Car Preview: GT Electric Supercar
Gizmag
Mar 27, 2008
It seems a transatlantic battle is brewing in the high-performance electric sportscar market. As America’s Tesla moves into the production phase with its 130+mph Roadster, Britain’s Lightning GT is hot on its heels, with prototypes expected to hit the road later this year.
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.
With battery technology advancing so quickly, it’s hard not to be bullish about the prospects of electric motoring as a serious alternative to the combustion engine. The battery has always been the limiting factor with electric vehicles; they’ve traditionally been too heavy, too large, too expensive. They took too long to charge, they didn’t offer a good enough charge range, and some of the better-performing Lithium variants were prone to dangerous overheating spirals that threatened driver and passenger safety.
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.
Which is why the Lightning GT is such an exciting electric car. Beyond its very British good looks, extreme performance figures and nifty regenerative braking, this is an electric car that takes only marginally longer to “fill up” than your Ferrari – and will travel a similar distance, all the while delivering truly awesome driving thrills and extreme amounts of torque.
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