StoreDot’s Latest En-devour Could Super Charge Your EV

StoreDot’s at it again, remember that company, whose tech could charge your smartphone in a minute, their latest en-devour could charge an electric vehicle in just 5.

At Microsoft’s ThinkNext conference, the Israeli startup announced that it had started work on a technology that would enable electric vehicles to fully charge in 5 minutes.

To achieve this, they’ve developed a multi-function electrode (MFE). The MFE is a combination of a conductive polymer and metal oxide. The polymer allows the battery to receive the charge quickly while the metal oxide is used to trickle the Lithium ions into the electrode. Trickle charging’s essential as it prevents the electrode from cracking and shorting out, a danger when fast charging Lithium ion batteries.

StoreDot also tackles a major issue “heat”, it destroys electrodes over time. To remedy this, StoreDot’s developed new organic materials with low resistance, which produce little to no heat. The technology’s capable of 3x the charge cycle of normal lithium-ion batteries (1500-2000 charges). It also charges a lot quicker (one order of magnitude faster than existing battery technology).

They accomplished this speed by replacing existing battery components with new ones optimized for fast charging. The re-design isn’t a small fit, the company’s raised over US $42 million last year to create a pilot production line demonstrating how batteries are made with its technology. StoreDot estimates 80 percent of the manufacturing process is similar to the way today’s lithium batteries are made.

The battery’s only one side of the coin as infrastructure’s needed to make extremely fast charging a reality. To understand this one needs to know how StoreDot’s technology will work and its limitations. To fully charge a battery of an electric vehicle in 5 minutes, one needs powerful electrical infrastructure. 200 kilowatts for every 100 km of travel between charges. This effectively rules out charging at home, a modern high-rise would be more suitable as it would have the necessary infrastructure.

Five-minute charging requires a direct connection to the battery a foreign concept in today’s EVs. StoreDot’s goal with its battery technology is to provide a similar refueling experience as one would fill up with its petrol counterpart and to achieve a similar range of travel between charges. To realize this, existing and future refueling stations would need more than 200kW of power, a major upgrade.

Tesla one of its rivals had a similar issue implementing its Supercharger network (120kW fast charging stations), these provided a model S with 200 miles of travel per 30-minute charge. StoreDot’s technology though a lot faster requires stations to be in the range of a high-power transformer. It believes a wide spread adaptation of its technology would require some government support directing the installation of new grid components.

StoreDot’s tech will cost 20 to 30 percent higher than today’s lithium-ions, due to costly organic materials. Yet this shouldn’t put you off, 3x the charge cycles of current Li-ions will save you thousands in the long run, who doesn’t love saving.

StoreDot estimates we’ll see the first mobile products based on its technology around the second half of 2016. It should have a preliminary prototype of its vehicle battery in 2016 and commercial one in 2017.

Here’s a video of their vision:

This startup’s one to keep our eyes on, their technology could revolutionize everything, really looking forward to further developments, are you? let us know in the comments section.

Thank you ieee.org for providing us with this information.