Zenn outlines global ambitions for 80mph electric car

Canadian electric car firm Zenn will expand into Europe when it releases a highway-speed vehicle later next year, its CEO has said.

The Zenn Motor Company is waiting until a new power storage technology is ready before it releases the vehicle, called the cityZENN, which will achieve 80mph speeds and have a range of 250 miles.

Rechargeable in five minutes, the vehicle will use ultracapacitors from Texas-based EEStor instead of conventional lithium or lead acid batteries.

"Look at the price of lithium over the past seven years and it's very dramatic," said Zenn CEO Ian Clifford, who also cited constrained supplies of lithium as a key threat to the use of conventional battery technology in the nascent electric car sector. "There are very limited global reserves and they're in potentially unstable parts of the world. The other issue with it is that once it is used, it can't be reused".

He claims that in contrast EEStor's barium titanate-based solid state ultracapacitors have far fewer supply constraints and an effectively unlimited usable life.

Zenn, which has a small equity stake in EEStor, has secured an exclusive license to use the ultracapacitor technology in vehicles up to 1,400kg in weight (the mid-sized Toyota Camry is 1580kg). It also has the non-exclusive right to use the technology in vehicles above that weight, and will be providing retrofit kits to convert existing combustion vehicles to the new electric storage system. The first target market for that venture will be large, high profile fleets, such as metropolitan taxi cabs, Clifford says.

Zenn's existing cars fall into the neighbourhood vehicle category, targeting short-haul users. They can travel at 25 miles per hour and have a 30 to 50 mile range.