Electric car battery charges in under five minutes during track test – BBC News

An electric car battery developed by British start-up Nyobolt has successfully charged from 10% to 80% in four minutes and 37 seconds in the first live demonstration.

This was achieved using a purpose-built concept sports car at a test track in Bedford, and is part of an industry-wide effort to make electric vehicles (EVs) charge faster.

For comparison, an existing Tesla Supercharger can charge a car’s battery to 80% in 15-20 minutes.

Experts say eliminating so-called ‘range anxiety’ is key to increasing electric vehicle adoption, but also emphasize the importance of improving charging infrastructure.

“Developing technology that allows people to charge faster, in line with the time it currently takes to refuel a car, is really important,” said Paul Shearing, professor of Sustainable Energy Engineering at the University of Oxford, to the BBC.

But he added that more types of chargers were needed.

“People will want fast charging infrastructure regardless of what car they use – everyone wants to do it faster,” he said.

The sports car in which the Nyobolt battery was installed – which was tested for two days this week – achieved a range of 193 kilometers after four minutes

A Tesla charged to 80% typically has a range of 200 miles.

Dr Sai Shivareddy, co-founder of Nyobolt, told the BBC he was pleased with the results but admitted the tests were “nerve-wracking”.

The demo was first performed live in front of an invited audience of industry professionals, but there were some issues.

Challenges included the British heatwave, a failure in the concept car’s cooling system and a standard on-site charger not made by Nyobolt.

Due to these factors, the company was unable to reproduce the laboratory results, which show that the battery can be charged from 0% to 100% in six minutes.

Nevertheless, Dr Shivareddy described the event as “a big milestone for electrification” and joked that his own car was still charging after plugging it in earlier that day.

Nyobolt says it does not plan to produce its own vehicles, but plans to work with existing car brands, potentially installing the battery in electric vehicles “on a small scale” within a year.

The powerful 350kW DC super-fast chargers required for this are widely available in the UK, but not yet available everywhere.

The company also claims that degradation has been kept to a minimum, with the battery still charging to 80% after 4,000 cycles.

A full cycle is a charge of 0-100%, but this does not have to be done in one go. For example, two 50% charges count as one cycle.

According to Apple, the iPhone 15’s battery will still function at 80% after 1,000 cycles.

There is a global race to develop faster-charging batteries that are more powerful, lighter and more durable.

Last year, Toyota said a technical breakthrough would allow it to develop a solid state battery that can be charged in ten minutes and last 1,200 miles (754 m).

And a compact charger developed by US start-up Gravity can extend an electric vehicle’s range by 200 miles (322 kilometers) in less than 13 minutes.

According to Dr Edward Brightman, a lecturer in chemical engineering at Strathclyde University, while fast charging is useful for long journeys, the real barrier to electric vehicle adoption still lies in the supporting infrastructure.

“Electric cars are actually no longer limited by batteries,” he said.

“We urgently need to upgrade the electricity grid and install fast chargers that can transfer the charge to the battery.”