Asian battery makers are racing to develop new generations of “superfast charging” cells for electric vehicles that will make refuelling as fast as filling up cars with petrol or diesel.
With the global electric vehicle (EV) industry seeking to win over sceptical consumers put off by long charge times and “range anxiety”, China’s CATL and Gotion High-tech are this year unveiling batteries that can be charged from 10 per cent to 80 per cent in under 10 minutes.
The goal is to charge an EV in about five minutes, making the experience virtually indistinguishable from filling up a car using traditional fuels.
“One answer to range anxiety is obviously to give EVs more range, but the other is to make it possible to charge your EV fast enough that it is convenient to do so in the middle of a trip,” said Andreas Breiter, who co-leads McKinsey’s Center for Future Mobility in North America.
“Because there are limits to the amount of range you can achieve and the number of batteries that an EV can hold, faster charging will be part of the solution – but it comes with trade-offs.”
Challenges that stand in the way of the five-minute milestone include heightened safety risks, shorter battery lifespans, availability of grid connections and the extra costs associated with installing superfast chargers. The EV industry is also fighting a trend of consumers turning to hybrids or sticking with cars powered by petrol and diesel, as incentives to convert to pure electric are reduced.
South Korean carmaker Hyundai said it saw fast charging as essential for boosting EV sales. An expanded infrastructure would increase customer convenience, it said, and joint ventures had been set up with other carmakers to build high-powered EV charging networks across North America and Europe.
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While many potential purchasers of EVs are still put off by the thought of interrupting a journey to spend up to an hour at a charging station, several 800-volt EV models already on the market can be refuelled with “Level 3″ chargers to about 80 per cent – translating to hundreds of kilometres of range – in less than 20 minutes.
“Our superfast chargers allow an EV to be charged to 80 per cent in just 15 minutes, giving you enough range to drive the 450km from LA to Las Vegas,” said Joon Park, chief marketing officer of Korean charger maker SK Signet, giving one example.
Charging speed is typically measured in terms of how long it takes to go from a 10 per cent to an 80 per cent charge, because batteries should ideally not be depleted below 10 per cent, while charging speeds slow dramatically between 80 and 100 per cent.
According to the US Department of Transportation, a “Level 1″ charger that plugs into a standard household 120 volt AC outlet offers about 1 kilowatt of power – enough to charge an EV from empty to 80 per cent in 40-50 hours. A 240-volt “Level 2″ charger of the kind used for overnight charging will typically offer up to 20kW and charge times of 4-10 hours.
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But the latest super fast “Level 3″ chargers, which bypass an EV’s on-board charger and supply direct current (DC) straight to the battery, can offer hundreds of kilowatts, drastically reducing charge times. Tesla Superchargers offer up to 250kW, giving 75 miles of charge in five minutes, while Huawei’s top-of-the-range charger offers 600kW.
Neil Beveridge, a senior analyst at Bernstein in Hong Kong, notes that China’s leading battery makers have pulled ahead of their Korean rivals in producing cells capable of the quickest charge times.
CATL’s Shenxing Plus battery, unveiled at the Beijing auto show earlier this year, promises a charge time equating to one kilometre of range per second, or 600km in 10 minutes.
But Korean battery makers are determined to close the gap. “In 2026, we will unveil a battery that can be fully charged within nine minutes,” Goh Juh-young, vice-president of South Korean battery maker Samsung SDI, said.
“But our aim is to develop an EV battery that will be on a par with internal combustion engine vehicles that can go 600km after a five-minute refuelling.”
On the downside, Lee Hang-koo, head of the Jeonbuk Institute of Automotive Convergence Technology in South Korea, says there is evidence that a battery’s lifespan can be reduced by excessive superfast charging, as well as there being an increased risk of battery fires because of overheating.
“The biggest problem with fast charging is the temperature of batteries,” said Kim Je-young, chief technology officer at LG Energy Solution, the world’s largest non-Chinese battery producer.
One reason charging speeds of Chinese batteries have pulled ahead is their makers’ focus on lithium iron phosphate or LFP batteries, which are less susceptible to overheating than the nickel-rich batteries of Korean battery makers.
Last week, LG Energy Solution’s parent LG Chem announced it had developed a temperature-responsive “safety reinforced layer” a 100th the thickness of human hair designed to reduce the risk of so-called thermal runaway, a leading cause of battery fires.
The Jeonbuk Institute’s Lee noted that charging speed was not the top priority of many EV owners, who may be unwilling to shoulder the extra cost of power-intensive superfast charging.
“According to recent polls, consumers think lowering EV prices and having long ranges are more important than charging speed,” said Lee. “Consumers want to see more charging facilities more than they want to see faster charging.”
But the industry is approaching a tipping point, according to Bernstein’s Beveridge, where owning an EV will no longer be regarded as any less convenient than owning a car with a standard internal combustion engine.
“If you look at the state of the art vehicles coming out of China, you can see that it will soon be fairly standard to get 700-800 kilometres on a 10-minute charge,” he said.
“That will be more than enough for the vast majority of consumers, and that is why electric vehicles are going to win in the end.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024
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