Many technologies under development will allow us to charge the battery of electric cars much faster. But some of them are just a project, others have no date, and others will force us to have a more modern electric car than the current ones. The technology at hand, however, is a simple upgrade to current chargers and current cars. And they say it will be available in just 5 years, so we can expect it in 2027.
They assure that by then technology will be available that will allow charging 90% of the battery in just 10 minutes; that is to say, a technology that will be as fast in charging the battery of an electric vehicle, almost, as refueling a vehicle with a thermal engine. And today there are already electric cars that admit a lot of charging power and therefore shorter times to have a battery again; however, many of these technologies are detrimental to battery health. The technology at hand, however, does not cause damage to the battery and does not involve heating or fire risks.
It only takes software to charge 90% of the battery in just 10 minutes
As they explain, the key is not in new batteries with better capacities or in new charging systems for electric vehicles. No, it just takes software that optimizes the way already available technologies work. But in what way? Through a machine learning system. Everything is based on a computer system that constantly collects information about the state of the battery and the operation of the charging point and, based on the data collected, a specific protocol is created.
This protocol is the operating instructions that the charging point has to follow specifically for the electric car that is charging at that moment. In other words, in a personalized way, the charging point is capable, with this technology, of knowing when to increase and decrease power so that the process is as efficient as possible. Whenever possible, maximum power is applied, however, when approaching a point of risk for battery damage, power is automatically reduced until it can be safely increased again.
At the moment they have already done tests with the data of 30,000 charging points, and in the tests they have carried out they have found that, effectively, it is possible to charge 90% of the battery in less than 10 minutes. And the most important thing is that, as we mentioned, with this machine learning technology, better batteries are not needed and new charging systems are not necessary either. Of course, we are going to have to wait 5 years, because that is the time they estimate it will take for this technology to be 100% available.
And this would be an important evolution. In the first place, it would help to ‘discharge’ the charging points for electric cars, since each user would need to spend less time there. In addition, it would also allow cheaper electric cars to exist, because we could perfectly well have smaller – and cheaper – batteries that, although they have less autonomy, will recharge quickly. And above all, it will help increase the adoption of electric vehicles.
