New battery technology will charge electric cars in 10 minutes

Electric cars may have come close to range in recent years as they can travel longer distances, but the time-consuming problem of charging them remains. Despite various fast charge technologies introduced by companies such as Tesla and Porsche, the charging time of an electric car remains significantly longer than a refueling at the gas station.

The gap may close, however, with the new battery technology developed by Penn State University’s Chao Yang Wang and can charge up to 80% (300 km) of an electric car in just 10 minutes.

Wang’s idea was just started, providing as much power as possible in a lithium-ion battery, in this case 400 kilowatts. However, the problem of overcharging a lithium battery is that lithium deposits are created that cover the surface of the negative electrodes, which reduces the battery life. However, the researchers found that if they heated the battery well enough, they could not form lithium plates.

So they took a commercial battery and initially, at room temperature without heating, found that the plates began to form after 60 cycles of charging. Then, by heating it to 60 degrees Celsius, they were able to recharge the battery 2,500 times without forming the plates, which corresponds to 750,000 kilometers or 14 years of use.

It remains unclear whether this technology will eventually reach electric cars, but researchers are convinced they can reduce charging time by up to 5 minutes.

This experiment overturned an old belief that lithium-ion batteries should not be charged at high temperatures because they will reduce battery life. On the contrary, the results show that the benefits of a short charge at high temperature outweigh the disadvantages.