This New CATL Battery For Delivery Vans Can Recharge In 7 Minutes
It also has a low-temperature sodium-ion version that barely loses range even in -40 degrees Fahrenheit.
It has a 10 year warranty of over 600,000 miles.
CATL said this week that its new “Tectrans II” battery will charge from 20-80% in under seven minutes and take just two additional minutes to reach a full charge, per CNEVPost. The company also reportedly achieved several breakthroughs in durability, including reducing internal cell resistance by half versus the industry average. That allows ions to move faster during charging and discharging. There’s also a low-temperature sodium-ion version of this battery that can retain 90% capacity at -40 degrees Fahrenheit.
The commercial battery is in a totally different league compared to electric vans in the U.S. The now-discontinued Chevy BrightDrop vans take an hour to add 160 miles of range—
I would think range isn’t so important if one can recharge in 7 minutes. These vehicles just need to be in area with an adequate number of charging stations.
A very fast charge usually implies a huge power draw off the grid. That would limit the number of available stations to where they can get the infrastructure in place. If the power draw is big enough, it might mean upgrades to both transmission to the site and local transformers.
As a result, you still want a decent range on each vehicle, since the number of truly high speed chargers will likely be limited by infrastructure for awhile.
Also, delivery vans tend to have fairly standard daily routes or service areas. It would make sense to have enough capacity to handle at least one standard loop/route, including a buffer for traffic, weather, rerouting, and delays. That way, you’re not adding time to get to high speed charging station and then back to the route.
Because if you lose an hour of time navigating to and from a high speed charging facility, a bunch of the benefit of that high speed charging goes away.
Currently there are 70k plus fast charger ports in the US.
A year ago there were 58K fast chargers.
Infrastructure seems to be expending fairly rapidly.
The challenge is that there are multiple levels of fast chargers. What I didn’t see in either that first article or the one that it linked to is specifics in terms of how much energy is needed to reach that 7 minute change time in a full packed out car battery configuration. If you need megawatt sized chargers (or bigger) to get that 7 minute charge, there are a lot fewer of those stations than there are 150 kw speed stations…
Station draws power from the grid at nameplate rate. Station stores excess power not being consumed by individual auto recharges. Station deploys stored power where individual auto recharges exceed instantaneous charging rate directly from the grid.
One of the highest level chargers available uses about 10% of the draw of the average WalMart. I’m pretty sure if the grid can handle WalMart & Costco & Target & all the rest it can handle a few megawatt chargers.
But…
The typical delivery van travels between 50 an 200 miles per day (according to the know-it-all at the other end of my search machine). My stupid little EV gets 320 miles on a charge. Rivian says their delivery van gets 160 miles on a charge, or 175 with their “upgraded” battery set. So it seems odd to me, at least, that there’s this hulabaloo about “fast charging” when most vans already cover the territory needed on a single charge they can get at night - and don’t have to go out of their way to locate and plug into a special charger.
The articles did not state such a charger was needed.
It is my understanding that CATL has reduced the internal resistance of the battery cells by 50 per cent compared to the industry average, which minimizes heat generation during fast charging.
That is important because heat generation limits how fast a battery can charge because excessive heat can damage the battery and reduce its lifespan.
Different battery types have varying tolerances to heat.
There are three key things that need to be true for a car to charge at a given rate:
The grid (or combo of grid and local energy storage) needs to be able to deliver the electricity to the charger at that rate.
The charger itself must be able to handle power flowing through it at that rate.
The vehicle must be able to accept power at that rate.
I think it’s wonderful that those CATL batteries have the potential to speed up charging. It’s simply not sufficient on its own to get vehicle charging to that rate.
Let’s say you have ten 150 kw chargers at a site, and the total power to the site is 800 kw. If more than 5 chargers are being fully utilized at once, then either they blow a circuit or the chargers have to slow down to stay within their limits. That’s a case of “power from the grid isn’t enough”.
Let’s say you have a car that can charge at 350 kw plugged into one of those 150 kw chargers. The car will charge no faster than the 150 kw speed, because the charger itself can’t supply power any faster. That’s a case of the charger not being able to handle the maximum possible demand of the vehicle.
Let’s say you have a car that can only charge at 50 kw speeds plugged into one of those 150 kw chargers. That car will charge no faster than the 50 kw speed, because the car can’t accept power any faster.
Net: power delivery speed into an EV is limited by the slowest link in that chain. If a better battery enables faster charging, that’s a necessary part, but not a sufficient part on its own, to actually achieve faster charging.
Old Tesla Superchargers were rated at 350 kw. The new ones at 500 kw. Walmart is installing 400 kw chargers.
I have no idea how much power goes to a charging station.
Likely it varies.
I do know Tesla has put in chargers at a freeway exit in my burg that has 15 fast charging ports.
I haven’t seen any stories in the media regarding slow charging complaints at Tesla charging locations. I’m sure some charging problems occur but how prevalent are they?
Tesla has a financial interest in keeping the super charging network fully functional.