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The Lightning GT Electric: Too Good To Be True? |
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Dr. Samuel Says -
New Toys
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Tuesday, 11 September 2007 |
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Over the years, I have honed a certain preternatural sensitivity to marketing hype. It's a kind of information sickness, I've been told. The more oversold and hyperbolically hyped an upcoming product, the queasier I feel. The iPhone phenomenon, as you might expect, very nearly put me in the hospital.
 So I'm risking my very health by reporting on this latest item making the rounds. The Lightning GT Electric sports
car, from the able folks at Britain's Lightning Car Company, is making
the kind of promises I haven't heard since I was trying to pick up art
school girls in college.
According to the online promotional materials, the Lightning GT is not
only a hyper-efficient, zero-emissions electric vehicle -- it's an
ass-kicking, high-performance sports car able to beat a Jaguar off the
line. Top speed is 130 mph, with a 0-60 mph elapsed time of 4.0
seconds. Sports car aficionados can tell you: That … that's pretty
good.
It gets better. The Lightning uses four separate electric motors (one
for each wheel) powered by lithium-titanate NanoSafe battery technology
from the affiliated tech outfit Altair Nanotechnologies. Evidently, Altairnano has
outpaced the competition rather radically. Their high-power batteries
are not only more stable and less toxic, they have a life expectancy of
up to 12 years, compared to the typical range of 3-5 years. And check
this: The batteries can be fully recharged from a standard wall outlet
in ten minutes. Consider that typical recharge times are counted in
hours.
Take a scroll around the website for additional details on the Lightning's safety
features, regenerative braking, and remote charging options -- all
singularly impressive. And to top it all off, the thing looks
incredibly cool. Can it all be true? Time will tell. Prototypes are due
toward the end of the year, UK production models projected for sometime
in 2008. No word yet on a U.S. rollout. You can, however, pre-order
now.
I'll be interested to see how it all plays out. Remind me to tell you the story someday of the time I went undercover as a Formula One driver. It was a standard corporate espionage gig (I was between jobs), but through a series of fortuitous events, I won the Italian Grand Prix. Twice. The guys over at Fédération
Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) are still trying to figure out that one!
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