as i started researching this turned out to be way more interesting than i expected.
it seems this Lotus is actually using a technology i invented ( though it already existed at the time, i just havenāt heard about it until now ). i wrote about how i would use such a tech a few years ago on my UberAlphaTech Twitter account that got nuked. but admittedly it is easy to invent something like this and hard to commercialize it.
basically Williams ( as in Williams Formula 1 ), a British company has developed an āAdaptive Multi-Chemā battery, and then formed a joint venture with a company called Unipart ā¦ the joint venture is called āHyperbatā and they are the supplier of batteries for the Lotus Evija.
I havenāt verified that Evija actually uses āAdaptive Multi-Chemā battery, but it is likely considering Hyperbat ( the supplier ) was basically founded to commercialize that tech. However, itās still possible Evija uses something else - but iām going to assume it uses āAdaptive Multi-Chemā
here is the article where Williams guy talks about it ( and of course i will translate it into English in the following post ):
so before getting into the article the first thing i checked when i looked at this Evija X is horsepower and Kilowatt-Hours of the battery. 2000 hp from 70 KWH battery is 28 hp per KWH.
by comparison Rimac Nevera makes 17 hp per KWH and plaid makes 11 hp per KWH.
it was instantly obvious then that Evija is doing something differently if it is able to get so much more power per KWH from the battery.
of course the Corvette E-Ray gets 160 hp from 1.6 KHW battery so 100 hp per KWH but the E-Ray is not an EV and not even a Plug-in Hybrid - itās a REGULAR hybrid.
what if ā¦ you could combine the types of batteries used in the E-Ray with the types of batteries used in the Plaid so you could optimize for a perfect mix of power, range and weight ?
well thatās exactly what āAdaptive Multi-Chemā means. It uses two different types of cells - one optimized for power and one optimized for range. this essentially makes Evija a Hybrid but not a Gas-Electric hybrid but rather an Electric-Electric hybrid.
before you say that is insane remember - this is how your own body works. your muscle cells all covnert fuel into energy but there are multiple pathways - there are pathways optimized for sprint and pathways optimized for marathon - and they both run in parallel - but depending on what youāre doing the muscle cell favors one over the other.
so i guess i didnāt invent this - nature did. this is also why i like hybrid vehicles - because they take cue from nature - which itself is designed by evolution.
i will just briefly plug another interesting and similar car namely Ariel Hiperar which is a Gas Microturbine Hybrid that does 0-60 in 1.8 seconds:
i mention it because it is equally as technologically creative as the Evija, but it is a totally different solution discussed in a different thread at a link below:
back to Evija ā¦
from the previously linked article:
what we are showing here today is a new technology; something that the industry has been talking about for some time. At present, in most cell products, one either has high power cells or high energy cells, one canāt have both. Simply put, one can have high capacity, but not take out high power, or one can have very high power but you cannot store a large capacity. The industry keeps asking for both so what we are doing is combining high power cells with limited their limited energy storage capacity, with some cells that have high energy storage but with limited power capacity.
We are looking at existing technology and, trying to predict where it will go, and find the best possible āpackā one can make from it. If someone does come along with a magical chemistry then we will not need to do all of this. Our judgement is that no-one is going to produce an āindustrialise-ableā magic new chemistry in anything less than say, 15 years. Therefore the engineers need to say, 'This is what the industry and the chemistry can provide for us, how do I take that and make the best product?
In other words when i came up with this idea it was immediately obvious to me why nobody is using it. because engineers favor simple solutions to complicated ones. it makes no sense to increase complexity if it can be avoided, and Williams says that perhaps 15 years from now battery cells will be so good this tech will not be needed - but that is the kind of logic that applies to normal cars. it doesnāt apply to cars like Evija.
a car like Evija is not about what makes sense but about having the most and having it now.
Monitoring of cell condition, performance, voltage differences, gas production and safety issues have been much discussed in the seminars at CENEX and these challenges require increasingly complex sensor technology. With the combination found in the Multi-Chem battery pack, Paul says that the Williams Advanced Engineering team has had to design some very special monitoring systems. "The two types of cell have to be separated and controlled with a DC-DC converter between them because they will end up sitting at different voltages and one needs to be able to regulate the voltage for the different parts of the unit. What we have is a single board in each module that is combining the measurement, the control, and the DC-DC transfer between the cell elements. These boards are all ātalkingā to a master Battery Management System ((BMS) that is regulating the behaviour of each of these modules. A large part of the innovative technology is the electronics hardware and software, that we have developed totally in-house.
in other words this is why you shouldnāt expect to see this tech in your next Tesla. because Tesla is a company that removed windshield wiper stalks from their cars in order to save money and simplify things. do you really think they will quadruple the complexity of their battery unless somebody points a gun to Elonās head ?
Elon is a big believer in keeping things simple. To a fault. Elon fundamentally thinks differently from me. My mind always asks - what is optimal ? Elonās mind only asks what is essential. If something is not 100% essential - Elon eliminates it. This āAdaptive Multi-Chemā is definitely not essential.
I donāt like how Elon thinks and not interested in anything he makes. I also honestly wouldnāt buy a car using this āAdaptive Multi-Chemā either - i just invented it for shits and giggles. It makes much more sense to have something like that Ariel Hipercar, which i will discuss separately ā¦
finally want to say that the sheer speed of Evija around the track isnāt what is impressive. as the article mentions there are faster cars - both gas and electric. what is impressive is how close this Evija X is to a production vehicle whereas the cars that are faster than it are dedicated racers.
in other words the other fast cars are single-seater spoiler-on-wheels type cars whereas Evija is closer to a regular car ā¦ yet still fast
this is enabled by the innovative battery tech in the Evija ā¦
yes of course Evija has four motors but so does Ariel Hipercar and Rimac Nevera and even Rivian Trucks and SUVs ā¦ in the end the battery is the performance bottleneck because it limits bot how much power can be made and how light a car can be ā¦
and donāt forget in EVs the battery is used for both acceleration and braking so better battery tech can improve both ā¦