- An electric car battery that can be charged within five minutes was announced Monday.
- Standard batteries for electric vehicles take about 8 hours to fully charge.
- The faster loading capability will make EVs more accessible to the general public.
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An electric car battery that can be charged within five minutes, the amount of time it takes to fill a tank of gas, was first manufactured in a factory in China.
The new lithium-ion batteries were developed by the Israeli company StoreDot and manufactured by Eve Energy in China. The company has manufactured 1,000 sample batteries that meet Li-ion battery certification, StoreDot announced Tuesday.
The samples will be used to showcase the company’s technology to potential buyers and investors looking to jump on the EV market, including BP, Daimler, Samsung Ventures and TDK.
Faster charging batteries will make electric vehicles more functional
For many drivers, electric cars are not feasible for long rides due to the amount of time it takes to charge the vehicles. Current electric car batteries on the market can take about 30 minutes to 12 hours to charge, although a typical EV takes about 8 hours to charge from empty to full, according to PodPoint, a manufacturer of charging electric vehicles.
Electric vehicles are an important part of Biden’s $ 2 billion climate change plan, in which he wants a completely green electric power grid by 2035 with cars running on electricity instead of petrol. StoreDot’s new battery technology will make this green future more achievable, which CEO Doron Myersdorf calls the biggest barrier to electric vehicles: ‘range and charging anxiety’.
“Today’s announcement is an important milestone to shift XFC for the first time after innovation in the laboratory to a commercially viable product that is scalable for mass production,” Myersdorf said. in the press release. “We are on the verge of revolutionizing the EV charging experience that will remove the critical barrier to mass acceptance of EVs.”
Electric cars average about 250 kilometers of driving capacity per charge. With a battery that can charge faster, drivers will not be remotely bound and can take their EVs on longer rides like any other regular car.
While current lithium-ion batteries use graphite as an electrode, the StoreDot battery works faster by replacing graphite with semiconductor nanoparticles that allow ions to pass more easily and faster. The company expects to replace this electrode by the end of the year with silicone, a much cheaper component.
Tesla is also working on the development of silicone electrodes.
Elon Musk has long called for faster charging speeds for electric cars
Musk tweeted on Monday: “Battery cell production is the fundamental rate constraint that slows down a sustainable energy future. Very important issue.”
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 18 January 2021
Tesla has made progress in giving EVs a longer travel range through an extensive Supercharger network, as well as its new generation of long-distance electric cars that can travel up to 400km between charges. Musk hopes to make electric cars as convenient and accessible as vehicles with ordinary internal combustion engines.
Fast charging EV batteries are gone in a few years
StoreDot’s five – minute battery is unlikely to enter the mainstream market for years to come, as mass production will not be available for some time as the company continues to hone its technology.
StoreDot has in the past experimented with fast charging batteries for phones, drones and scooters. In 2014, the company developed a prototype of a charger that can charge the battery of your phone within 30 seconds from the dead to the full charge.