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Tech: Electric car batteries with five-minute charging times produced

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Claims of fabulous new battery tech often are reporting about research, not production, and never pan out. This company claims to be production-ready.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...es-race-ahead-with-five-minute-charging-times

The Guardian said:
Batteries capable of fully charging in five minutes have been produced in a factory for the first time, marking a significant step towards electric cars becoming as fast to charge as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles.

Electric vehicles are a vital part of action to tackle the climate crisis but running out of charge during a journey is a worry for drivers. The new lithium-ion batteries were developed by the Israeli company StoreDot and manufactured by Eve Energy in China on standard production lines.

StoreDot has already demonstrated its “extreme fast-charging” battery in phones, drones and scooters and the 1,000 batteries it has now produced are to showcase its technology to carmakers and other companies. Daimler, BP, Samsung and TDK have all invested in StoreDot, which has raised $130m to date and was named a Bloomberg New Energy Finance Pioneer in 2020.

The batteries can be fully charged in five minutes but this would require much higher-powered chargers than used today. Using available charging infrastructure, StoreDot is aiming to deliver 100 miles of charge to a car battery in five minutes in 2025.

“The number one barrier to the adoption of electric vehicles is no longer cost, it is range anxiety,” said Doron Myersdorf, CEO of StoreDot. “You’re either afraid that you’re going to get stuck on the highway or you’re going to need to sit in a charging station for two hours. But if the experience of the driver is exactly like fuelling [a petrol car], this whole anxiety goes away.”

“A five-minute charging lithium-ion battery was considered to be impossible,” he said. “But we are not releasing a lab prototype, we are releasing engineering samples from a mass production line. This demonstrates it is feasible and it’s commercially ready.”

...
 
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Ars looks into this.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/01/whats-the-technology-behind-a-five-minute-charge-battery/

Ars Technica said:
Building a better battery requires dealing with problems in materials science, chemistry, and manufacturing. We do regular coverage of work going on in the former two categories, but we get a fair number of complaints about our inability to handle the third: figuring out how companies manage to take solutions to the science and convert them into usable products. So, it was exciting to see that a company called StoreDot that was claiming the development of a battery that would allow five-minute charging of electric vehicles was apparently willing to talk to the press.

Unfortunately, the response to our inquiries fell a bit short of our hopes. "Thank you for your interest," was the reply, "we are still in pure R&D mode and cannot share any information or answer any questions at the moment." Apparently, the company gave The Guardian an exclusive and wasn't talking to anyone else.

Undeterred, we've since pulled every bit of information we could find from StoreDot's site to figure out roughly what they were doing, and we went backwards from there to look for research we've covered previously that could be related. What follows is an attempt to piece together a picture of the technology and the challenges a company has to tackle to take research concepts and make products out of them.

To an extent, StoreDot is using ideas that have been floating around research labs and startups for years, but it's taking a bit of a risk by using these ideas in a way that's different from their apparent promise. The bet that StoreDot is making is that it's not the absolute charge range of an electric vehicle that matters; it's how quickly you can extend that range. So, while it's leveraging research on technologies that allow greater capacity in lithium ion batteries, it's turning around and sacrificing some of that capacity in order to make charging faster.

Put differently, the bet is that people would rather add 300km to the range of their car in five minutes than have a car with a 600km range that takes an hour to fully charge.

...
 

Dennis E. Taylor

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So my EV has a 95kwh battery. Using a 400vdc fast charger, you'd have to supply 2850 amps to charge in 5 minutes.

Yeah, I'll be standing over there -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
while this is happening.
 

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Heh heh. Yeah, it’s a scary amount of current. I think they’re suggesting a half-charge in 5 minutes that would give 300km? Sounds like these batteries would sacrifice capacity for charge-speed. Unclear if that’s a good trade-off?
 

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“What the hell’s gigawatt!?!” :Guitar:
 

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Heh heh. Yeah, it’s a scary amount of current. I think they’re suggesting a half-charge in 5 minutes that would give 300km? Sounds like these batteries would sacrifice capacity for charge-speed. Unclear if that’s a good trade-off?

I saw the 100 mile range thing, and that's definitely not enough. If I go on a road trip with my electric car, I wouldn't want to be stopping for a charge every 100 miles. Even my pathetically small gas tank gives me between 200 and 300 miles range.

Out of curiosity, could these batteries still be charged the "slow" way, by plugging it in to your house current overnight?

Also, as far as charging infrastructure goes, do places that provide charging for people on the go charge money, or are they free as a courtesy? Even if the electricity is lots more efficient than gas, it wouldn't be free for those providing access, and everyone wants to profit off travelers. I know our college has a few spaces in the faculty lot with chargers for plug in cars, and they are free to use for those with a permit to park in the lot. But I am guessing this might change if we get to where more than a handful of people have plug-in cars.
 

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Out of curiosity, could these batteries still be charged the "slow" way, by plugging it in to your house current overnight?

Almost certainly.

Also, as far as charging infrastructure goes, do places that provide charging for people on the go charge money, or are they free as a courtesy?

Almost certainly the former. I know that for a time, Tesla was providing free charges for its vehicles, or at least its higher-end model S. Don't think they are any more? It was a smart move when they did it, though, because at least for the areas where their charging network was built out, it removed one argument against buying their cars.

The office park of a former employer of mine added parking spaces with chargers, and the first N hours or KwH or something was free, charged after that. (I know this because a co-worker with a Nissan Leaf told me he'd set an alarm to go off before "free" was due to flip to "paid", go outside, unplug, wait a few seconds, then plug back in and enjoy more "free." :tongue)
 

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I'm also imagining that the 5-minute charge would be best done from a good, safe distance, and in rubber shoes. And, might be useful for a car only used for a number of short runs, but for commuter vehicles, why not just plug in at night as usual?
Could be useful for people who are driving a lot during the day - delivery guys, etc?
 

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Cars can be charged by plugging into 110v 15a circuits (Level 1). Takes about 3 days to charge my car. With a level 2 charger (240v 50a) it can take up to 8 hrs. With a DC fast charger (400v, I think also 50a) it's less than an hour. I got a circuit put into my garage for a level 2 charge, and with the timer on the charger I can make sure the charging is done in the middle of the night when electricity is cheaper.

Policies can vary by area, of course, but in the Lower Mainland and SW BC there are a lot of free chargers. Whistler has a free DC fast charger, although they ask you to limit your time to 40 min. They also have a number of level 2 chargers in Lot 1 of the resort parking. You can charge for free if you've paid for parking. I have a monthly parking pass, so the charging's basically free since I'm parking anyway.

There's a phone app called ChargePoint that will find chargers for you and use your credit card to activate them and pay the charging fee. The Whistler lot chargers are actually on the ChargePoint network but don't charge you a fee when you activate the charger.

Tesla is making moves towards making their charging infrastructure available to non-Teslas, although I'm pretty sure that'll be paid charging. But the Tesla network is gigantic, and that would put EVs over the top, IMO, for acceptance by the public.
 

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Cars can be charged by plugging into 110v 15a circuits (Level 1). Takes about 3 days to charge my car.

Is that to take the battery from zero to full? Or is that from “where a typical day’s commuting leaves it, to full?”

When I was commuting, I was typically doing 80-100 miles a day. Am guessing I could probably have recharged an electric overnight in my garage on 110v? But maybe not, depending on your answer...

Not commuting these days, but not sure a pure electric makes sense for us here. We pay a relatively high price/KwH for power. Am quite happy with a Prius instead, for now.
 

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Is that to take the battery from zero to full? Or is that from “where a typical day’s commuting leaves it, to full?”

The latter. Charging from 0 to 100% is quoted as taking 129 hours. 5 days. But charging from 80% to 100% is slower anyway. The Audi website says you can use a level 1 charger overnight for normal daily commute levels of charging.

Consider also a plug-in hybrid. They have a much smaller battery, only good for 20-40 miles (depending on make and model), then the gas engine takes over. But most local daily usage will either never cut in the engine or only cut it in for a small part of the day. And regenerative braking has an unexpected benefit--brake pads last way longer, since you're hardly ever using the pads, except for the last half-second before you come to a complete stop.
 

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Consider also a plug-in hybrid. They have a much smaller battery, only good for 20-40 miles (depending on make and model), then the gas engine takes over.

That’s what our Prius is. But we don’t run it in battery-only mode, preferring to let it keep its battery topped up. 20 miles is a minimum round-trip into town for us. Add the hills here, and heating or A/C use, and I doubt we’d ever get a full trip on battery. Still works well, with low-speed parking lot driving on battery, etc. Average MPG of 57 is pleasing and yeah, regenerative braking helps.