This 900 HP, Salt Water-Powered Supercar Is Now Legal In Europe

It's okay if you haven't yet heard of the QUANT e-Sportlimousine. It was only announced as an exceedingly ambitious project earlier this year. When it was revealed, its claims of being a salt water-powered, 900 hp, 236 mph four-seater were so pie-in-the-sky that not a lot of people took them seriously.

Until now.

Earlier this week, the car has been approved for testing on the streets of Germany. That they've A) gotten this far, and B) done so in such a short amount of time is staggering, and shows the level of organization, manpower, and funding behind the project. It's time, then, to look a little deeper at what, exactly, this thing is.

It's a supercar.

Duh. All you have to do is take one look at it to know that. It features classic gull-wing doors, albeit very large ones, designed to make the back seat more than just a tax dodge.

The shape's so obviously aerodynamics-driven you don't even need to be an expert in air movement to see how it'll slice through the air like a Hattori Hanzo sword through warm butter.

It's an academic tour de force.

Sure, the four electric motors are capable of propelling the car at a similar rate as a McLaren P1 or a LaFerrari, but astoundingly, they aren't the most groundbreaking tech at play.

Stored on board are two refillable cells containing a total of 400 liters of a specially compounded salt water that's loaded with way more electrolytes than your Gatorade. Essentially, they take one highly-charged solution and one low-charged, and simultaneously pump them past opposite sides of a membrane to generate electricity, which is then stored in capacitors until it's needed.

The Quant is hitting the road soon for testing, and there's an increasingly strong chance it may actually be produced by late 2015 or early 2016. Watch this space...

Aaron Miller is the Rides editor for Supercompressor. He just gave himself a super-quick tutorial on electrolytes while drinking coconut water.