An electric car battery developed by UK start-up Nyobolt has successfully charged from 10% to 80% in four minutes and 37 seconds in its first live demonstration.
It was achieved with a specially-built concept sports car on a test track in Bedford, and is part of industry-wide efforts to get electric vehicles (EVs) charging more quickly.
By comparison, an existing Tesla supercharger can charge a car battery to 80% in 15-20 minutes.
Experts say eliminating so-called “range anxiety” is key to increasing uptake of EVs - but also stress the importance of improving the charging infrastructure.
“Developing technology that enables people to charge more quickly, which chimes with the time it currently takes to re-fuel a car – is really important," Paul Shearing, Professor of Sustainable Energy Engineering at Oxford University, told the BBC.
But he added there needed to be more chargers of all types.
“People are going to want fast-charging infrastructure, independent of what car they’re using – everyone wants to do this more quickly,” he said.
I read the article and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why you need a “test track” in order to test the recharge speed of a battery.
What does running the car on the track to drain the battery accomplish that simply running the car on a city street (or even parked with the AC on) to drain the battery would not do?
But this is not a test of how fast the battery drains but a test of how fast they could charge it from 10%. What relevance is there as to HOW the battery was drained prior testing how fast it charges?
In other words, if a Model 3 at 10% and it was driven hard 30 minutes ago will it charge any slower than that same Model 3 at 10% that sat overnight in your garage?
Inoder to do repetative charging tests, they need to discharge the battery often. Leaving the ac on or driving in city traffic is not the fastest way to discharge ane recharge a battery.
Actually yes, there could be a difference. This is why when on a long trip you make sure and schedule where you are going to charge because Tesla’s condition the battery ~20 minutes (??) prior to arriving. Conditioning is basically heating or cooling the battery cells (depending on outside air temp) so that it can be charged at the maximum rate or at the maximum rate for a longer time before it starts scaling back the charge rate.
Sorry but that still isn’t making sense. If this is based solely on outside air temp differences, then driving it first and charging when it is 18C vs charging a parked car at 18C should not have any variance.
This was not a repetitive test. This was a single test of a recharge in front of an invited audience.
Edit: To quote your link:
Nyobolt has successfully charged from 10% to 80% in four minutes and 37 seconds in its first live demonstration.
That is probably true. But it is also equalizing the temp of all the cells. Just one outlier cell temp can probably limit charging current to less than max. If you want more info there are probably numerous Tesla and 3rd party web sites that can give more info.
The Tesla batteries don’t need to be pre-conditioned (usually “heated”) before charging, the car just does it automatically when necessary so that charging begins at a higher rate than it otherwise would. It’s essentially an efficiency task (to make charging more efficient), but not a required task. In my model 3, when the battery ir preconditioned (“heated”), it will begin charging at 254kW, but I’ve seen it start charging well over 200kW even when not preconditioned at all. This happens when your hotel is less than a 90 second drive away from the supercharger, so you don’t have a 10-15 minute drive towards the supercharger when the preconditioning takes place.
Tesla does all sorts of things to improve efficiency, for example, in dual motor models, they shut off one of the motors while simply cruising on the highway to consume less energy. But if you suddenly need to overtake a slow truck on an uphill section, the second motor will instantly turn on when necessary. It is seamless, and very difficult for a regular driver to detect (professional drivers might be able to detect the second motor kicking in).
All vehicles are tested on race tracks. That is a historic norm in reporting on performance. An early reason, is automobiles are put under stress to build better suspension systems, better handling, better brakes, better engine mounts etc…the list is endless. All reports on innovation in the industry refer back to the race track. Does not matter what it is from a small insight to a major development.
