The electric car battery that can be charged in just five minutes

The sample cells were produced with EVE Energy, StoreDot’s Chinese partner

Electric vehicle batteries capable of charging within five minutes have been produced for the first time.

The breakthrough, from Israeli battery company StoreDot, marks a “significant milestone” in the bid to wean the world’s motorists off petrol and diesel vehicles. 

So-called range anxiety and the length of time it takes to fully charge an EV battery have hindered mass adoption of the lithium-based vehicles. While the speed with which EVs charge can vary,  typically electric car drivers can add up to 100 miles of range in 35 minutes using a 50kw rapid charger.

StoreDot, which counts Daimler, BP, and Samsung among its backers, has released its first production batch of sample cells that it will show to potential EV and industry partners.

The company has already shown off the ability of its “ultra fast-charging” in scooters and commercial drones. Now it has demonstrated how its batteries can be used to charge electric vehicles. The news was first reported by the Guardian.

StoreDot said the new batteries show the “successful replacement of graphite” in a cell’s anode using so-called metalloid nanoparticles. The battery producer claims it is a “major breakthrough” in overcoming issues around safety and battery life cycle.

StoreDot's extreme fast-charging cells

Credit: StoreDot

The new battery cells can be fully charged within five minutes, however to do so would require considerably higher-powerered chargers that are used by most EV drivers today. StoreDot hopes that by 2025 it will be able to deliver 100 miles of range within five minutes using the existing charging infrastructure available today.

The sample cells were produced with EVE Energy, StoreDot’s Chinese partner. The company said the batteries have been designed so that they can be produced using the existing manufacturing lines at EVE that are typically used to roll out lithium ion batteries, the cells that traditionally underpin electric vehicles.

Doron Myersdorf, StoreDot chief executive, said the samples were an “important milestone”.

"We founded StoreDot to achieve what many said could never be done – develop batteries capable of delivering a full charge in just five minutes,” he said in a statement.

“We have shown that this level of extreme fast charging is possible – first in 2019 with an electric scooter and again six months ago with a commercial drone.”

Mr Myersdorf said the company was “on the cusp of achieving a revolution in EVs” that would remove the “critical barrier to mass adoption”.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has brought forward the Government’s ambitions to curtail the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles. In November, he said that the sale of new internal combustion engines should be stopped by 2030, five years earlier than had been previously planned.

Britain’s battery supply chain remains significantly behind that of China, the US, and Europe.

In December, BritishVolt announced its plans to spend £2.6bn on its first battery factory in the UK that will be built on the site of a former coal-fired power station in Blyth in northeastern England.