A big drawback for some potential EV buyers is the amount of time it can take to fully charge an electric vehicle—from 20 minutes to potentially hours from a home charger.
Long periods required to charge vehicles can limit how EVs are used in long-distance trips, as drivers don’t want to wait for a charge. The best EVs on the market today offer battery range of just over 300 miles per charge.
Both Ford and Purdue University recently announced they are working on a potential fix with a new charging station cable. Researchers are inventing a patent-pending method for charging stations that relies on a liquid active cooling agent with a process that alters the liquid to vapor, improving its ability to dissipate heat. Ford said the goal is to be able to charge an EV as quickly as the time it takes to fill-up a traditional car with a gas combustion engine, about five minutes.
Today’s chargers are limited in how quickly they can charge a battery due to the danger of overheating. To charge faster requires more current to travel through the charging cable. “The higher the current, the greater the amount of heat that has to be removed to keep the cable operational,” said Michael Degner, senior technical leader at Ford Research and Advanced Engineering.
Prototyping the concept will take place over two years, so the improvement is likely still years away from completion. Ford has said its F-150 Lightning pickup requires about 40 minutes to charge from 15% to 80%.
Widespread charging of EVs that makes the process simple will be a major challenge. One portion of the massive $1.2 billion infrastructure measure being signed by President Biden on Monday calls for adding thousands more charging stations. EV adoption is moving ahead in the U.S., but slowly, with just above 2% of all new cars sold being EVs.
However, major carmakers like Ford and GM are committed to introducing many more models of EVs in the next decade. Rivian, a newcomer that is beginningto make EV delivery vans, pickups and SUVs just began public trading on Nasdaq last week, igniting a flurry of investor interest that quickly drove its market capitalization above that of either Ford or GM. The introductory price of the stock was $78 a share last Wednesday, which had surpassed $148 at mid-day Monday.