New battery chemistry promises 10-minute fast charge, or five minute top up for EVs

Existing electric vehicles owners know that charging times are generally unimportant – after all, who cares if it takes 3 hours or four hours, when you’re asleep for 8?

Even for long distance travelers, a fast charge time of 15-30 minutes is hardly a trial when you should be taking that sort of break every two to three hours anyway.

It is however a different matter for those without easy access to home charging. For this group, a charging experience more akin to the petrol station may be what will/won’t get them across the line to switching to a full-electric vehicle (BEV) over a fully fossil fueled internal combustion or plug-in hybrid vehicle.

This is where the recent trial of an improved lithium battery chemistry comes in. As we reported earlier this week, Polestar, in conjunction with battery manufacturer StoreDot, have trialed a Polestar 5 prototype fitted with StoreDot’s  Extreme Fast Charging (XFC) battery technology to get a 10% to 80% charge in 10 minutes.

The test showed a consistent charge rate starting at 310 kW and rising to a peak in excess of 370 kW at the end of charging.

According to Polestar, thanks to the consistent charge speeds on offer, with a suitable charger consumers could stop for five minutes at 50% SOC (state of charge) and continue their journey with over 80 per cent SOC.

StoreDot describe their technology as utilising silicon-dominant cells with an energy density on par with state-of-the-art NMC cells, but not requiring specialist cooling systems in the vehicle.

The battery system is also promoted as having high recyclability and serviceability built into the design of the pack.

StoreDot’s roadmap for battery evolution involves a series of aims to increase battery charging speeds. These include to deliver 100 miles (160 km) in 5 minutes by 2024, 4 minutes in 2026 and 3 minutes in 2028.

Mind-you, at the upper range of those charging rates the chargers themselves would need to hit 600 kW plus at some stages, so for cars perhaps these batteries may never see the light of day.

On the other hand, that sort of battery technology would be a boon to the rollout of full battery trucks to enable them to take full advantage of the Mega Charging System designed for heavy transport use.