Loving an electric car in just 10 minutes is no longer a promise, it is a real advance that science has just given. A team of researchers in the US has achieved what until recently seemed impossible, A battery that is loaded almost as fast as a gas tank is filledwithout compromising your useful life, with less critical materials and also lighter.
Although electric vehicles have been consolidating as a cleaner alternative to combustion, they still drag a ballast difficult to ignore: lThe batteries take too long to load. Faced with the few minutes you need to fill one with combustion, many continue to see in the load time, an obstacle that does not compensate for the advantages of the electric.
One of the reasons why some drivers still do not make the jump to the electric car have more to do with the wait than with distance. Autonomies have already improved a lot in recent years, but What makes the difference is still how long you have to stop to recharge.
In urban journeys you can adapt, but on long trips or urgent situations, the time that requires a complete load throws the experience by land. While a gasoline car needs a few minutes to be ready, Many electric models are still taking half an hour, an hour or even moredepending on the type of charger and battery.
Part of the problem is in the design of current batteries, which are based on heavy materials such as copper or aluminum, and They are configured to protect themselves from overheating. If the forces too much in a fast charge, they degrade before and shorten their useful life. Therefore, increasing speed without damaging them has been one of the great technical challenges so far.
A battery that can be charged up to 80% in 10 minutes
A group of scientists from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), in the United States, has found a solution that breaks several limits at the same time. They have not created a new battery from scratch, but have redesigned one of their most critical parts, such as current collector.
Until now, this component – responsible for conducting electricity inside the battery – was manufactured with thick copper or aluminum layers. Experts have managed to replace it with an ultrafine structure, which is a encapsulated polymer film between two light metal layers.
With this new architecture, the battery can be charged up to 80 % in just 10 minutes. In addition, it reduces the use of metals by up to 80 %, which means less weight, less cost and lower dependence on strategic materials.
This translates into greater autonomy, since the car has to move less dough, but also implies that manufacturers could build more efficient vehicles without inflating the price. And by reducing internal resistance, efficiency in rapid loads is improved without the battery suffer from temperature damage.
According to Georgios Polyzos, responsible for the project, «by drastically reducing metals, we will reduce the battery from the inside without sacrificing performance.» It is just what the industry had been looking for years.
Lighter, faster, less dependent
The advantages of this innovation are evident, with a quick car can be adapted to more lifestyles and be more attractive to drivers who come from combustion cars. If you do not have a recharge point at home, or if you travel frequently, the speed becomes key.
The reduction of critical metals also plays a strategic role, where The electric car industry currently depends on materials that are scarce or that are subject to geopolitical tensions, such as copper, lithium or cobalt. Minimizing this dependence not only low costs, long -term production stabilizes.
But perhaps the most important thing is the psychological impact, in which the average driver needs certainties. If you know that you can recharge your car in the time it takes to buy a coffee or go through the toilet, it will stop thinking that the electric is a solution for others.
If this technology passes the commercial validation tests – which is what is missing now – we could begin to see a new generation of electric cars with more efficient batteries, but above all less expensive.
In addition, this can mark a rhythm change for recharge infrastructure. If cars need less plugging time, the stations can serve more users without increasing investment at new points. Something that also interests cities and operators.
It is not yet clear when the market will reach, but the address that the investigation has taken is. With A battery that is loaded in 10 minutesperhaps we can finally say that filling electricity with electricity is as fast as filling the usual gasoline.
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Tags: Batteries