Electric cars that can be charged in five minutes could be on Irish roads by 2025, according to the manufacturer of a new battery.
Israeli firm StoreDot this month became the first company to produce an extreme-fast-charging battery outside of a laboratory.
The company said the battery could soon be mass produced – sparking a “revolution in the Electric Vehicle charging experience.”
It said the production of electric cars that can be charged in the same amount of time it takes to fill up a tank of petrol will remove the critical barrier to mass adoption of electric vehicles.
On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, StoreDot CEO Dr Doron Myersdorf said the breakthrough is “absolutely” a game-changer.
“The number one barrier in the adoption of electric vehicles is what is referred to as the range anxiety,” he said.
“Not only might you get stuck on the freeway, but when you get to a charging station - which is today a petrol station but it will convert to a charging station - there might be a long line there or you yourself might have to sit there for a couple of hours to get the couple of hundred kilometres you need.
“We are there to solve this number one problem of range anxiety.”
Mass adoption
He said there are still a number obstacles to overcome before extreme-fast-charging is a commercial reality; however, the fact it can be produced outside of the lab makes it a “a stepping stone for the launch of the technology on a mass scale.”
He said the manufacturing costs need to be reduced to make it commercially viable to use the batteries in electric cars but noted that the breakthrough shows that five-minute charging is ‘not a dream but a reality.’
We are now looking at future car models that would be ideal for the initial implementation so I would say 2025 is a realistic estimation for the rollout of five-minute charging,” he said.
The technology requires DC current meaning the fast-charging will only be possible at roadside charging stations – which will likely be repurposed petrol stations.
Forecourt charging
The company is working with oil giant BP on a strategy for retrofitting petrol stations for extreme fast charging.
“These are DC chargers,” he said. “This is not at home. You will never be able to charge at home in five minutes just because the infrastructure will never be there.
“In these forecourts you will be able to get 350kw or even half a megawatt of a charging station that will enable extreme fast charging of your vehicle.
“Batteries will charge at home as well but to use the 5kw, 10kw or 15kw you have at home it will take overnight or at least five or six hours to get a full charge.
“That is something that will always be the case but what is important to understand is that the whole use case is changing.
“People will charge at home if they have garage, they will charge in the street, they will charge at work, they will charge when they do grocery shopping but the fact that you can go into a forecourt and in five minutes get these couple of hundred kilometres – that is the whole idea of eliminating the range anxiety.”
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