Quant’s salt water-powered car is ready or the real world

Earlier this year, a German company by the name of Quant took the wraps off a car powered by the company’s nanoFLOWCELL technology. If advancements in vehicular technology is of interest to you, you might be pleased to learn that the vehicle is expected to make its debut on the road as it has been approved for real-world testing by the TUV, Germany’s road safety monitoring agency. Now safe to say that based on the photos alone that the Quant e-Sportlimousine is pretty stunning in terms of design, and while that is definitely noteworthy, we guess the highlight of the car would be its flow-cell technology. Described as a cross between regular batteries and fuel-cells, flow-cell technology sees liquid electrolytes being circulated through two tanks, where electrical charges are passed from one cell to another, producer enough power for an electric drivetrain.

After making a debut at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show, the Quant e-Sportlimousine has received approval from Germany’s TÜV Süd. The car, which uses an electrolyte flow cell power system, is now certified for use on German and European roads. As I stood around waiting for NanoFlowcell’s Geneva Motor Show press conference in March, my eyes bounced back and forth between the exotic curves of the concept car at center dais, the oddly punctuated letters of the make and model and the bubbling tanks of water that looked like they were ripped off the wall of an after-hours lounge. Then Nunzio La Vecchia sauntered out, wearing his best jet black pompadour, and made a bunch of bold claims about the 912-hp, gull-winged 2×2 and its bleeding-edge flow cell technology. Everything about the scene suggested that it might very well have been the last we heard of the NanoFlowcell Quant e-Sportlimousine. Promises of a magic bullet of energy storage, made by a three-month-old company, packaged with outlandish numbers like 0-62 mph (100 km/h) in 2.8 seconds and a top speed of 236 mph (380 km/h), hinted, rather strongly, that this car’s technology and performance would only exist on paper. Given that a similarly outlandish Quant car, centered in a similar black-walled booth, introduced by a very different Nunzio La Vecchia company, had vaporized years earlier, it seemed a responsible assumption that the e-Sportlimousine would do the same.