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The sports car that runs on saltwater

Top Gear’s Ollie Kew attempts out the ‘world-saving’ NanoFlowcell Quantino.

• By Editors
• From Top Gear

ten October two thousand sixteen

The annual Geneva motor display is a designer’s event, and its halls are packed each March with a predicatably dazzling array of concept cars, from the usual suspects along with the occasional unknown. So when a startup called NanoFlowcell arrived in Geneva back in 2014, pulling the wraps off a battery electrical grand touring car called the Quant e-SportLimousine, the world was intrigued, if unsurprised. But beyond its dramatic looks and outlandish spectacle claims (zero to 62mph in Two.6 seconds, a 236mph top speed) this design investigate made a genuinely audacious promise: It could run on saltwater.

The Quant made use of an ex-Nasa technology, a flow battery powered by ‘ionic liquid’ – that is, elementary saline water. It’s not fairly as elementary as packing the tank with sea water, but there’s little question the system is environmentally friendly in ways no other propulsion system (save, perhaps, solar) could be.

Top Gear’s Ollie Kew recently loved some seat time in the Quantino, the company’s city-car sized concept from the two thousand fifteen Geneva showcase. The car – which has been approved for use on European roads – gets its power from a “flow cell” comprised of two 159-litre tanks, each packed with a different electrolytic liquid&bashful; – one with a positive charge and one with a negative charge. The tanks are separated by a membrane and it is the meeting and interaction of the two fluids that creates an electrical charge. Ordinary, yes? The Quantino`s electrical motor produces a modest one hundred thirty six horsepower, providing it (says its maker) the capability to run from zero to 62mph in five seconds and press on to a top speed of 125mph.

So what did Ollie think of the “electrified car that you never have to charge”? Read on.

Named ‘bi-Ion`, the fluid is a water solution containing both organic and inorganic salts. Nasa gave up on this tech in the 1970s because the energy density was so poor, but NanoFlowcell`s enigmatic and enthusiastic chief technical officer Nunzio la Vecchia`s sixteen years of work on the chemistry has evidently yielded the necessary breakthrough to hit a lithium-ion battery`s storage capacity, so far as kWh per kilo are worried.

Mr la Vecchia won`t tell us, because the patent is pending.

One batch of ‘bi-Ion` fluid holds a positive charge, the other a negative charge. The car pumps these liquids through a membrane, where the interaction of the charged electrons generates an electrical charge. The liquid is vapourised and released, harmlessly, we`re told, as ‘water dust`. This permits the tank to empty so you can refill it. [And because] the fuel is essentially saltwater, it`s abundant and can be produced almost anywhere on Earth (again, the exact process is a closely-guarded secret, but la Vecchia says it could be made widespread and totally carbon-free).

On the energy storage system

The charge is stored in a supercapacitor, which is like a giant industrial-strength battery, more resistant to frequent charge-use-charge cycles than a regular battery, and can provide the bursts of power necessary for driving a motorised vehicle. It`s the size of a shoebox.

On the technology’s potential

Last year, the superbly coiffured la Vecchia – no arguments, this man is in possession of the greatest hair in the motor industry – evidently competed in a 14-hour, 1100km stamina run in the Quantino. And it still had fuel left in the tanks. It was his backache after fourteen hours at the wheel at up to 90mph that called time.

If Koenigsegg went to Zagato and asked them to construct a Ford Fiesta rival (we can fantasy), it`d most likely look something like this.

Just like a regular electrified car. [Quantino] accelerates smartly – NanoFlowcell claims a five-second run to 62mph – and tho’ it doesn`t feel fairly that snappy, there`s all the spectacle you`d ever reasonably expect from a puny hatch here. The regenerative effort on the brakes is subtle.

Instantaneously, Quentin feels like it`s been thoughtfully set up. Display it some corners, and despite weighing 1420kg, it`s remarkably agile. The car corners almost totally level and grips tightly on its snaking test course, shrugging off the few bumps there are to run over. The whine of the drive system gets progressively louder as the speed rises, but it`s still ideally effortless to hold a conversation with the sniggering la Vecchia in the passenger seat, and once the system has been refined and shrunk behind a bulkhead, it`d be leagues quieter.

On living with the Quantino

[The liquid fuel] is safe – not volatile like petrol – so it`s effortless to store and transport around. The bi-Ion doesn`t have a shelf-life either, unlike petrol. And that`s before you get to putting it into the car, which you do via a twin-nozzle pump. Just like packing your car with petrol or diesel, it`s a five-minute pit-stop with no cable adaptor or charging bay anxiety.

NanoFlowcell is adamant they are a tech company, not a carmaker. And the Quantino, and its 920bhp super-limo sister, the Quant e-Sportlimousine, are merely demonstrators of the tech. Both have been road legalised, but will never be sold. Instead, la Vecchia tells us that the company is in talks with a major automaker to sell its propulsion concept on in 2017.

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