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HERZLIYA, Israel: From a dead battery to a full charge in just five minutes, an Israeli startup has developed technology that it says could eliminate the “range anxiety” associated with electric cars.
Ultra-fast recharge specialists StoreDot have developed a first-generation lithium-ion battery that can compete with the fill time of a standard car at the pump.
“We’re changing the whole driver experience, the problem of ‘range anxiety’ … that you could get stuck on the road without power,” said StoreDot founder Doron Myersdorf.
The innovation could eliminate the hours needed to recharge an electric car, he said.
Manufacturers are testing hundreds of prototypes.
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His company, based in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, is backed by four key investors: German automaker Daimler, Britain’s British Petroleum, and electronics giants Samsung and TDK.
Myersdorf, who started the company in 2012, has tested the battery in phones, drones and scooters, before tackling the grand prix of electric vehicles.
“REVOLUTION”
But Eric Esperance, an analyst at consultancy Roland Berger, warned that while ultra-fast charging would be a “revolution”, there are many stages to go.
“We are still far from the industrial auto market,” he told AFP.
In 2019, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to John Goodenough from the USA, Stanley Whittingham from Great Britain and Akira Yoshino from Japan for the invention of lithium-ion batteries.
“This lightweight, rechargeable and powerful battery is now used in everything from mobile phones to laptops to electric vehicles,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in awarding the award.
Samples of fast-charging batteries displayed at the headquarters of the startup StoreDot in Israel. (Photo: AFP / Emmanuel DUNAND)
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Myersdorf said that “charging speed was not part” of the original Nobel-winning design, so he worked on what was “considered impossible”: a lithium-ion battery ready to go in minutes.
“We wanted to show that you can take a lithium-ion battery, replace some of its materials, and then charge it in five minutes,” he said.
The engineer replaced the original graphite on the battery’s negative anode with silicon.
“We are taking that amazing innovation from the lithium-ion battery and upgrading it to extremely fast charging capability,” he said.
The batteries are assembled in a laboratory equipped with large glass boxes, sealed to prevent oxygen ingress.
StoreDot chemists, dressed in goggles and white coats, make 100 batteries a week and ship them to companies for possible use in their products.
“SOCIETY FREE OF FOSSIL FUELS”
The team is already working on a second generation of batteries to cut costs.
While a vehicle’s design cycle is “typically four to five years,” they seek to speed up the process.
“We are working to bring this solution to market in parallel, by designing the manufacturing facilities that could mass produce this battery,” Myersdorf said.
The Nobel jury praised the lithium-ion battery for being able to “store significant amounts of energy from solar and wind energy, making a fossil-fuel-free society possible.”
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As public opinion shifts toward prioritizing the climate change crisis, manufacturers are shifting production toward cleaner vehicles.
But the road is long.
A chemist works at StoreDot’s headquarters in the Israeli coastal city of Herzliya. (Photo: AFP / Emmanuel DUNAND)
On land, charging stations would have to be adapted for new-generation batteries, costing between US $ 1,500 and US $ 10,000 depending on capacity.
Electric cars are also still expensive, accounting for just 2.6% of global sales in 2019, according to the International Energy Agency.
For Myersdorf, the sooner the world switches to electric vehicles, the better, which points to “big impact on the planet.”
But recycling lithium-ion batteries remains a problem, and Esperance noted that each has a lifespan of between 3,000 and 3,500 charges.
“We must establish a recycling system, as exists for lead-acid batteries,” he said. “Today, this network is just being set up.”
Both the extraction and recycling of lithium pose ecological, political and economic challenges that the technology must overcome.
