At the quickest charging stations, electric vehicles require at least 30 minutes to get 80 percent charged. Faster charging may be achievable in five to ten years. Novel lithium-ion battery materials and new "solid-state" batteries are being developed by companies. They could be able to achieve recharge times of 20 minutes or less.
Developing a Quick Charging Battery
A group of scientists has developed a lithium battery prototype that can recharge to more than 50% capacity in less than three minutes. According to them, this might open the way for batteries that can be fully charged in as little as 10 minutes.
But, before extremely fast-charging EV batteries are both technically viable and inexpensive, there are still scientific and engineering difficulties to solve.
Lithium-Ion Batteries
Thousands of lithium-ion cells make up the batteries of today's electric vehicles, each capable of storing and releasing energy thousands of times. Each of these cells comprises two electrodes separated by a liquid electrolyte: a metal cathode and a graphite anode. Lithium ions move through the liquid from the cathode to the anode when the battery is charged, filling up gaps between the graphite layers like wooden blocks in a Jenga tower.
If lithium is pumped into the anode too quickly, a Jenga tower might become unstable. Thousands of lithium-ion cells make up the battery, which can store and release energy thousands of times.
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Overheating
Lithium batteries can overheat at high charging speeds, leading them to deteriorate over time. More concerning, instead of entering the anode, lithium might begin to accumulate on its surface. Dendrites are filament-like structures that originate from these deposits. Dendrites can spread over the body once they begin to develop.
Charging Speed
An Audi E-tron SUV's 95-kilowatt-hour battery may be charged in around 16 minutes using a 350-kilowatt fast-charging station. However, the battery itself can only handle roughly 150 kilowatts of electricity, limiting the charging time to around 40 minutes.
Fast charging stations that are state-of-the-art may add hundreds of miles of range in 30 minutes. Tesla owners may use a supercharging station to boost their range by up to 200 miles in 15 minutes. The pace at which a battery charge is determined by the battery's size, capacity, and state of charge, as well as the weather.
Problems with Fast Charging
Dendrites develop quickly in lithium-ion batteries, leading them to fail fast, especially at high charge rates. However, alternative anode materials that do not encourage lithium plating or dendrite growth can be developed. According to Buettner-Garre, fast-charging lithium metal batteries would be the Holy Grail of high-performance EV batteries, but they are "still a work in progress." Solid Power is developing a silicon anode battery cell that can be fully charged in 15 minutes and halfway charged in 20 minutes. It's also working on batteries using lithium metal anodes, which have 10 times the energy storage capacity of graphite per unit mass.
Mass Production
The team must show that the battery, which is presently the size of a coin, can be mass-produced at a larger scale. According to Li, a commercial version of this battery might be available in five years "assuming everything goes well."
Fast Charging
Even though EV batteries that charge less than 10 minutes are technically viable, ultra-fast charging is unlikely to become a reality. Today's fast-charging stations, which operate at 400 volts or more, already take far more electricity from the electric grid than the 120- and 240-volt outlets that many EV owners use at home. If every American drove an electric vehicle and expected ever-faster charging to be accessible at all times, the grid would be severely strained.
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