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New Tech Promises Fully-Charged EVs in Just 5 Minutes

June 18, 2011 by 22 Comments
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Once you start talking about 200 miles of driving in-between 5 minute “pit-stops”, it’s not really clear if you’re talking about gas or electric-powered cars – and that’s the whole point of developing quick-charging and battery-swapping stations for EVs:  you can get all of the green, none of the sacrifice.  Now, you can have that very thing!

Last week, Kanno Tomio and his team of engineers in Tochigi, Japan have patented and demonstrated a new, ultra-fast charging system that fully charged a (production-spec.) Nissan Leaf’s battery pack in under 300 seconds (that’s 5 minutes to you and me).

In order to transfer the huge amounts of electricity required to charge the Leaf so quickly, Tomi’s team made use of capacitors, which could power up their own charge over time, while still releasing huge amounts energy suddenly and, it should be said, cost-effectively (this is similar, in concept, to the KERS hybrid systems employed by current Formula 1 race teams).

Tomi’s capacitor-based charging stations can also be “set” to collect their reserves of power during off-peak times, and can be fueled themselves by Japan’s existing energy infrastructure without the need for special connections to be installed – another advantage to current “quick charge” systems which claim to be able to charge a car like the Leaf to 80% capacity in about 30 min (vs. 90% in less than 5).

The group expects to begin installing its ultra-fast chargers in homes and businesses in 2012 … and, yes, they do plan to offer them to the North American and European markets shortly thereafter.  No word (yet) on pricing.

Source:  Motorpasion.

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About Jo Borras

I've been working in motorsports and tuning since 1997, with some the biggest names in the business. In 2008, the work we did on a hybrid/EV concept car attracted the attention of Gas 2 editors, and they invited me to join the team. I couldn't resist!

  • http://Web DaveD

    Maxwell will currently negotiate to a price of about $50 per cell in HUGE volumes and these BCAP3000′s are about 3Wh per cell. They were hoping to get the price way down with their new Chinese mfg facility and increased volume so let’s say they are $30 per cell in large bulk.

    At 3Wh per cell, that would mean it would still take 8,000 or so and even if you assumed the $30 cost, that is still $240,000 just for the supercaps alone!

    They are targeting some newer tech that doubles or even triples the energy density of the cells, but they would have to hit that 3X target and produce them at the same price to even start to make this a competitive product.

    I wish them well so very, VERY much as I think this is critical to the adoption of EVs. But wow, I hope they have some magic I’m not aware of to make it affordable.

    • http://Web MrJest

      Boy, I dunno… working at a company that is closely associated with Maxwell and in the same sort of tech field they are, we tried to get Chinese manufacture of our own specialized caps – and they were absolute crap. Unless Maxwell has 100% control over the plant, I wish them luck!!

      • http://Web DaveD

        Good point MrJest,
        But in this case, it is actually a Maxwell owned plant they opened in China, not an outsourcing job to another company.

        They plan to double their total production capacity with this new plant and presumably grow it even more over time.

    • http://Web DaveD

      @David Martin,

      I’m answering your question from ABG over here because those morons can’t get their site working today:

      Yes, you’re correct to be very concerned about the reality of this announcement. It would take one hell of a battery and one hell of a charger system to make this work today.

      I just called Don Francis who ran the EV charging infrastructure for Georgia Power for 17 years and is currently the President of the EV Club of the South. He said they experimented with 150kW chargers in the late 90′s and it took a water-cooled connector the size of a fire hose, with heat exchangers, etc just to make it work. The amps flowing through the charger were trying to essentially cook the connecters at that rate.

      Charging a 24kWh Leaf in 5 minutes would require a rate of 288kW. It could be done, but it would require something like a three-phase, 480V charger and a lot of engineering to make it work safely.

      A 24kWh pack with the new Toshiba batteries would weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 240kg. They could easily handle the flow rate to take that 5 minute charge. I’m not sure I’d want to do that to the Leaf batteries unless it was an emergency. I think 20 minutes would do just fine for a “fast charge” for a Leaf.

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  • http://Web Kevin M

    This cannot be good for the battery. And home chargers (and capacitor arrays) with a kiloamp of current output seem, well, dangerous.

  • http://Web Jeff

    maybe, just maybe if these super smart guys would design a better battery they wouldn’t have to think up expensive workarounds for current battery technology …

    maybe they just aren’t that smart …

  • http://Web Michael A.

    I am waiting in anticipation when one of the components in the transfer path fails. The energy required to drive an electric vehicle is no less than that required for a non-electric vehicle; it is a very large quantity of joules. Transferring this large number of joules quickly from a charging station to the battery over even a short, fat cable will excite some very interesting properties of the materials in the energy transfer path.

    The interesting and dangerous part will be when a failure occurs. The resulting explosion will be something to behold. And just like a gasoline/fossil fueling accident, it’s best to be very far away when it happens.

  • http://Web SonnyJim

    Once everyone begins charging their electric stuff during non-peak hours, they will become the new peak hours. Once the new-peak hours exceed the old-peak hours in demand, without the old-peak hours having diminished demand, what will happen to the price of electricity?

    • http://Web Realist

      SonnyJim gets toward the real issue. There is not enough power generation or infrastructure to handle a significant portion of the population, regardless of peak vs off peak hours, or time to recharge. When they fix that issue, and only then, can ev’s even hope to become a noticeable section of the market. Not that better capacitors won’t be useful in many other ways for real word uses.

      • http://Web JonathanInTelAviv

        True, and the real revolution is already here: micro EVs – from electric scooters to electric bikes and even golf cart types. They don’t require much juice, or even a fancy charger. It just doesn’t make sense to drag a whole car around for many trips. Get a scooter for either end of a commuter train trip & you’ve got a nice solution.

  • http://Web Jim Sweet

    “And home chargers (and capacitor arrays) with a kiloamp of current output seem, well, dangerous.”

    As in everything else, it will take one lawyer to blow this whole idea up.

  • http://Web John DeVita

    Could they hook this fast charging system up to a flywheel system on the car, that charges the car over hours? This could leave the expensive capacitor array at the gas(energy) station, and allow the vehicle to charge at the rate of it’s batteries.

    • http://Web Phos

      If the flywheel could store the whole charge, you would not need the batteries.

      Energy storage in kinetic energy is 1/2 M v^2. For rotational kinetic energy E = 1/2 M r^2 ω^2, where ω = angular velocity (radians per second)

      The two most common materials for high performance flywheels are steel and GFRE (graphite fiber reinforced epoxy).

      The theoretical energy
      density for a simple steel flywheel is 1,169 watt-seconds per pound and that of the GFRE flywheel is 15,967 watt-seconds per pound. GFRE flywheels compared to steel have an improved energy density.

      For the steel flywheel, dividing the cost of $0.15 by 173 watt-seconds stored energy gives a specific cost
      of $0.867 per kW-second.

      Similarly, for the GFRE flywheel, dividing the cost of $1.52 by 479 watt-seconds stored energy gives a specific cost of $3.17 per kW-second; a factor of 3.66 times higher.

      A Nissan Leaf has a 24 kWH battery. A steel flywheel of that energy capacity would cost at least $74,908. It would also weigh 73,000 pounds.

      • http://Web Temk

        So, how much would a flywheel system cost that is intended for powering a U.S. residence (ie, in Northern coastal California at 1800 sqft of living space, central forced air heating, gas water heater, double pane windows, fiberglass insulation) all year (winter and summer energy needs)?

        Now what changes that complex equation when adding a 17 Kilowatt array to charge EV (Ford/Nissan), spin up flywheel and power for the house, a newer tankless water heater, doubling roof insulation, add insulation under floors?

        I am planning on the latter approach. It will not be cheap up front. Medium to long term, I hope it is sustainable.

        • http://Web DaveD

          @Temk,

          Interestingly enough, Phos already supplied the answer!

          By sheer coincidence, it turns out that the average US home uses about 20kWh per day so it would need about the same size as the Nissan Leaf example he gave above :-)

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