More Power!
Ultra-fast EV charging has always been possible, but it doesn't come for free
Do you ever clean the outside of your house? If so, you probably rent an electric pump (a.k.a. pressure washer) rather than simply placing your thumb over the end of the garden hose. A pressure washer can operate at up to 3,000 psi, moving water with more than enough force to do serious damage to your home if you’re not careful. The maximum safe washing pressure depends on the home’s exterior materials (brick, wood siding, stucco, etc.) of construction. In some cases, particularly with fiber cement siding, pressure washing is not really recommended at all.
Recharging a lithium-ion battery is something akin to the electrical analog of pressure washing. A high voltage charger forces ions into empty spaces inside the battery’s electrode material in a process called intercalation. The more power you apply, the faster and more forcefully you can insert ions. The electric automobile manufacturer BYD recently announced “five-minute” recharging of some of its newest vehicle models. One key to this advance is a switch to megawatt (1000 kW) charging stations. That’s a lot of power, four times what Tesla’s V3 Superchargers currently provide. It isn’t that Tesla doesn’t know how to make a really powerful charger, but rather that they don’t want to damage their customers’ car batteries. The BYD announcement is impressive, and one can assume that the company has tested its new chargers and batteries to be mutually compatible. Nevertheless, I predict it will take several years of real-world driving and recharging data to confirm that such ultra-fast charging does not unacceptably limit battery lifespan or cause long-term safety concerns. Tesla has, to date, appeared to have hit a sweet spot in that regard—at least as far as data show.
The details of BYD’s new technology are not readily available, and I can only speculate that a change in material chemistry, potentially coupled with tradeoffs in battery longevity, have been made. The actual production cost of these changes is also unclear. No doubt mass production can allocate any additional fixed manufacturing costs and make the new units more affordable for consumers, but this will have the usual caveat of being limited by variable cost (e.g. commodity material price) constraints. Moreover, accompanying networks of high-power charging stations must be deployed to replace older, less capable stations. It is difficult to imagine a similar level and speed of investment being made in the United States: more frequent vehicle battery replacement would be a consumer nightmare, lower power charging station deployment is already years behind schedule, and bulk access to raw battery materials is an ongoing challenge. But five-minute EV recharging would definitely be a major breakthrough, all other things equal. For the time being, I remain skeptical.
In related news, a Jeff Bezos backed company has announced plans to sell a stripped-down electric pickup truck. For $27,500, you can buy an unpainted, injection molded, gray polypropylene truck that comes standard with 150 miles of range, hand-cranked windows, and a USB port (bring your own music—no radio installed). I have a really hard time seeing this take off among the F-150, Ram, and Silverado crowds here in Texas. This new truck, called a Slate, looks like a 3D-printed high school science project, not unlike what electric sedans used to resemble in their earliest incarnations. Sure, it’s easy to poke fun at this effort, and I do give the company proper credit for trying to broaden the scope of affordable vehicle offerings. Let’s be honest, though: if Slate represents the future of vehicle ownership for the average American, we’ll need to radically reset our cultural and aesthetic expectations. All in all, such a reset is definitely needed if we are to pivot to a low carbon economy. But are we ready yet? I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it.