In an era where the EV hype machine keeps cranking out hypothetical products every five minutes, a rendering of an electric sports car is usually something to ponder for a moment, then discard. After all, for every EV startup that’s failed, dozens more promise vaporware. However, every so often, a beautiful anomaly happens known as follow-through. British battery firm Nyobolt has actually built an electric sports car, and on paper, it’s amazing.
Let’s start by addressing how the Nyobolt prototype looks. With this project, Callum, the design firm run by Ian Callum of Jaguar fame, has done a solid job modernizing the styling language of the original Lotus Elise. While not as shrink-wrapped as the original, larger intakes, new lighting signatures, and shapelier curves make this prototype an obvious descendant of sports car royalty.
However, the real story is the curb weight — just 2,747 pounds. That’s 68 pounds lighter than a Subaru BRZ and 205 pounds lighter than a Honda Civic Si. Considering electric cars are typically heavier that combustion-powered ones, how has Nyobolt done that? Well, part of it is due to starting with something exceptionally light. This thing is certainly inspired by, and use some significant parts from, the Lotus Elise, and that thing tipped the scales at less than 2,000 pounds in many European trims. Feathery stuff.
Then there’s the fact that Nyobolt went with a fairly small 35 kWh battery pack, five kWh smaller than the one in a base Nissan Leaf. That means a range of 155 miles, and while that isn’t an impressive figure, charging speeds of up to 350 kW promise to make that up on the back end. Nyobolt claims a 10-to-80 percent charging time of four minutes, 37 seconds under ideal conditions, which is absolutely blazing quick.
What’s more, the firm has tested its battery pack to 4,000 complete DC fast charging cycles, or the equivalent of 600,000 miles of rated range. At the end of that testing cycle, Nyobolt claims a usable remaining capacity of more than 80 percent, meaning this pack seems to be built to last.
Of course, the flipside to being able to push a ton of current into a battery pack is that it’s easy to pull a ton of current out of it. This sports car prototype produces 470 horsepower, 15 more than a V8-powered Chevrolet Camaro SS. While Nyobolt hasn’t released any GPS-verified performance figures for this prototype, 342 horsepower per ton ought to produce some formidable results.
As Nyobolt is a battery technology company, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that this sports car prototype is currently the only one of its sort in existence, but it has been engineered for low-volume production. Whether as a trackday toy, or ideally, a roadgoing toy, the promise of a properly light electric sports car is one worth considering. Come on, Nyobolt. Build at least a few hundred more of them.
(Photo credits: Nyobolt)
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THIS is what I’m waiting for.
AND why I’m driving a Civic Sport Hatch and a Mini Cooper S convertible.
Light cars are fun.
Smaller batteries are lighter.
Lighter cars need less power and brakes and still stop, go, and turn better than heavy cars.
And my God, people… You don’t need “ground clearance”, a low center of gravity is WAY better.
(Trust me, I live in Buffalo, we get snow by the feet, daily).
155 miles is plenty, and I’d charge nightly in the garage.
Even the fun sounding Ionic 5 is too heavy and tall and needs lots of expensive compensations and even at that you still can’t beat physics.
Sign me up for this.
don’t forget: “i like to sit up high so i can see over traffic.”
nevermind the fact that when many of the vehicles on the road are crossovers, suvs, and pick up trucks you’re not seeing over anything, or the point in needing to “see over” traffic to begin with – i do just fine driving cars that can barely see over an ant.
even funnier is the amount of people i see in high ground clearance vehicles glued to their cell phones; like yeah, bud, you are seeing *so far.*
Nyobolt’s press release is here. I had to check to make sure it wasn’t related to the Caterham 7.
They’re very tight-lipped about the chemistry, aside from saying it’s a lithium-ion battery with some metal-oxide mix cathode and carbon anode. The energy density and power density and cycle count of the battery closely match what I’d expect out of lithium titanate. If it’s not LTO, it’s an interesting coincidence.
I’m pretty solidly in the “smaller battery, better charging” camp because it can yield lighter and more resource-efficient cars. I’m happy to see some manufacturers experimenting with that idea.
The problem is that it’s supposed to be a fun weekend car. 150 miles barely gets me to the nice secluded lake I like to visit on my weekends with a buffer for a side stop or two. In winter, I’d have to charge somewhere along the way in each direction and high speed chargers don’t exist along routes like that.
A weekend car needs more range than a city commuter.
This is how I see pure EVs.
< 150 miles = track toy or in city car.
> 150 miles < 250 miles = daily commuter.
> 250 miles < 400 miles = weekend car or daily all-purpose vehicle.
> 400 miles < 600 miles = road trip car and good enough for most uses.
> 600 miles = long distance primarily for commercial use, special use cases, and deeply rural areas.
The above ranges are best case range, and what I’d expect buying new. You need to have extra capacity to cover for poor weather and HVAC use, and to allow for a bit of loss due to battery aging over the useful life.
This little table is why I think PHEVs are likely to remain the best solution for a very long time to come.
Ages ago owned a Lotus 7 type car, a Birkin. It followed a motorcycle way of proportions. The size of the gas tank was set by the comfort of the seat. No sense having a tank hold more gas than your body could stand to ride.
Remove as much weight as possible and have the battery only last that long, say 50 miles at full tilt. Could also have modular batteries. Add more battery weight for longer distances.
Read where a fellow drove a Lotus 7 across the USA. Me, after an hour of amazing fun, I needed to be helped out. That is what I would want in such a car.
That 4.5 minute charge time from 10-80% seems either over optimistic or it’s going to trash that battery after a low number of cycles. 35KWh batterycharting 70% (10 to 80) in 4.5 minutes means it basically using the entire 350KW charge rate right up to 80%.
That being said, this could make for an awesome track toy for rich guys as long as the track has a charger. Go do some laps, and in the time you get a snack/water and a restroom break you’re back at 80% ready to go again? Only problem is if lots of people have EV’s you’re either going to have a line or the track spend $$$ to upgrade the power to support multiple 350KW chargers at the same time…
One of the BIG problems with EVs among track enthusiasts is the lack of onsite/offsite charging. I almost bought a Polestar 2 Performance but the tracks near me have at least a 15 minute drive to the nearest charger and thats with me accounting for the eventual Polestar-Supercharger ability. However the Nurburgring seems to be a great place
That’s a track problem, not a car problem.
Light a fire under the flag-and-eagle shirt tucked into jean shorts wearing track owners and let them know their anti-EV boomer buddies aren’t the only ones who want track time anymore.
There’s probably more performance cars that are electric than gas these days anyway.
I also forgot to mention most racetracks don’t allow EVs because there’s no EV safety training. Again a track problem, but also a cost problem.
The first generation Leaf debuted in 2011 with a 24kWh battery pack. Years later, a 30kWh pack was offered on some trims. The second generation Leaf debuted in 2018 with the 40kWh pack you refer to. In 2019 the “Plus” trims were added with the 60kWh pack. Nissan continues to offer both the 40kWh and 60kWh today.
“35 kWh battery pack, five kWh smaller than the one in an original Nissan Leaf.”
I presume you mean the second generation Leaf? The first-generation cars had 24 kWh standard or 30 kWh for the longer-range versions.
I think a 35 kWh pack might be adequate in this car, though. It probably gives you 70 miles of range when driven aggressively and 110+ miles at highway speeds. It is not a road trip machine. I presume it has limited interior room and isn’t particularly comfortable, so it is not a vehicle most people want to drive long distances in.
Beat me to it. By mere seconds.
I like the idea, but I hate the lack of originality. But it is a one-off prototype, likely to demonstrate the company’s battery tech.
That 150 miles range could easily be increased significantly with a focus on drag reduction. The original Elise has a Cd value of 0.36. Those oversized air intakes are in all likelihood completely unnecessary and only serve to hold this car’s potential back.
Make it more slippery, to match the VW XL1 with a Cd value of 0.19, and that same 35 kWh pack could yield a range of 220+ miles.
I also wonder what kind of motors they’re using. Lucid’s are incredibly small/lightweight and powerful and may be a good application here
A former Lotus CEO also founded a revival company of Detroit Electric to build an EV based on the Elise, though it never made production.
This is pretty much what I want from an EV. This kind of car isn’t a long-distance machine, so range isn’t an issue, but with charging (potentially) that fast, well, it isn’t an issue. Problem here is the fragile/repair unapproved Elise chassis—it seemed like 70% of the ones I saw when I was looking for one were on salvage titles from minor crashes.
The problem with Elises in terms of salvage titles is the front and rear fiberglass body “clam” rather than the chassis. Damage to the actual tub does total it (and generally scrap it), but that’s pretty unusual. Much more often the front and rear fiberglass clam both take minor or moderate damage. Maybe for liability reasons, insurance isn’t generally willing to cover repair and will insist on replacement, which means a high price and often long delays because they’re made in batches maybe once or twice a year.
But the thing is, fiberglass is extremely repairable. The Elise clams are just injected or sprayed fiberglass with polyester resin – nothing special or exotic at all, and standard glassmat and resin repairs will get it good as new. So, they end up with rebuilt titles.
That makes sense. That’s nuts that they won’t just pay for repair, especially just being fiberglass almost anyone can repair, but it makes sense that so many are bought back for that purpose.
So that gets you over 100 miles of range in under five minutes. That’s not bad, especially for a weekend toy that you’re not usually road-tripping. I strongly suspect that if/when I do buy an EV, it will be because two things happened: 1) Someone built a car that can get you 70 or 80% charge in under ten minutes, which is realistically at least as short as most of my gas stops by the time I pee and/or get snacks. 2) Charging infrastructure has gotten reliable enough that I can count on those 10 minute stops happening consistently.
I think we’re close to 1, not remotely so on 2.
It will be just fine for the folks following the wine trails.
This feels like an even more Lotus Elise in ethos than the Tesla Roadster, which was literally a modified Lotus
“highly” modified Lotus, by the time Musk was finished with it
I wonder what the range is when being driven as intended.
If 155 miles is on the optimistic Euro test cycle and doesn’t include hard driving, this might be a sub 100 mile real world range on the back roads.
Maybe that’s OK, but even for a toy it limits the usability pretty severely.
Flogging it around on the back roads or a track will yield significantly less than 100 miles range. EV run time on a given battery pack size is proportional to power demand.
Unlike ICE, the thermal efficiency of an electric drive system does not increase with load. With a gasoline or diesel vehicle, the harder you drive it(to a point), the more energy you’re going to extract from a gallon of fuel to produce mechanical output vs heat, even if overall fuel economy measured in MPG still drops. This is because power to overcome aero drag is a cubic function versus speed, which will usually outpace any increase in thermal efficiency.
EV tech is more than good enough for normal A to B driving and batteries 1/3 as energy dense by volume like we had in the 1990s vs what we have today can easily get competitive range with gasoline in this application if you design the car correctly(which almost no one does).
BUT…
…hooning about is a totally different story. The EV does not see increased thermal efficiency with load. Whereas driving a gasoline car on your commute might yield 30 mpg vs flogging it around a track yielding perhaps 10 mpg, with an EV, a 300 mile range on a 50 kWh pack being used as a daily might only translate to 50 miles range on the same race track flogging it about.
For racing conditions, keeping mass down to reduce energy requirements for acceleration is even more important than with a gasoline ICE. But that runs counter to the need to also maximize available battery pack capacity in order to maximize run time.
The steering wheel is on the wrong side. Hopefully they can fix that before production.
I would absolutely have one of these for backroad burning and weekend driving. They nailed the brief on this one.
Thomas, you silly goose. That EV has at least 6 lights, maybe 8 if those triangle lighty bits up front are actually lights. 😛
Funny that the vintage Tesla Roadster and this both are based on the Elise. The roadster weighed 100 pounds more, but had a 53kwh battery pack. Still plenty of potential in that lightweight, extruded aluminium structure.
It all looks great, except the name. Nyobolt? Really. Were these the only letters left in a bowl of Alpha-Bits?
“Hmm. Lynboot?”
“Nah.”
“Tynloob?”
“Uh-uh.”
“…How about ‘Nyobolt?'”
“Great. Throw out that warm cereal milk and let’s get lunch.”
Shoulda been Nyan-cat
so… it’s an elise with a body kit…
the interior is even original elise
It would be nice if they had a unique design. not a derivative one
Tesla did the same stunt with their original roadster.
so I guess the moral of the story is… the Elise was the best sports car of all time?
I love this. This is exactly the electric car that could get me to buy one. A small and lightweight sports coupe. 150 miles is more than enough for me.
Exactly. While it might not have enough range for major roadtrips, I could see something like this being an excellent daily.
I don’t know, an hour and a half between five minute charges would be fine. I’ve had cars like that before.
Where I live, it would require charging stations in the middle of nowhere just to travel, so my particular case is different.
Presumably the range estimate is WTLP, which is more optimistic than the EPA, and is estimated with a city/highway mix, for which both estimated and real world range will be higher than for highway-only driving. But the fast charge time, if it can be consistently achieved in the wild, does change things and makes it conceivable, if not convenient, to use for a weekend trip in a charger-rich part of the country.
Got my car back from some suspension work and added 25 miles of mostly empty twisty hill roads to the drive home today. Made my day. This concepts range isn’t enough for a full day at the track, but a few hours of the twisty road dance is very rewarding.
Wow…. I kinda love it. Not just because I’ve been eyeing used Elise’s lately… but mostly because I’ve been eyeing used Elise’s lately. I’d be looking for the wait list to join if I thought they’d sell in NA.
I suspect this might be an tech demo for their battery tech though.
It can be done! Folks may complain about the range, but who cares? If you think of it like a Miata it makes sense. This isn’t for road trips or comfort. It’s to throw around on a nice afternoon, and in that setting 155 miles is perfectly adequate.
I would daily the hell out of this and take the long, winding way home.
Honestly, after road tripping an ND2 Club for 5 hours, I had to stop 3 times just due to comfort, 1.5 hours on the highway is my physical maximum, which would be in the 100 or so miles you’d see in an ideal 10-80% charge, and I can promise you I’m stopping for at least 5 minutes to walk around anyways.
If you’re shorter than I am, I’m sure this would be less of an issue, but for a fast, light EV with incredibly quick charge times due to a small pack, this is nearly perfect. I’m sure it will be absurdly expensive being low production, but anything that can prove the lightweight EV sports concept to be realistic and viable is a win in my books.
Exactly.
Yeah something like this is what I would want out of an EV something fun and sporty but can still get me to and from work. If I need a long haul cruiser I’ll keep the ICE for that (or a hybrid if I ever get one)
What does it need the massive intakes for?
I’ll buy one, though. I kinda wish the interior wasn’t just a Federalised S2 for all the bodywork changes they did, but that’s easy enough to fix.
I was wondering the same thing. They may be aero related. If you look at the back view, the tailights holes appear to actually only have a thin light bars and perhaps the rest is hollow, so air gets channeled through the intake and out through the holes? That’s my best guess
Discharging massive amounts of electricity generates massive amounts of heat. That’s from the battery, motor and motor controller. Have to keep those cool to keep the party going.
The thermal issue isn’t as acute as ICE but still pretty significant.
And to add to this, EV electronics and batteries are happiest at the low 100 F (~38C) range, rather than than the 200 F (93 C) range. Which even with liquid cooling, requires a lot of ambient temp air flow to achieve. I imagine there is also an aero element to it, and as a prototype, overhead while testing is helpful, and can be trimmed back as needed to optimize for lower drag.