From The Mobilist Inbox This Week
The Supercar, China, and a slew of awards
Each Wednesday, The Mobilist highlights reader articles on Medium, comments, and updates.
Much is said about the speed of the electric car: In Ludicrous mode, the Tesla S goes from zero to 60 in 2.3 seconds. The Lucid Air does the same in 2.5 seconds, and the Porsche Taycan Turbo S in 2.6. Super cool for the new age of electrics. But what about tradition and the original supercars as conceived by the Italians — the Ferrari, the Lamborghini, and Pininfarina? In this piece, Mobilist reader Matteo Licata takes stock of the stunning continued success of Italy’s Modena, or “Motor Valley.”
Who is making NIO’s battery? In the last edition of The Mobilist, we discussed the widely unappreciated world-scale battery and EV advances achieved in China. At a blog called Moneyball, Kou Jiandong this week sought to nail down who is supplying NIO’s industry-leading next battery (NIO won’t say). It’s a subject of much interest because NIO says its ET7, to debut the second half of next year, will achieve a state-of-the-art specific energy density of 360 watt-hours per kilogram and go 625 miles on a charge.
Department of congratulations: Yet-Ming Chiang, Venkat Viswanathan, and their colleagues working at 24M won an Arpa-E Scaleup award for their metallic lithium-based battery for aviation. Gene Berdichevsky and his team at Sila Nano also won the award for their fast-charge silicon anode for EVs. A third Scaleup Award went to Mike Zimmerman and his team at Ionic Materials for their solid-state polymer battery.
