Let's do some math:
- "The car can, using a 800kW charger, fully replenish itself in nine minutes."
- "Range-wise, the car can run up to 270 miles, based on the New European Driving Cycle Combined Cycle."
- "The Evija is shooting for a target weight of 1680kg"
Now, NEDC range is, as we all know, a joke. That might be ~200 miles EPA. I'd say that the car would average ~275Wh/mi EPA combined if done well, aka 55 kWh available... let's just say 60kWh total (may need to be more). Now, to get those sorts of crazy charge times (which yes,
are possible), you're talking titanates or the like. Say, Samsung's SCiB line. The highest energy density variant is listed at ~100Wh/kg, and can do 0-80% in 6 minutes, 0-100% in 10 minutes. That'd be 600kg of cells - plus overhead for the rest of the battery pack. That leaves under 1000kg for the rest of the car.
** It's possible to make charging even faster than that - SCiB cells come in variants that can charge as fast as 0-80% in 1 minute. But life is tradeoffs. You have to throw away
even more energy density, and you'll never realistically be able to feed in current / draw out heat that fast regardless.
BTW, they'll have to charge a fortune for this car, if only because high-power-density cells like SCiBs cost a bloody fortune. Last I checked they were a couple thousand dollars per kWh.
This is BTW part of the reason why such cells and "0-100% charge speeds" are pointless except for toys. It makes far more sense to just add more energy-dense cells. If you can charge 40% in 9 minutes, and your cells are 270Wh/kg, then that's equivalent to charging to 100% in 9 minutes on a 108Wh/kg cell. Except that on the 270Wh/kg cell you can just keep on charging after that, and it costs a tiny fraction as much. Don't get me wrong, titanate cells have a number of other nice advantages, like crazy cycle lives (tens of thousands) and wide operating temperature ranges. But for EVs, they're just not a good choice. The short-term future of EV batteries is NCA or NMC, followed by some type of N[A,M] in the mid-term. Long-term, who bloody knows at this point
ED: Adding charging graphs for SCiB products. Top, their fastest charging / least energy dense variety, and bottom, their slowest charging / most energy dense variety.
ED2: Let's put it another way. A 2017 ~75kWh Model 3 LR can charge the Lotus's range in ~18 minutes on V3. In doing so, the V3 Supercharger is tapered down to under 100kW by the end. Is there any doubt that a Roadster, which shouldn't taper at all from 250kW over that range (and could theoretically take even higher charge currents), and whose consumption should be marginally but not terribly worse than the Model 3, should be able to match or beat the Lotus? Yet its range will be three times as long.
