The technology company located in San José, California, has managed to make its solid-state batteries withstand 400 consecutive cycles of fast charging with a deterioration of less than 20% of its capacity.
Electric car technology faces a great challenge: getting batteries to allow greater autonomy and recharging speed to match its performance to those of conventional combustion engine cars.
Currently, one of the main drawbacks of the electric car is precisely this, that while a combustion car user takes less than five minutes to refuel to cover between 700 and 1000 kilometers, an electric car user must wait even several hours to be in willingness to cover distances that do not usually exceed 400 real kilometers.
In practice, an electric car could travel more than 250,000 kilometers before losing more than 20% of its initial capacity.
In this sense, the fast or super fast charging takes on vital importance, but on the other hand it usually causes a considerable deterioration in the charging capacity of the batteries, so it is a resource that it is advisable to resort to only sporadically.
QuantumScape
However, the American technology company, QuantumScape, seems to have made great progress in this regard, since during tests with its solid-state batteries it achieved very promising figures.
Specifically, QuantumScape -a firm in which Volkswagen has recently invested 85 million euros- points out that it has managed to 400 consecutive 15 minute fast recharge cycles in which the capacity of the batteries was increased from 10 to 80%, retaining at the end of the process more than 80% of the total original capacity of the battery.
This is what a QuantumScape solid-state battery looks like.
This, in practice, means that an electric car could travel more than 250,000 kilometers before seeing how their batteries would lose more than 20% of their initial capacity, which would undoubtedly represent a very significant advance in the efficiency of use of this type of vehicle, both in terms of its useful life and its practicality of use. .
solid state battery key
According to QuantumScape, the key resides in a system of separation of the solid electrolyte of ceramic origin, which provides stability and limits the formation of residues that reduce properties. Thus, the energy density of the anode increases, also suffering a lower rate of degradation as a result of low temperatures during the charging process.
Also, the lithium coating of QuantumScape batteries acts as a defense mechanism, thereby allowing faster charges in any thermal condition.
Do you want to know more about solid state batteries? We tell you what they are and how they differ from lithium ion batteries in this article about it.