Super skeptical here, or at least the wording is misleading as hell.
> The product allows users to charge a 60kWh EV battery pack with 119 miles of range in 15 minutes as compared to 15 miles in 15 minutes today.
> The technology works with off-the-shelf lithium ion batteries and existing fast charge infrastructure by integrating via a patented self-contained adapter on a car charge port
First read says that they're delivering 60kWh in 15min, or they're pumping electrons at 240kW. This is just nonsense -- most deployed DC fast chargers are 50kW... the charger companies and the OEMs are experimenting with 200kW chargers, but those are liquid cooled. So physics says this is nonsense.
Okay, so second read: the 60 kWh is distracting technobabble, and what they're ACTUALLY doing is "adding 119 miles of range in 15 minutes."
The just-announced Nissan Leaf e+ has a 62 kWh battery with 226 miles of range. When you DC Fast Charge, going from 0-80% takes about as much time as going from 80-100% (EV roadtripping is about doing frequent small charging because of this phenomenon, not one-time top-offs like with gas).
The Nissan Leaf e+ is about a 60 kWh battery, and if they're adding "119 miles of range in 15 minutes", that's about half the Leaf's 226 mi range, so call it "30 kWh of charge in 15 min". That means they're charging at an average of 120kW. Okay, now we're back within the realm of physics.
Note the Leaf e+'s (yet unreleased hardware) still only accepts a maximum of 100kW DC fast charging. I think jaguar has experimented with 150kW charging on the ipace (but again, liquid cooled cables).
So they're saying they found a way to cycle fast charging and get about a 20% improvement in average charging rate from the current kinda-top-of-the-line tech, and only for the first 50% battery capacity.
Not nothing, but hardly "as quickly as visiting the pump", especially since whatever tricks they use likely won't continue for the next 50% of the battery.
Hi! I'm one of the founders at GBatteries, please let me try to clear that up.
We've demonstrated 5 min to 50% charge, 10 min to 100% - I’ll edit this to include a demo that we’ve done at CES 2019, and that we’re now exhibiting at the Detroit Auto show demonstrating.
[EDIT] Video here: https://youtu.be/kSLrqR4TfnU
Note: Charging times can vary by ~1 minute here and there, because the algorithm is adaptive and characteristics of batteries change from moment to moment.
>First read says that they're delivering 60kWh in 15min, or they're pumping electrons at 240kW. This is just nonsense -- most deployed DC fast chargers are 50kW... the charger companies and the OEMs are experimenting with 200kW chargers, but those are liquid cooled. So physics says this is nonsense.
>Okay, so second read: the 60 kWh is distracting technobabble, and what they're ACTUALLY doing is "adding 119 miles of range in 15 minutes."
There’s a mistake in the article, in both cases it should be in 5 minutes; should be corrected shortly.
In this example, we’re talking about a 60kWh battery with 238 miles of range (Chevy Bolt). Right now the car charges 90miles in 30 minutes, or 15 miles in 5 minutes because the manufacturer limits the charging rate for the batteries in order to preserve their life. Our technology can enable these Li-ion batteries to charge in 5 min to 50%, or 119 miles. This example assumes that the car goes to a fast charging station that has enough power to charge the vehicle in this time; fast charge infrastructure that’s currently being put up by companies like Ionity (350kW), Electrify America, or Charge Point (500kW capability).
The problem with batteries today is not charging speed; it’s possible to charge any battery quickly, but the faster you charge a battery the faster it will degrade. Our technology is able to decrease the irreversible chemical reactions that happen during charging, so that the same batteries can be charged fast without compromising cycle life.
What are you doing differently? Unless you’re pulsing your charging or otherwise varying the current rapidly, then it seems that all you can really do is vary the current as a function of temperature, state of charge, and maybe some other variables. At the end of the day, if you’re going to deliver energy e in time t, you need average power e/t, and the fancier your curve, the more your peak power will exceed your average.
(And if you don’t want to overhead the cables or the connector, you care about current squared, giving you an added incentive to charge at near constant current or perhaps to charge some cells at a different rate than others.
And to add to these questions - what are the consequences for increasing charging rates? Tesla has made some public statements regarding fast(er) charging (specifically targeting the 350kW Ionity chargers) to the effect that pushing that much power will degrade the batteries far faster for little gain.
Edit:
> Our technology is able to decrease the irreversible chemical reactions that happen during charging, so that the same batteries can be charged fast without compromising cycle life.
This seems to imply it's doing something to the battery chemistry? Maybe a brief pulse of high-rate discharge every now and then to help balance things out?
> This seems to imply it's doing something to the battery chemistry? Maybe a brief pulse of high-rate discharge every now and then to help balance things out?
That's usually within the domain of the battery management system. There's not much the charger itself can do (there is intelligent communication between EV and charging equipment, but not as granular as the view the BMS has).
You're correct - On a high level, our technology is based on pulses that are fully adaptive, and their parameters are adjusted by the AI controlling the charging.
This makes more sense....I posted another comment, but the long and short is that you would need to be able to bypass the manufacturers controller to do this, which it sounds like you are saying.
That's correct, we're not able to fast charge at these levels without approval from the OEM because of the limits they have built. We need to either be integrated inside of the vehicle, or on the charger but have the vehicles "approval" for charging at these higher rates, as at Level 3 and up it's DC to the pack.
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but this seems like a B2B/acquisition play masquerading as a B2C play; your value (if proven) is a superior battery management system (versus the OEM's or a supplier's) and charge controller for non-Tesla EVs (hinging on the battery pack instrumentation architecture).
The techcrunch article tone makes it sound like they're pitching charge rate increases directly to consumers. That doesn't seem to be the case based on the in-thread discussion, but how techcrunch made it sound.
The battery is the most expensive part of an electric car. If you have come up with something that MITMs the signaling between my car and the charger, causing the charger to deliver more power than my car says it can handle, that's a huge problem. First off, there's no way this won't immediately invalidate every warranty on my car, and secondly, why should I trust you over the company that manufactured my car and its battery?
Thanks for chiming in! Batteries and charging are complicated as is, when translated into Journalist they get even more so :)
There was a lot of concern with the first generation EV's about battery life, a lot of which the data has shown to be misguided now that the first gen's are coming off-lease. How long is the process to convince the OEMs this won't degrade their battery packs?
"119 miles of range in 15 minutes" is also nowhere near as fast as an IC car "visiting the pump". It does not take 15 minutes to fill the tank on a normal car.
Short of physically swapping out batteries, charging an EC will never be as fast as pouring gasoline into a tank. Transferring that much energy that quickly over wires is ... I don't want to stand anywhere near it. Fillup time is not an are where EC should try to compete.
I never finished school, so correct anything I've got wrong here.
Diesel has a specific energy of 48MJ/kg and weighs 0.832kg/L.
48MJ converts to 13.33kWh. My diesel tank will take 70L from nearly empty. I've never timed it, but it's definitely substantially quicker than 10 minutes to fill.
So I'm transferring about 776kWh in to my diesel tank in <10 mins.
70 * 0.832 * 13.33 = 776.33kWh
So it would take a 1MW charger three quarters of an hour to transfer the same amount of energy. <gasp>
That's to say nothing of a caravan of trucks such as yours with full 70l tanks, barrelling down the freeway.
If three such vehicles pass a given point per second, that's like 144 MW of power, I think!
I wonder if you need to cool the battery pack charging at that rate you could imagine having a connector that hooked up a battery both to electricity and to a cooling circuit that pumped water round the battery pack as it charged
VAG is releasing a car shortly (March) that can charge at 150 Kw, and has deployed some charges in Europe and the US that can put out that much power. Last I heard, the iPace is listed as accepting 100 kW, but no one has seen over 80 yet.
> The product allows users to charge a 60kWh EV battery pack with 119 miles of range in 15 minutes as compared to 15 miles in 15 minutes today.
> The technology works with off-the-shelf lithium ion batteries and existing fast charge infrastructure by integrating via a patented self-contained adapter on a car charge port
First read says that they're delivering 60kWh in 15min, or they're pumping electrons at 240kW. This is just nonsense -- most deployed DC fast chargers are 50kW... the charger companies and the OEMs are experimenting with 200kW chargers, but those are liquid cooled. So physics says this is nonsense.
Okay, so second read: the 60 kWh is distracting technobabble, and what they're ACTUALLY doing is "adding 119 miles of range in 15 minutes."
The just-announced Nissan Leaf e+ has a 62 kWh battery with 226 miles of range. When you DC Fast Charge, going from 0-80% takes about as much time as going from 80-100% (EV roadtripping is about doing frequent small charging because of this phenomenon, not one-time top-offs like with gas).
The Nissan Leaf e+ is about a 60 kWh battery, and if they're adding "119 miles of range in 15 minutes", that's about half the Leaf's 226 mi range, so call it "30 kWh of charge in 15 min". That means they're charging at an average of 120kW. Okay, now we're back within the realm of physics.
Note the Leaf e+'s (yet unreleased hardware) still only accepts a maximum of 100kW DC fast charging. I think jaguar has experimented with 150kW charging on the ipace (but again, liquid cooled cables).
So they're saying they found a way to cycle fast charging and get about a 20% improvement in average charging rate from the current kinda-top-of-the-line tech, and only for the first 50% battery capacity.
Not nothing, but hardly "as quickly as visiting the pump", especially since whatever tricks they use likely won't continue for the next 50% of the battery.