this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Something like 200 KWh. Charging that in 10 minutes would be along the lines of 1 MW. It's roughly the output of a 50 metre diameter wind turbine. A medium sized nuclear power plant would only be able to handle around 1000 of those at the same time.
That's an impressive feat but I doubt they expect the 10 mins to be practical. If they could implement this battery at good value it would be a game changer. Though the capacity seems much higher than most of us need so it makes me wonder what impacts on the environment it would have. As we all know, electric cars are better but are no saints with a somewhat competitive emission amount over its lifetime.
So you're saying that if we put a 50m wind turbine on the roof of one of those Toyotas, we'd have a car with infinite range?
Forget turbines we need sails on our cars like they're talking about putting on cargo ships
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This is dumb anyway - nobody is going to pump 1MW into a car, the grid can't support it, never mind a supercharger-style station with between 8 and 20 plugs. A 20-plug Supercharger needs around 1.5MW to serve each station with 72kW.
And really, when I'm on a road trip, after 3h in the car, I need a break that's long enough to hit the bathroom, grab a bite to eat, and stretch my legs. The car is usually charged to 90% in under 45 minutes anyway, even if I roll into the charging station at under 5%...
I'd expect a "Ultra-tier" fast charging station to have internal batteries (or perhaps supercapacitors or something like that) which buffer up from the grid. Eg. when not in use and over-night. Probably won't last much into a day even with that, but we may see smaller buildings connected to charging stations that hold internal batteries to deliver faster charging than the connected grid can deliver.
As long as there is demand and profit to be made, it could happen. The biggest cost is of course the batteries, but if solid-state batteries turn into reality I think things might be more cost effective. Especially since fixed position batteries aren't subject to the same contraints as car batteries. Don't need to handle vibration, weight is not a big problem. Key goals are lifetime value, energy density + and (dis)charging rates.
Cheaper electricity during night might not be a thing everywhere or in the future, but small savings by stocking up cheaper during nighttime, gives better margins.
This is what Superchargers are. The snag is that during busy weekends, the batteries eventually hit zero, and everyone is capped at 72kW, because that's what the AC/DC transformer can provide.
That's just an engineering or planning problem. Really though it's probably just not cost effective to have enough capacity to cover the super busy times.
Assuming that this is for private vehicles, and not trying to set the stage for something like a freight truck.
Something like that might have a more reasonable demand for that 1MW, especially if they need massive batteries for interstate/international travel.
This would be useful for the logistics industry, especially the non-US logistics industry (though useful for short-haul there). There is a LOT of logistics that isn't big-rig long-haulers.
Amazon would for sure buy millions at that range, as an example. That's multiple days of use with overnight charging drawing it even longer.
...and also, such intensely fast charging might shorten the lifespan of the battery considerably? This is an impressive engineering feat, but most ICE cars get half that range per fill-up. Targeting that level with rapid recharge might be more realistic to make practical, and would still be a huge step forward in practicality for a lot of non-urban drivers.
I agree it's not practical, but they don't necessarily need that output all the time. They could charge extra for faster charging and just make it so while the fast chargers aren't being used they charge batteries/capacitors for the fast charging stalls. But even with this, the fast chargers would probably always never be available in urban areas, and this would lead to a lot of waste too if nobody is fast charging.