New Battery Tech Could Juice Up Electric Cars In Just 10 Minutes

While range anxiety regarding electric cars might have lessened over the years, thanks to modern day electric cars being able to travel greater distances, the next problem that needs to be addressed would be charging. This is because while charging tech has improved greatly, it still takes considerably longer to charge an electric car versus filling it up at the gas station.

However, thanks to researcher done at Penn State University led by Chao Yang Wang, they think they might have solved that problem by coming up with new battery technology that could potentially recharge an electric car to 80% in just 10 minutes. This might still be a tad longer than it would take to fill up a gas tank, but it is still pretty damn fast.

Wang’s research focused started out rather simple, with the idea of just pumping a lithium-ion battery with as much energy as possible. However, the problem with supercharging a lithium-ion battery is that in the process, there is a chance for lithium to form plate-like deposits on the negative electrode’s surface, which in turn decreases its battery life.

However, the researchers came up with an idea that by heating up the battery to a high temperature first, they could make it too hot for the lithium plates to form. They then tested it out on a commercially available industrial battery where first they tested it without heating, where after 60 cycles, lithium plates began to form.

They then tested it out again where at 60C, they managed to recharge the battery 2,500 times without lithium plates forming. This is said to be equivalent to about 750,000 kilometers. While we’re not sure if and when this tech could find its way to electric car batteries, the researchers are now hoping to go even further by reducing charging time to as low as 5 minutes.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Green, Transportation
Tags: Electric Cars, Science