT bush suburb, as I've been obliged to do. If I didn't hear it coming, and neither of the dogs I was walking heard it, either, that tells me they're probably already taking people out, and will end up taking out many more.
Fact is, progress does not occur over night. Electric cars are hardly an immediate solution to cure your woes. So please, tone down that over inflated ego. I'm beginning to suffocate from your "smug."
As for recycling of the batteries, these batteries aren't like your laptop battery which lasts for a couple of years and needs to be replaced. The new generation of lithium-ion batteries, like those from AltairNano who is making the battery for this vehicle or A123, who is the likely the supplier for the Chevy Volt, last for 5,000 to 15,000 charge cycles. Assuming that you drove 200 miles a day in the Lighting (or other 200 mile range ELV) and went through a complete cycle each and every day, 365 days a year the battery life would be between 13 and 40 years!
If instead you drive a 200 mile range electric car an average of 12,000 miles a year, then you would only need to recharge it 60 times a year. Even 5000 charge cycles gives a life of 83 YEARS! If AltairNano is right and they can really get 15,000 charge cycles out of a battery, then the battery pack that I buy today would still be powering vehicles 250 years from now!
But eventually my great-great-great grandchild will need to dispose of these batteries. Again these aren't a couple of AA alkaline batteries that get thrown in the trash. These things are full of very valuable materials. Batteries wear out not because the stuff inside somehow get used up. Instead it is because the microstructure inside that allows them to hold a charge breaks down. The Lithium will still be Lithium and the Titanium will still be Titanium. So when the time comes people will pay you money so that they can take your old tired batteries off your hands and make new batteries out of them.
The electricity used to drive these cars is generated and dellivered with a well-to-wall-socket efficiency of only around 30%. Add in the cycle losses in the car's battery and the motor efficiency, and your looking at a well-to-wheel efficiency of maybe 25%. This is very comparable with the well-to-wheel efficiency of 20-25% for an i/c vehicle.
http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/well_to_wheel.php
A big stationary coal fired power plant can use several efficiency boosting devices that would be too bulky for use in cars, and typically get 45% efficiency. The distribution grid averages 92% efficient, charger and batteries 85% efficient, electric motor about 95%. Overall efficiency about 33%. Thats with average coal fired plants, some power plants are much more efficient - the newest GE combined cycle gas turbine generators get 60% efficiency, for an overall efficiency of 45%.
A gas car is about 15%, if you add in the energy losses for refining the oil and shipping the fuel, you are looking at single digit efficiency. Sorry, when it comes to efficiency, electrics win over gassers, by a wide margin.
Incidentally, I did a quick calculation about how much electricy would be required to replace petrol and diesel in terms of "delivered megajoules" here in the UK and, having factored in the improved efficiency of the electric battery/motor, we would need to increase the capacity of our electricty generation and delivery infrastructure by 50-70%, which would, of course, require enormous investment.
I suspect one of the main benefits of introducing electric cars is that it will be an opportunity to wean people off powerful, high-speed vehicles so they get, and use, only the performance they need rather than want. This alone would reduce their energy footprint enormously. In that respect the Tesla is probably going off in the wrong direction, although it's no doubt a great advert (and development platform) for the technology.
Assuming that this car has a 50kWh battery pack (similar to the Tesla), then to charge it in only 10 minutes would require 50,000 x (60/10), or 300 kW of electrical power.
Phoenix Motorcars (www.phoenixmotorcars.com) which is making a truck with this battery has already demonstrated a 15 minute recharge time for a 35 kWh battery pack. The recharge they used was a 480V unit. Such a recharger will be pulling 625 amps at 480 volts in order to charge a 50 kWh battery pack in 10 minutes. Obviously not something you are going to have installed in your garage. Rather this will be a specialized installation at a commercial recharging station which would have to be operated by trained techs (so the "full service" gas or rather recharging station might be making a comeback :)
Of course you would not have to use one of these recharging stations. Assuming that you upgrade your garage outlet to a 220V/50A service (often used in electric clothes dryers), recharging this car would take 4 1/2 hours.
The electricity has to be generated somewhere. All this car does is move the pollution back to the power station chimney. It infuriates me when the makers try to pull the wool over people's eyes about this.
OK, so the car itself doesn't emit any pollutants, which is great for inner cities. Also, it should be considerably more efficient than internal combustion engine, but on the other hand electricity is generated and delivered with only around 30% efficiency, so the overall difference isn't much at all.
Let's not kid ourselves that this is any sort of solution to global pollution and/or CO2 emissions.
Thack
The other thing that isnt being mentioned is that the raw fuels being used to produce the electricity are being wasted. If the same fuels were used directly the efficency is much greater than the lossy production of electricity, the powerline voltage drops and the losses in the charger itself. For electric motorvehicles to not generate pollution FROM USE, purely hydroelectric or wind power generation would be necessary, Nuclear generation produces spent fuel rods that must be stored for thousands of years to become safe, Solar generation produces massive ctoxic waste in the production of the solar cells. And lets not even mention the MASSIVE amounts of toxic waste that is produced in the manufature and disposal of the batteries. To DATE the Toyota Prius is the most toxic and eco unfriendly auto made due to the production of the limited lifetime batteries. Maximum estimated lifetime of the batteries it used are 75 to 85 thousand miles. In the United States the average auto puts on 15 to 20 thousand miles a year per DOT records. There is no way to recycle the Prius batteries at this point in time. What are we going to be doing with all those batteries in four years?
- by TomMariner July 26, 2008 5:37 AM PDT
- Years ago I had a wealthy friend from the upper reaches of British society who liked techie stuff. He showed up at my office with this thing strapped to his wrist that displayed the time in glowing red numbers. He had literally paid a fortune for the LED watch that ten years later was given away at McDonalds with a Happy Meal.
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- by staigerclock July 26, 2008 12:18 PM PDT
- >> We owe a debt of gratitude to those who buy the first Teslas and Volts who will help get the rest of us affordable green transportation....<<
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- by staigerclock July 26, 2008 12:19 PM PDT
- In what way is this car "green"? See my comment above beginning "Zero emissions???"
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- by staigerclock July 26, 2008 12:25 PM PDT
- Oops! Sorry for the duplication.
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(39 Comments)The lesson is that the early adopters kick off the business models that the rest of us can later enjoy. We owe a debt of gratitude to those who buy the first Teslas and Volts who will help get the rest of us affordable green transportation that will satisfy those of us who revel in dramatic acceleration.
In what way is this green? See my comments above beginning "Zero emissions???"
Thack
Thack
Thack