Nanotech company Altairnano (NASDAQ: ALTI) has a lot to be charged up about these days.

For instance, the company's nano-based battery pack was featured today in an all-electric truck in a press event with U.S. President George Bush at the White House.

It's the latest in a series of appearances of Altairnano's battery pack at various public events since September of last year. And while the company's battery promises unusually high performance, it doesn't get all the respect it deserves, said CEO Alan Gotcher.

"I know there are skeptics," Gotcher told Cleantech.com in an interview.

The dubious wonder how Altairnano - a relatively small public company operating out of offices, labs and manufacturing facilities in Reno, Nevada and with prototyping and design operations in Anderson, Indiana - could be producing a battery that could power an electric vehicle hundreds of miles, charge in 10 minutes, and have a service life of 20 years or more, as the company claims.

The secret, according to Gotcher, is nanotechnology, and Altairnano's selection of nano-structured lithium titanate as a framework for its battery, branded NanoSafe™. Because the storage compartments are so small, the battery can store a lot of lithium ions. And the titanate material used in the nanostructures enhances battery cycle life, and gives it an extraordinary service life, he said.

"The nano titanate is a zero-strain material, which means that when the lithium inserts and exits the crystal lattice, there's no strain, no deformation of a conventional battery."

That robustness has been shown to yield more than 20,000 cycles with little performance degradation, Gotcher said. In contrast, other rechargeable battery technologies typically have a lifetime of 3-7 years. Further, Altairnano says its batteries have been tested under extreme conditions, including an operating temperature range of -50 to plus 71 degrees Celsius.

To naysayers who claim it's impossible to put hundreds of kilowatts into a battery safely in under ten minutes, Gotcher said proof was already on display.

"We have these battery packs in vehicles. We're demonstrating we can do this rapidly. Some people had concerns about heat buildup. We have low resistance in our battery pack, so there is minimal heat generation. And because the charging mechanism in our battery system is endothermic, it absorbs heat when it charges. We get minimal heat during this rapid charge system."

Altairnano is planning different types of charging stations. The battery pack can be charged at low voltage over long times, or charged at higher voltages quicker, Gotcher said. In a 10 minute or less charge, at least 480 volts at several hundred amps will be required, transferring 210 kW/h of energy to the battery pack.

"We envision charging stations with large capacities of energy, where you'll take a fraction through a cable plugged into the vehicle. There'll be a safety clamp to ensure there's no chance you could charge before the proper connection is made, and to ensure that the power is completely disconnected before you could break and open the circuit."

"We hope it'll look like a conventional gas station. We're working through issues of the right connectors, where they could be abused and still work and are safe. We want to be thoughtful about the design and prepare for people dropping these cables on the ground, or running over them with a vehicle."

Altairnano is working with AeroVironment of Monrovia, California, which has worked in rapid battery charge systems for a number of years. The company was the primary supplier of the charging systems for the General Motors EV1 vehicle.

How would service stations of the future store the mammoth amounts of electricity required by electric vehicles? Altairnano's Gotcher says the company "hasn't really said a lot about that yet, but you'll see us come forward with information in the second quarter."

Industry observers are less optimistic that hydrogen will win as the fuel of choice for cars of the future (see Cleantech.com's Hydrogen cars non-starters.) as hydrogen is relatively expensive to produce.

As a further nail in its coffin, Gotcher predicts the price of charging an electric car will be hard for a hydrogen infrastructure to compete with.

"The exact cost of charging will depend on the time of day and the cost of fuels available. But using 10 or 11 cents a kW/h for power, we think you'll be able to recharge a vehicle with electricity somewhere between one-tenth to one-third the cost of fueling today's conventional vehicles."

Cleantech.com speculated Altairnano's batteries were at the heart of the new vehicle recently announced by ZAP, the ZAP-Z (see Look out Tesla... ZAP building electric supercar.) While spokespeople for the companies wouldn't confirm or deny the relationship at the time, Gotcher acknowledged the two have been talking for well over a year.

"We just haven't been able to put a business deal together yet. In terms of a business relationship, where they've ordered products from us and we're shipping products to them, no, there's not that kind of relationship yet."

Beyond ZAP, Altairnano has announced several deals to date. It has partnered with Alcoa to build a medium duty hybrid electric truck. And it's working with (and has invested in) Phoenix Motorcars on the all-electric sport utility truck shown to George Bush today, which is to be focused on the fleet vehicle market in California. See Altairnano takes stake in Phoenix Motorcars.