Atlis Motor Vehicles, an Arizona-based electric vehicle startup, has built a prototype battery pack that can be charged from 0 to 100-percent in 12 minutes, 35 seconds. Atlis believes that this prototype is scalable for its upcoming electric pickup truck. However, it must be noted that the prototype was only a 3 kWh pack.

The CEO Seems Very Confident

As per the company, the test of their first large-scale prototype pack used a public DC fast charge station. Atlis Motor Vehicles’ CEO, Mark Hanchett, said, “We have completed preliminary testing of our prototype battery pack with fast charging capabilities, and we’re proud to announce that we did better than expected. We beat our charge time by 2 minutes and 25 seconds by charging a 3 kWh pack to full in 12 minutes 35 seconds. This was the key to proving our technology – recharge times for batteries is still one of the largest obstacles to wider adoption of electric vehicles.”

Don’t Make Assumptions Just Because It’s A Small Battery Pack

A 3 kWh battery pack sounds irrelevant for a large all-electric pickup truck charging test, but Atlis Motor Vehicles says that it is fully scalable, “The battery pack is part of Atlis’ prototype design and is capable of scaling in size to meet their customer’s performance needs. The capacity of the test pack had to be kept low to ensure enough power was available from the Level 3 DC charging station. Next steps for the prototype pack is to integrate this design concept into Atlis Motor Vehicles’ XP platform currently in development.”

It’s All Only On Paper for Now

The start-up is planning to price it very competitively with a starting price of $45,000 with a base range of 300 miles and an optional range of 500 miles. The ultra-fast charging, however, would be standard. Presently, the company is trying to raise $1 million through crowdfunding in order to build the first prototype of the truck.

Our Take

What is Atlis trying to pull here? Trying to crowd-fund a million bucks on the basis a prototype that’s not even real yet? If in case Atlis is not able to live up to its claim of ultra-fast charging, where does it leave them and the investors? Nevertheless, the idea is good, and we can only hope for things to move ‘ultra-fast’ in this segment. What are your thoughts on this? Share them with us in the comments section below.

Further reading

Read our full review on the 2019 Tesla Semi.