Car charging in under 15 minutes
A new charging station has been developed that is claimed to reduce charging times down to just 15 minutes.
Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology say they’ve built a system that can charge electric cars with 4.5MW of power in 15 minutes.
Regular charging systems aren’t able to draw down 4.5MW of electricity in one go, so researchers have built in a buffer system that is constantly charging at a low voltage.
When cars require charging, the buffer storage system disconnects from the grid to prevent it going down. It then provides the car with the 20-30kWh required to charge the car battery in 15 minutes. The car will then be able to travel up to 150km on that power.
Massimiliano Capezzali, deputy director of the Institute, who coordinated the project, said, ‘Our aim was to get under the psychological threshold of a half hour. But there is room for improvement. It’s clear that, in the future, several types of charging systems – such as slow charging at home and ultra-fast charging for long-distance travel – will co-exist.’
