While electric cars are becoming more and more popular and there is a lot of recognition that they are the big trend, none of this alleviates the current electric car dilemma - people's anxiety about charging and mileage. The fear of not being able to find a place to charge and not wanting to spend too much time charging ...... have become common concerns between those who want to choose an electric car and those who have already chosen one.
▲Image from: Polestar
If you want electric cars to become more embedded in people's lives, you have to solve this problem. The car brand Polestar announced an investment in Israeli battery manufacturer StoreDot just a short time ago.
The two companies are also working together with the express purpose of exploring how StoreDot's extreme charging technology can be used in future Polestar cars.
▲Image from: StoreDot
StoreDot, based in Israel, is developing silicon-based, extremely fast rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles. The company aims to mass-produce batteries for electric vehicles by 2024, achieving a range of 160 kilometers on a five-minute charge.
▲Image from: StoreDot
To create Extreme Fast Charging (XFC) batteries, StoreDot fuses organic chemistry, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence to maximize energy use, revolutionizing traditional lithium-ion batteries with proprietary organic and inorganic compounds to deliver electric vehicle batteries that can be manufactured on a standard production line.
StoreDot utilizes patented active material nanoparticles to replace traditional lithium-ion graphite anodes, breakthrough nanoscale silicon and proprietary small molecule organic compounds to synthesize a highly efficient active material that can withstand the volume expansion and energy fade during battery charging.
▲Image from: StoreDot
The nanoparticles also accelerate ion diffusion, enabling fast, safe and stable charging. To increase the energy density of the battery through XFC, StoreDot has discovered a way to generate a low resistance ion flow between the battery electrodes by introducing a hybrid solid solution with an electrode-specific blend of electrolytes to achieve maximum multiplicity.
Rigorous machine learning and AI-based data science could not be ignored in the development of StoreDot.
▲Image from: StoreDot
In addition to harnessing the power of AI to evaluate massive amounts of data and build models at breakneck speeds to speed up the R&D process and indicate the right material formulations, these AI infrastructures will also monitor battery health in real time and incorporate safety alerts to improve cycle life and overall EV (electric vehicle) range.
▲Image from: StoreDot
At EcoMotion Week 2022 in Israel, StoreDot demonstrated a test of a full-size electric vehicle (EV) battery charging to 100 miles in 5 minutes. This test also further validates StoreDot's strategic technology roadmap of "100inX" (100 miles in X minutes).
▲Image from: StoreDot
According to this roadmap, the StoreDot can travel 100 miles (about 160 kilometers) on a 5-minute charge, reducing that time to under 3 minutes by 2028 and perhaps just 2 minutes by 2032.
As part of its partnership with Polestar, StoreDot will apply its own technology to the proof-of-concept Polestar EV, such as customizing StoreDot's battery technology for Polestar cars, enabling faster charging and improved cycling.
▲Image from: StoreDot
If plans go well, perhaps by 2026 StoreDot will have extreme charging batteries in Polestar's cars, and people will be able to experience the anxiety relief with extreme charging in Polestar's new cars.