Electric vehicles (EVs) will soon be able to fully charge as fast as filling up the tank with gasoline/diesel. Israeli startup StoreDot developed new lithium-ion batteries and had 1,000 manufactured by Eve Energy in China on standard production lines.
StoreDot made this batch of new EV batteries to showcase its technology to carmakers; so, they won’t be available to consumers yet. However, they are the world’s first five-minute-charge batteries to be produced in a factory, and the moment means ultra-fast charging cars are on the horizon.
StoreDot CEO Doron Myersdorf said in a statement:
We are proud to make these samples available, but today’s milestone is just the beginning. We’re on the cusp of achieving a revolution in the electric vehicle charging experience that will remove the critical barrier to mass adoption of electric vehicles.
EV adoption is a necessary action to tackle the climate crisis. However, it’s been slow – far slower than required to meet sustainability goals. People tend to worry about running out of charge during a journey and having to sit at a charging station for 1-2 hours.
Myersdorf said:
The number one barrier to the adoption of electric vehicles is no longer cost; it is range anxiety. 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 fueling [a petrol car], this whole anxiety goes away.
A five-minute charging lithium-ion battery was considered to be impossible. 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.
Elon Musk recently tweeted:
Battery cell production is the fundamental rate-limiter slowing down a sustainable energy future. Very important problem.
StoreDot has demonstrated its “extreme fast-charging” battery in drones, phones, and scooters already. They caught the attention of companies like BP, Daimler, Samsung, and TDK – all of which invested significant money in the company. To date, it has raised $130 million, earning itself a name as a Bloomberg New Energy Finance Pioneer in 2020.
According to Myerdorf, the new battery could withstand 1,000 recharging cycles while retaining 80% of its original capacity. And while they can fully charge in five minutes, to do so would require substantially higher-powered chargers in use today. So, realistically the battery can deliver 100 miles of charge in five minutes using available charging infrastructure. Such will be the case in 2025.
Myerdorf said:
The bottleneck to extra-fast charging is no longer the battery. Now the charging stations and grids that supply them need to be upgraded.
And StoreDot is on it! It’s working with BP, which has invested $20 million in the startup already.
Myerdorf continued:
BP has 18,200 forecourts, and they understand that ten years from now, all these stations will be obsolete if they don’t repurpose them for charging – batteries are the new oil.
The StoreDot battery replaces the graphite electrode found in current Li-ion batteries with semiconductor nanoparticles based on germanium. Ions can pass more easily and quickly into them. Germanium is excellent, but it will eventually be replaced by silicon, which is much cheaper. The silicon prototypes will debut later this year.
