BMW and Porsche have learned to charge electric cars in three minutes

14 December 2018

The German company had left "him" behind

Slow charging still remains one of the main problems on the way of popularization of electric vehicles. They need plugging in for the night, however, if the traction battery runs low on the road, then down the drain: we'll have to wait a few hours. Slightly better situation with "Teslimi": when connecting to the branded stations Supercharger they could be recharged to 80 % in just 30 minutes. But it's a lot compared to conventional vehicles running on gasoline or diesel fuel in their gas station spent only a few minutes. Now there is a glimmer of hope for improving the situation: BMW and Porsche has introduced a new charging station, which needs only three minutes to replenish a cruising range of 100 kilometers. The breakthrough is reported Bloomberg.

ultra-fast charging Power is 450 kW. This is three times more than the Tesla Supercharger. Charging from 0 to 80% using this setup spend only 15 minutes.

however, it is too early to say that the problem of slow charging fully resolved. First, in the future we will need to build a network of such stations. But the more advanced (in this case — a more "quick") is a station, the more it costs.

second, even if new stations will be enough (at least, if to speak about the developed automotive markets: Europe, USA, Japan and so on), there will be a new "bottleneck": they themselves will become electric vehicles. The problem is that they simply can not digest this amount of energy. For example, the charge capacity of the BMW i3 is limited to around 50 kW. Electric crossover BMW iX3, which will hit the market in 2020 will be able to triple this figure: for him, the limit is the capacity of 150 kW. But even this figure is three times lower than the possibility of new charges.

the Situation in this area is so complex that to test the new station Porsche had to use water cooling not only battery electric, but also cable, which is supplied electricity. While Siemens provided the power supply with a higher voltage.

All of this suggests that engineers have to solve many more problems. But progress in this area can not but rejoice.