CATL's new LFP battery can charge from 10 to 98% in less than 7 minutes

PPotatoNinja about 3 hours ago 19 commentsRead Article on arstechnica.com

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Discussion (19 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

perching_aix•about 2 hours ago

Saw this yesterday, did not expect the competition around Donut's batteries to heat up this much and this quickly.

Even the gravimetric density is fairly close, CATL's claim is 350 Wh/kg, compared to Donut's 400 Wh/kg.

The safety and durability (plus no lithium) prospects of Donut's V1 battery are still big though (if the thing is actually real).

bayesianbot•about 2 hours ago

Feels quite clear Donut doesn't have much - no meaningful new tests released for many weeks already and some executive of Nordic Nano sued Donut Lab and said their claims were misleading.

I haven't really followed that closely myself, but I've noticed the people who I saw defending Donut before have gone really quiet about it lately.

yorwba•about 1 hour ago

Donut's website claims that they will release the next test result in 7 days, so you can check next week whether those people will have something new to talk about: https://idonutbelieve.com

viraj_shah•about 1 hour ago

I didn't see a number for cycle life. That'd be my biggest question here. You can charge in less than 7 minutes but how many times before performance (capacity) degrades?

phh•about 1 hour ago

TFA says "After 1,000 fast charges, the battery should retain more than 90 percent of its original state of charge, the company said."

I can't really judge whether 1000 charges is a reasonable target for a car, though i think that 1000 fast charges is reasonable. It should probably be able to push to 5000 slow charges and 500 fast charges, which should fit a lot of use-cases.

dgacmu•21 minutes ago

If you get 400km per charge using 88% of the battery (98% -> 10%), that's 400,000km (258,000 miles) before you're down to 90%, at which point you have likely worn out an awful lot of other things with the car.

Admitting that I have the luxury of an urban, low-driving lifestyle: I'm 50. That battery would literally last the rest of my driving life and have room to spare.

xoa•18 minutes ago

>I can't really judge whether 1000 charges is a reasonable target for a car

I mean, if "charges" is "full charge" and the battery pack does even 200 miles of range then that'd be 200,000 miles right? And more like 250-300+ miles seems like a spreading target as energy density ticks upwards.

Honestly that's more than I've ever put on any single individual car or truck I've owned, and well into the point where I'd be expecting to put real money into engine and other work for an ICE. Sure more is better but if a battery pack can go 200k-300k miles keeping 90% range that doesn't feel unreasonable at all for non-commercial usage. Taxis and so on with much higher utilization may find value in alternative options of course.

baq•19 minutes ago

1000 charges 10-80% for a passenger car at 300-400 km per charge is 30 000 - 40 000 km of fast charge driving. I'd say it's perfectly fine for most people?

est•about 1 hour ago

China had many >1M KM electric taxies. Usually they degrade after 200,000 km, and they are like 2 generations behind the latest ones.

djcannabiz•about 1 hour ago

right at the end “After 1,000 fast charges, the battery should retain more than 90 percent of its original state of charge, the company said.”

tristanj•about 2 hours ago

I did not expect Nio's 5-minute battery swap technology to become obsolete this soon.

c9lgPZqHNGdC1V1•about 2 hours ago

If anything, Nio battery swap stations would allow car users to swap to newer types of battery as they become available. I say this knowing Nio is one of CATL's most important partners[1].

[1] https://eletric-vehicles.com/catl/catl-calls-nio-an-irreplac...

DennisP•about 2 hours ago

That'd be an interesting situation. They'd probably replace their fleet of batteries gradually, so with each swap sometimes you'd get upgraded, sometimes downgraded. Your range and home charging curves would change with the batteries, and Nio would have to update the battery management software when it puts in a different battery type.

But over time, you'd get upgraded on average without having to pay for a new battery, as long as Nio kept updating to keep its batteries competitive.

xbmcuser•about 1 hour ago

Nio already has a service to swap to higher capacity battery if you want to go on a long road trip etc. It prices its cars according to battery capacity so even people that chose lower capacity car on purchase still have the option to swap to a higher capacity battery. Though I think the main use for battery swap technology will be for commercial trucking and if I recall correctly Chinese government and OEM are working on standardisation for that so all those truck batteries are swappable no matter which company builds the battery.

dirck-norman•about 2 hours ago

5 minute swap is not needed for this.

maeln•about 1 hour ago

We should always take marketing number with a huge grain of salt, so the 10 to 98% in 7 minutes remain to be seen. Also, there is the question of if it lowers the battery lifespan faster than charging at lower power. It is does, there might still be a point in battery swap, especially for public transport systems (for bus). A public transit operator might want to have more battery than vehicle, so that they can rotate the battery regularly and charge them at lower power, to diminish and distribute the wear on battery. But that's obviously a big if and a more niche usage.

SideburnsOfDoom•15 minutes ago

> Also, there is the question of if it lowers the battery lifespan faster than charging at lower power.

This kind of fast-as-possible charging rather than overnight or "while parked at the mall for hours" slow charging should be the exception rather than the rule, i.e. it is useful when road-tripping long-distance, but is not not the daily case. Battery lifespan should not be based on assuming that it's the only thing that you ever do.

xbmcuser•about 1 hour ago

the life span stat with the current battery tech is mostly useless for a normal car. 300 mile range most people will need to top up 2 times a week 100 times a year 1000 times in 10 years. The battery degradation is not that bad in the first place.

SideburnsOfDoom•less than a minute ago

[delayed]

sandworm101•about 2 hours ago

> have a minute to plug in? Still sufficient to get from 10 to 35 percent state of charge.

Scaling that to something the size of an EV pack will require one massive cable/connector. Call it 5kw/h in 1/60 hours, thats 3000kw, at 700v thats still roughly 4000 amps. (Please correct my head math.) Charging one car could suck up more power than an entire neighbourhood. Say four or five chargers operating at once ... every roadside charging station will need its own electrical substation.

jcsager•about 1 hour ago

Fjord ferries in Norway are up around that sort of charge rate, but for 30 mins instead of 5. That kind of battery charging performance is pure marketing until our local LV supply network is uplifted!

g4cg54g54•about 1 hour ago

chargers of that size generally have there own internal (sometimes even shared by multiple receptacles) batteries

SideburnsOfDoom•about 2 hours ago

Neither article mentions what specs - voltage and kW - are used when doing this very fast charging.

Does anyone know? Assuming it's not just the current high-end spec of 800v? It matters because higher current requires heavier equipment to generate it and heavier cables too.