Vaduz, Liechtenstein - There is no doubt that electric vehicles are way simpler and more efficient than combustion engines. It's the electricity supply that causes problems - but now there's a Liechtenstein start-up that says it has the answer.
An electric car doesn't need a gearbox, clutch or propshaft - modern designs drive the axles directly. In fact, a little extra engineering and some gizmotronics will get you all-wheel drive with built-in traction control.
But their batteries are heavy, often adding nearly a ton to the car's weight, their range is short and it is commonplace for recharging to take two to four hours for every hour spent driving. Yes, high-amperage charging stations can reduce that ratio to 1:1 or better, but at the cost of drastically shortened battery life.
Then there's the problem of interchangability. There's no world standard for charging cables or charging rates, nor is there likely to be, while the political will to roll out charging stations will be lacking as long as there is a tax element to the price of petroleum products that governments cannot afford to give up.
An early answer was the introduction of hydrogen-powered fuel cells, which have been a standard power source for space exploration since before the Apollo missions to the moon in the 1960s - and BMW has also come up with a particularly elegant solution: a V12 combustion engine that ran practically emissions-free on hydrogen.
But hydrogen is violently flammable, has to be stored and transferred under enormous pressure and is both expensive and 'dirty' in terms of the environment to produce.
So, where to from here?
Enter Nunzio La Vecchia, inventor of the nanoFlowcell, a new type of fuel cell. It runs on electrolytes - positive and negatively charged liquids that react inside the cell to produce electricity.
For obvious reasons, he won't say what they are but, unlike conventional fuels, neither liquid is explosive - or even flammable. The 'used' liquids are atomised while driving and expelled to air, where, La Vecchia insists, they pose no threat to health or the environment.
The tank(s) of a nanoFlowcell electric vehicle can be refilled in the same way as a combustion-engined vehicle; the only complication is that you need a double hose and nozzle to deliver equal amounts of both electrolytes, while keeping them separate until they meet in the flow cell.
Since they're neither hazardous materials nor dependent on rare, non-renewable resources, they can be locally produced and bottled - or delivered in bulk - by franchisees, just as Coca-Cola and beer are now.
Alongside conventional technology
Many 'future scenarios' see automated charging stations replacing conventional garages, putting hundreds of thousands of pump attendants out of work. By contrast, La Vecchia sees Bi-Ion electrolyte pumps at existing filling stations, side by side with bio-diesel and bio-ethanol pumps.
The electrolytes could even be sold at supermarkets, shopping centres and leisure resorts, he says. As long as you pour one liquid at a time and wipe the funnel out when changing over, refuelling a nanoFlowcell powered vehicle by hand is no more complex than for a combustion engine.
Yes, it all sounds a bit too good to be true, and there will undoubtedly be issues (the cost per litre of these miraculous liquids is one that springs to mind) but it is just possible that we may be looking at the very first viable power supply for electric cars.
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe to our Newsletter