I posted about this a week ago. The battery pack will likely be around 150kWh (Nio has a solid state battery car that will be produced that can do 577 miles on a 150kWh battery). The 9 minute charge is from 8-80% (according to the marketing material I dug up) so it is 432 miles of charge in 9 minutes. Considering fast charge costs like $0.50/kWh currently, I’m guessing most people will not be charging up that entire portion unless they are planning on driving for a long fucking time…after they have already been driving for 9-10 hours.
But that charge rate would have to come from a charger that can output much higher than current ones. The highest output you are likely to find is 350kW which would take 18 minutes to charge that 108kWh. So while this battery can charge that fast, you are not likely to be able to find a charger with that high of output for a few years. Still great to be able to get a couple hundred miles of range in 9 minutes. Solid state batteries supposedly have a quicker ramp up period and can take the full output for a higher percentage of the battery.
There are already some charging stations in Germany offering 400kW. Still 16 minutes though. 800kW is just insane. CCS is currently capped at 500kW, so you would need MCS which is planned for trucks.
Fucking hell, imagine the requirement of a couple of megawatt substation for fast charging, urban power planners must be shitting themselves.
Urban probably isn’t too bad, if it’s a proper city they already have power for the infrastructure of subways, lighting, and large buildings.
Where it’s going to be tough is putting these in the ‘burbs or the large areas of mostly vacant interstate. There’s just no infrastructure for them to build off of, and EV charging infrastructure is already one of the issues holding people back from more widely adopting them.
If you do the math, the common standard plugs simply can’t do the charging rates that would be required here. You’d need a whole new plug design on top of all new chargers.
It’s also silly and unnecessary. We should focus on getting more chargers out there, not chasing a fast charge time goal. If you plan your route out a bit, 20-30 minute charge times every 2-4 hours are fine for the vast majority of people.
https://wumpus-cave.net/post/2024/03/2024-03-30-ten-minute-ev-charging-wont-happen/index.html
According to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_62196 the standard was updated in 2022 to support up to 1500V and 800A. If this can be achieved simultaneously it would be 1.2MW.
Whether it is necessary or realistic is another thing, but seems to be achievable without even changing the plug.
Does fast charging reduce the lifespan of a battery like this? The headline is bothersome because my suspicion is it won’t last 20 years if you fast charge all of the time and whatnot. I realize that’s not a typical case but it’s good to understand the trade-offs.
The chemistry is substantially different, so we’ll probably have to wait until scientists run some tests to get a more precise set of parameters that affect degradation. I expect failure modes like dendrites are basically impossible with solid-state, but electrode cracking is still possible. There might even be new and exciting ways they can degrade! Regardless, this is still great news.
Engineering Explained has a good summary: https://youtu.be/w4lvDGtfI9U (Piped link: https://piped.video/watch?v=w4lvDGtfI9U)
You know, with charge times like that I wonder if roadside attractions will become more popular again.
Maybe I should start on the next worlds largest rubber band ball now.
Well most people are not needing to add over 400 miles when they charge up. That might be the case once a year for occasional families but most will be looking to add half that which is not much more time than it takes to fill up with gas. It might cause charging stations to offer more amenities. Or maybe the government could get off its ass and make it okay to put them in at rest stops, there wouldn’t be much of a problem at all.
Honestly, we do that. Almost every year we drive for 13-14 hours to visit my parents, which is something like 900 miles. We usually do 300-400 miles then refill gas and grab some fast food. We usually stop twice on this trip, sometimes three times if someone has an emergency. We also do some shorter 600 mile+ trips as well (in-laws and sibling are just over 600 miles away), and frequently drive ~200 miles, so we usually have 1-2 road trips each year.
Current EVs that get something like 200-250 miles per change would require at least four stops, and 30min or so per stop, which would add at least 2 hours to the trip. That turns a one-day drive into a two-day drive, and probably three days if charging stations aren’t readily available. For the shorter trips (just over 600 miles), we’d still need to recharge at least twice, which adds more than an hour to the trip.
So I’m absolutely interested in this kind of range. I don’t need 600 miles, but 400-500 would be good. Until they’re affordable, we’re sticking to our ICE family car, though we’re planning to exchange our hybrid commuter for an EV.
That’s a long day in the car, too much for me. Any road trip over about 350 miles gets me pretty exhausted and sick of being in the car. So I’d be OK with a 300 mile range and stopping overnight at a hotel with a charger nearby for trips like that.
I grew up with it. Almost every year we’d drive 800-900 miles to visit family, and almost always in one day. We’ve done it in two before, but honestly it’s more of a pain to get everything unloaded and get the kids to actually sleep in the hotel that we just drive all the way through. We arrive exhausted, but it’s one long day instead of two.
That is the case for some people but cases like that are pretty rare. There is no way I could do a drive like that. Current EVs are fine for the vast majority of people but there is the rare family that makes 900 mile trips once our twice a year. For those instances like yours, I’d suggest renting an ICE one or twice a year if you wanted to switch to an EV for your larger vehicle or get a plug in hybrid.
Definitely swap out that commuter car. A used Bolt is pretty darn cheap. I did some math and replacing our Prius C with one would save $1200/year in gas costs. And then there are oil change costs that you save and a few others.
A used Bolt is pretty darn cheap
Yeah, I’ve been looking at them, and it’s something like $13k, which is definitely in the reasonable range of prices, especially since I can probably get $5k for my current car.
However, I’m worried about battery issues. People claim it’s fixed, but I’ll be parking mine in my garage and there’s a lot of flammable stuff in there. So I’m a little hesitant. I don’t need to ever fast charge it since I only drive like 200 miles per week (and never more than 100 miles in a day, usually like 50), so trickle charging should be totally fine. If I can confirm that, I might just do the swap. Or maybe I’ll get a Leaf, which is in a similar price range used.
Our gas and electricity costs are pretty low ($3.50/gal and $0.12-0.13/kWh), so even at $13k, the Bolt would still need ~10 years to pay back for itself (and that’s not counting the opportunity cost of investing that money). I’m still tempted based purely on the convenience factor (never needing to go to a gas station again), but it’s not a slam dunk yet. If the car dies, I’ll certainly replace the commuter with an EV though, I would just rather avoid the hassle of listing and selling my current car.
From a purely climate perspective, it’s probably better for me to replace our family car. We get ~20mpg, and hybrids would get 30-40mpg, and a plug-in would get emissions-free for most of our around-town trips. That car is only used for very short trips (<20 miles) or long trips (>200 miles), with almost nothing in-between. But those cars are super expensive right now, so I’m watching the used market to see if I can score a deal.
Your math checks out.
Charging a 600 mi battery in 9 minutes would require a charging station that can output somewhere north of 1.2 MW.
We need major upgrades to the electrical grid as well as doubling our electricity generation capacity for charging stations and vehicles like that to be common place.
