Isreali technology firm StoreDot has produced an EV battery capable of fully charging in five minutes, marking a significant step towards electric cars becoming as fast to charge as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles.
The new lithium-ion batteries were manufactured by Eve Energy in China on standard production lines. StoreDot now plans to showcase the tech to potential EV and industry partners.
StoreDot has previously demonstrated its extreme fast-charging battery in phones, drones and scooters and the 1,000 batteries it has now produced with Eve Energy are to showcase its technology to carmakers and other companies. Daimler, BP, Samsung and TDK have all invested in StoreDot, which has raised $130m to date and was named a Bloomberg New Energy Finance Pioneer in 2020.
The batteries require much higher-powered chargers than available today, but using available charging infrastructure, StoreDot is aiming to deliver 100 miles of charge to a car battery in five minutes by 2025.
Doron Myersdorf, CEO of StoreDot said “A five-minute charging lithium-ion battery was considered impossible. And, adds Myersdorf “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.”
Existing Li-ion batteries use graphite as one electrode, into which the lithium ions are pushed to store charge. But when these are rapidly charged, the ions get congested and can turn into metal and short circuit the battery.
The StoreDot battery replaces graphite with semiconductor nanoparticles into which ions can pass more quickly and easily. These nanoparticles are currently based on germanium, but StoreDot’s plan is to use silicon, which is significantly cheaper, and it expects these prototypes later this year. Myersdorf said the cost would then be the same as existing Li-ion batteries.
