Since speeding up the charging process can damage the battery and reduce its lifespan, scientists keep working on super-fast charging methods explicitly tailored to power each different type of electric vehicle battery in 10 minutes or less without damaging them.In search of quicker powering methodsCharging the lithium-ion batteries that fuel electric vehicles is a delicate balancing act. Drivers want to power up as quickly as possible to get back on the road, but with current technology, speeding up the process damages the batteries.When a lithium-ion battery is being charged, lithium ions migrate from the cathode and anode sides of the device.The batteries can be charged more quickly by making the lithium ions migrate faster, but sometimes the lithium ions don’t fully move from the cathode to the anode. By doing so, lithium metal can build up, triggering early battery failure. It can also cause the cathode to wear and crack. All of these issues will reduce the battery’s lifetime and the vehicle’s effective range.One solution to this enigma is to tailor the charging protocol to optimize speed while avoiding damage to various types of battery designs. But developing optimal protocols requires massive data on how different methods affect these devices’ lifetimes, efficiencies, and safety.The design and condition of batteries and the feasibility of applying a given charging protocol with the current electric grid infrastructure are vital variables in the studies.”Fast charging is the key to increasing consumer confidence and overall adoption of electric vehicles,” said Eric Dufek, Ph.D. from Idaho National Laboratory’s Energy Storage & Electric Transportation Department, at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). “It would allow vehicle charging to be very similar to filling up at a gas station,” he added.
Source: https://interestingengineering.com/transportation/super-fast-ev-charging-ai-machine-learning
