Nanoflow’s Quant is a $1 million car that runs on salt

quant_salt_powered_carNanoflow technology’s Quant e-Sportlimousine is fast. Its 920 horsepower engine can accelerate this sleekly luxurious car from 0 to 100mph in 2.8 seconds. Its maximum speed is 217.5 mph.  Nanoflow claims this electric car has a range of 373 miles with a full tank. And when it does run low on fuel, you’ll need to refuel it– with saltwater.

The Quant salt-water powered car made its debut at the motor show in Geneva Switzerland. Wait a minute, a saltwater powered car?

Shouldn’t we take claims of cars powered by water, salt, cold fusion or potatoes with– a grain of salt? Isn’t this too good to be true? Will the region surrounding the Dead Sea soon be the richest in the world?

quant nanoflow saltwater car

With a price that may exceed one million dollars, the Quant won’t directly compete with Tesla. But the Quant is real and has already been approved for use on some public roads in Europe.

There is one catch. Like the batteries in electrics car and the gasoline in internal combustion engines, the salt electrolyte is only a convenient way to store energy in the Quant e-sportlimousine. Flow batteries replace conventional electrodes with ionized fluids.

 

Quant could run on desalination brine

In the case of this car, that fluid is salt water. Certain parts of the world face a surplus of salt water and the waste from the Mideast’s desalination plants will be more concentrated brine.

salt-powered-qaunt-quant car that runs on salt, quant esportlimousine, nanocell quant-qaunt-nanocell-flow-salt-car nanoflowcell-quant-elimousine-sport

Conventional electric cars can use wind, solar, nuclear or hydroelectric power from utility grids. Its two achilles heels are energy storage density and refueling time.

Ordinary gasoline has more than five times the energy storage density of the best lithium air batteries. Electric car recharge times have dropped from half a day to as little as 30 minutes but this is still much slower than pumping gasoline. Electric car companies such as Israel’s Better Place tried to sidestep this problem with battery exchange stations.

Gasoline cars use solar energy but if we were to be fair, their recharge time is fas slower. The gasoline in ordinary cars was “charged” with solar energy over the course of millions of years. It’s only the fact that we found so much of it precharged that allows us to ignore that and avoid that long recharge cycle.

quant-nanoflow-exterior

The world needs something that combines the best characteristics of gasoline and electric car energy storage. The flow battery in the Quant e-sportlimousine has some of these characteristics. Refueling would have the familiarity, speed and convenience of refueling a gasoline-powered car. It doesn’t solve every environmental problem in the world, but the flow battery technology behind the Quant e-limousine could become a valuable tool in the world’s transportation and energy infrastructure.

Photos from Nanoflow technology

About Brian Nitz

Brian remembers when a single tear dredged up a nation's guilt. The tear belonged to an Italian-American actor known as Iron-Eyes Cody, the guilt was displaced from centuries of Native American mistreatment and redirected into a new environmental awareness. A 10-year-old Brian wondered, 'What are they... No, what are we doing to this country?' From a family of engineers, farmers and tinkerers Brian's father was a physics teacher. He remembers the day his father drove up to watch a coal power plant's new scrubbers turn smoke from dirty grey-back to steamy white. Surely technology would solve every problem. But then he noticed that breathing was difficult when the wind blew a certain way. While sailing, he often saw a yellow-brown line on the horizon. The stars were beginning to disappear. Gas mileage peaked when Reagan was still president. Solar panels installed in the 1970s were torn from roofs as they were no longer cost-effective to maintain. Racism, public policy and low oil prices transformed suburban life and cities began to sprawl out and absorb farmland. Brian only began to understand the root causes of "doughnut cities" when he moved to Ireland in 2001 and watched history repeat itself. Brian doesn't think environmentalism is 'rocket science', but understanding how to apply it within a society requires wisdom and education. In his travels through Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East, Brian has learned that great ideas come from everywhere and that sharing mistakes is just as important as sharing ideas.

3 thoughts on “Nanoflow’s Quant is a $1 million car that runs on salt

  1. Pingback: Quant Electric Car Runs On Salt And A 1 Million Price Tag Green Sport Electric Car : OtoSPEED

  2. Ramesh Krishna

    Amazing. Wish we could see cars running on sea water…!! When will this car be available for public like us, who cannot spend a million for a car..?

    Reply
  3. AR

    One (minor?) correction: gasoline was “precharged” using 1) thermal energy created in the Earth’s core and mantle by the gravitational accretion of the planet – and resulting compression of those portions of the planet – that serves to ‘cook’ organic matter into hydrocarbons, and 2) the mechanical energy of plate tectonics resulting from mantle convection driven by thermal energy from item (1,) which serves to bury and pressurize organic matter, producing similar ‘cooking’ effects.

    Reply

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