it will charge up in five minutes and provide enough energy to drive 500 miles on about $9 worth of electricity
hmm... so let's say it takes 15hp to push a particular car down the road at 65mph. That's about 11.2 kW. It would take you 7.7hrs to travel 500mph, so you're looking at 86.2kWh of electrical energy "at the wheels" (no losses). That comes out to about $9-$12 worth of electricity - if you have no storage or conversion losses whatsoever.
To get that energy into the battery in 5 minutes, you'd need to transfer a megawatt or so into the battery over that entire time period... that sounds a bit steep for electrical transfer... you'd have to change out the chemical contents of the "battery" by the sound of it.
The amount of gasoline burned, assuming you got about 20 mpg, would be about 25gal. That would run you about $60 in the midwest currently.
So except for the charging time, it doesn't sound like this is way too far out in the weeds, but the "lossless" estimate does sound really really optimistic (probably only off by a factor of 4 or so).
The article is notably short on details, though... in one breath they call it a "battery" like energy storage device, and in another they call it an engine. Which is it? Energy storage? Converter of stored electrical energy into mechanical work? A new kind of breakfast cereal?
