StoreDot claims it has taken electric car battery charging from hours to minutes. Of course, after all these years of reporting on EVs, we remain skeptical. However, now the company has announced that a third party has successfully validated StoreDot's EV battery technology.
If you've been following the electric car space for a time, you're probably well aware of the myriad of "battery breakthroughs" we've learned about over the years, and they keep coming. However, to date, almost none of them have yet come to fruition. They may be "working" in a test situation, but they're not living in EVs that are out on the road.
Solid-state batteries may be one of the first EV battery breakthroughs to come to mind, and while many companies are working on the battery tech, its application in vehicles may still be far off. It seems more successful efforts are being made with regard to adjusting battery chemistry, rather than entirely new technology. Tesla has had much success going this route, as have many top battery cell suppliers across the globe.
StoreDot is the developer of what it calls extreme fast charging (XFC) batteries that are specifically designed for EVs. StoreDot says that by 2024, its XFC batteries will be capable of accepting 100 miles of charging in five minutes. The company expects the 100-mile charging time to reduce to three minutes by 2028 and two minutes by the end of the decade.
Shmuel De-Leon Energy (SDLE), an independent battery lab, recently tested StoreDot's 30 Ah Pouch Cell XFC batteries, which are ready for production for electric cars. It concluded that the battery tech boasts superior fast charging capability and high energy density, and that it's already commercially viable.
According to Green Car Congress, SDLE put the EV batteries through 1,000 consecutive extreme fast-charging cycles to complete tests related to "energy density, charging rate, operating conditions and cycling." The tests showed that the batteries lead the sector in energy density at 300 Wh/kg.
