Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Power China

China's CATL Says It Has Overtaken BYD On 5-Minute EV Charging Time (msn.com) 53

Posted by BeauHD from the game-changer dept.
CATL has unveiled a second-generation Shenxing battery capable of delivering a 520km range in just five minutes of charging, surpassing BYD's recent breakthrough and positioning both Chinese firms ahead of Western rivals in EV battery tech. The battery manufacturer also introduced a sodium-ion battery called Naxtra, offering up to 500km range for EVs and potential to diversify global energy resources. The Financial Times reports: The claims by the Chinese battery groups would put them ahead of major western rivals. At present, Tesla vehicles can be charged up to 200 miles (321km) in added range in 15 minutes, while Germany's Mercedes-Benz recently launched its all-electric CLA compact sedan, which can be charged for up to 325km within 10 minutes using a fast-charging station. [...] The second generation of the Shenxing battery, which boasts a range of 800km on one charge, can achieve a peak charging speed of 2.5km per second, the company said at a media event ahead of this week's Shanghai auto show.

"We look forward to collaborating with more industry leaders to push the limits of supercharging through true innovation," said CATL's chief technology officer Gao Huan, adding that he wanted the new batteries to become "the standard for electric vehicles." Analysts at Bernstein said the latest progress meant that charging speeds had more than doubled in the past year and "increased tenfold over the past 3-4 years." Huan said the new Shenxing battery would be installed in more than 67 EV models this year. He later told reporters that energy density would not be sacrificed as a trade-off for fast charging.

During its tech day, CATL also unveiled its new sodium-ion battery, which it said would go into mass production in December. The battery brand called Naxtra is able to give a range of about 200km for a hybrid vehicle and 500km for an electric vehicle, according to Huan. [...] At the event, Huan claimed the new sodium-ion battery would enable the industry's shift from "single resource dependence" to "energy freedom" and reshape the global energy landscape. He added that he was in discussions with several companies about using sodium-ion batteries in their vehicles.

China's CATL Says It Has Overtaken BYD On 5-Minute EV Charging Time More | Reply

China's CATL Says It Has Overtaken BYD On 5-Minute EV Charging Time

Comments Filter:
  • The US is so done.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      People seem to be under the impression that China is only capable of making dirt cheap trinkets. They are more than capable of manufacturing quality items. It's the old standby of you get what you pay for. You buy the cheapest shit manufactured in the USA it's going to be the exact same quality of the Chinese shit.

      China is making a better product and making it cheaper. That's pure capitalism.

    • Yeah, American conglomerates are allocating way too many resources to extracting more money from the customer rather than making a better product. Tesla's insistence on achieving full self driving is not in the interest of the consumer. It's in the interest of its bottom line. Consumers would much rather buy a cheap car without autonomy. In fact, that's what most consumers can afford. You can add the entire social media and AI nonsense to this bucket. They are giant resources suckers that hoover up all the

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by shilly ( 142940 )

        This is a really confused take. Chinese cars routinely include really impressive autonomy, and that’s following consumer demand. Many consumers enjoy not having to focus 100%, all the time, when driving. And while AI has obvious shitty downsides, dismissing it all as without potential is equally silly. And again, lots of Chinese companies are pursuing that as well.

  • Seriously. With NAFTA fucked and no further trade deals possible (because the terms change by the hour), maybe Canada can disconnect its vehicle market from the US and let China in. We'll finally have affordable vehicles.

  • I'm more interested that the mentioned Mercedes uses a new OS platform using QNX (from Blackberry) for the car operation and Linux with "Android in a container" for infotainment. I won't buy, but I hope they upstream something useful back to the linux kernel. The more technical link I found was Ars two years ago: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2... [arstechnica.com]

  • Just like 0 to 60 time has always been.

    After driving for 3+ hours I like a break to stretch my legs and maybe have a light snack. 15 minutes is a plenty fast recharge time to go from 20% to 80% on a decent size battery. Two fast charges during the day and then a level 2 charge at night easily covers 8 hours of driving on a cross country trip.

    • I agree with you, but the advertisement "800 km (497 mi) total charge, 520 km (320 mi) recharge in 5 minutes" still can make a really strong selling point to any vehicle integrating these batteries. These are the numbers slashdot naysayers have been asking for (I won't buy an EV unless it can do X), and now he have them.

      Of course now the naysayers are going to switch to the problem of charging infrastructure so I'll start: the very fast chargers are are only needed on highways every 200 km/mi, so they will

      • Agreed. Really, even 15 minutes of charging time isn't bad. One of the arguments against EVs has always been that if you go on a long drive, like in a place like Texas, or if you are going on a long trip, you're kind of screwed if there aren't chargers. So it's a catch-22.

        1. "I won't get an EV until there is a good charging network."

        2. "We won't sink the capital into a good charging network until enough people use EVs."

        This is actually something that the government could invest in. But I'm sure it would be

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        I agree with you, but the advertisement "800 km (497 mi) total charge, 520 km (320 mi) recharge in 5 minutes" still can make a really strong selling point to any vehicle integrating these batteries.

        Depends on the vehicle. Something the size of a Model X with full U.S.-level safety features getting 500 miles of range and 320 miles in 5 minutes, yes. A glorified golf cart with a maximum speed of 25 MPH, no air bags, no power steering, etc., not so much.

        A Model 3 can add 175 miles in 15 minutes. So if you can find a way to reduce the power consumption by a factor of 5.5, you're done without improving the batteries at all. Electric bicycles get 40 miles per kWh, which is almost 10x that of a Model 3.

    • It takes all kinds, but market heavily favors those who want short recharge times.

      • It takes all kinds, but market heavily favors those who want short recharge times.

        And those who want a battery that will last as long as the car. Preferably in a car that can last decades.

    • 15 minutes is a plenty fast recharge time to go from 20% to 80% on a decent size battery

      what, like a 75kWh battery? So 60% is 45kWh in 15 min, or 180kW? 180kW?!? That’s charging at a mere 241 horsepower, a mere toot of energy usage. Kind sir, in order to truly experience the raw power potential, I get up daily at 4 am and start my elite training regimen to be able to actually unhook the 6” diameter liquid helium cooled superconducting cable able to meet the demand of charging a 100kWh pack in 0.3 seconds. I hook it up and with effortless precision open the 1.21 gigawatt floo

    • After driving for 3+ hours I like a break to stretch my legs and maybe have a light snack.

      You're already beyond that maximum. There have been repeated studies that have all shown driving performance impairs beyond 2.5hours and that you should take a 15min break then, which is more than enough to get even a 2015-2017 generation electric car charged enough to go another 2.5-3 hours down the highway.

      I get it if you only get 2 weeks holidays a year then your holiday becomes a competition to maximise every minute you spend at the destination, but it should be important to you that you actually make i

  • I argued against NEVI funds. Those measly chargers would have been outdated by the time they were installed, and we would have foolishly wasted taxpayer money on them.

    Just look at where the tech has already come in such a short amount of time.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I doubt the infrastructure for fast charging is in place anyhow, as it would probably require installing new power-lines for miles to get enough voltage, let alone having needed safety features for high voltage. It's not just about the connector.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      I argued against NEVI funds. Those measly chargers would have been outdated by the time they were installed, and we would have foolishly wasted taxpayer money on them.

      Just look at where the tech has already come in such a short amount of time.

      That's actually not a valid conclusion. First of all, the infrastructure required to put in EV charging is more than just chargers. It is power to the site, transformers, etc. And none of that infrastructure becomes worthless when charging tech improves. You might want to add a second transformer if you upgrade the charging hardware to charge at twice the speed, but the transformer doesn't stop being able to service chargers; it just services a smaller number of them.

      Moreover, if you assume that the num

  • "520km range from just five minutes of charging time"

    I don't know what wattage a charging station would have to deliver in those 5 minutes but I bet the ones in the US can't do it at present.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Cyberax ( 705495 )
      It requires around 700kW of power. The already installed Tesla V4 chargers can go up to 350kW and the new ones should go up to 500kW. The standard technically allows up to 1MW.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Just wait for lighting to strike the clock-tower. I saw a dude who looked like a tall Bernie Sanders pull it off.

      • Just wait for lighting to strike the clock-tower. I saw a dude who looked like a tall Bernie Sanders pull it off.

        That charged (flux) capacitors not batteries.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shilly ( 142940 )

      It makes much more sense to have a reasonable size battery at the charging station which is filled at a slower speed, but continuously. People aren’t going to be charging their cars that often at these stations.

  • 5xx KM range still translates to 3XX mile range, when what we need, due to scarcity of chargers, is a range in miles where the 1st digit is no less than 6. The touted entries from Toyota / Porsche profess to eventually start with a 9 in miles. That would be more like it - do your long distance trip with no refueling planning. That's what those holdouts still driving gas cars want - to hit the road, with maybe their destination known and maybe not, and not have to give a thought to where to refuel. If

    • 900 miles is probably overkill, but there are areas in the country where you'd better treat the half tank mark as empty, even with a gas car. Those places tend not have chargers. Factor in reduced performance in hot and cold in an EV, you'd do well to treat 75% as empty in those places.

    • Idiotic. What we need is to pass laws to mandate cars forcefully stop every 2.5 hours to stop people dying needlessly due to driver impairment, just like we don't let people drive drunk, they shouldn't drive fatigued either.

      Back in 2015 we already passed a threshold for EVs to drive down highways long enough and fast charge enough to move continuously at the maximum safe rate (2.5h driving, 15min break). Let's not have technology promote unsafe stupid attempts at setting land-duration records for idiot road

  • or something else? Desten, a couple years ago, was showing off 80% charge in 5 minutes.

    I should note that charging cycle didn't destroy the battery (duh) and they even came up with technology for the charging facilities. Why? Because each charger pulling nearly a megawatt of power when in use would be problematic with 30 chargers at a large station.

  • I really hope that this story is accurate and commercially viable. But there are limits to how fast energy can be dumped into a battery.

    How have they overcome heating of the batteries when they get hit with this much power? There's only so much magic that can be done when you're talking about charging any kind of battery that fast with that many watts. Unless they've figured out a way to massively lower internal resistance. But I think developing a room temperature super conductor would be the bigger s

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )

      Rapid charge cables are already chunky and heavy because they have active cooling systems like a water jacket built into the cable because of the heat. God knows what a 5 minute charger would look like but realistically I don't a human operating it. More likely the the car parks over the charger which mechanically couples with the car. Maybe the charger would have to include lines that circulate coolant around the battery at the same time as it delivers power to dissipate heat.

  • We’re only a few years into EV development, and it’s not yet fully scaled. I can *imagine* a continued improvement such that we get to 2MW charging for cars 20 years from now, 2000 mile range, 30 second charging, etc. But will we get there? Or does innovation switch to lowering the costs of good enough charging instead? Or something else? It will be better than today, but which way better is tough to predict.

  • Five minute charging requires five minute chargers. And chargers all using the same standard. I think countries would be better offer to pass legislation to encourage the proliferation of AC chargers in places people leave their cars parked all day - houses, apartment complexes, office car parks, supermarkets, restaurants, streets etc. Rapid chargers are more complex and expensive and really should be installed in places where people do longer trips. People shouldn't be habituated into driving to a rapid ch

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shilly ( 142940 )

      Almost all of the above is happening, eg the UK is adding more than 1,000 chargers a month and a lot of these are AC in everyday places.

      But I agree that what isn’t yet happening, which would be useful, is scale destination charging — eg car parks being built with a 7 / 11 / 22 kW charger for every space.

Slashdot Top Deals

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions. - Robert Bly

Close