New EV battery can charge in 10 minutes

Researchers at Penn State University have designed plans for a new type of battery that can provide up to 200 miles of charge in as little as 10 minutes. The scientists reported late last month in the journal Joule that the key to charging the lithium-ion electric car batteries involves heating them up to 60 degrees Celcius and cooling them down within a matter of minutes.

“As long as we limit [a] battery’s exposure time to high temperatures, we can minimize battery damage,” engineer and study author Chao-Yang Wang told Smithsonian.

In most cases, this rapid heating and cooling cycle could cause the batteries to short, but Wang and his colleagues believe they’ve found a way around that by limiting the amount of time the batteries are exposed to the temperatures. This is all thanks to a thin layer of nickel foil, which absorbs the excess heat and distributes the charge evenly across the battery.