The EV industry is striving to develop fast-charging batteries that’ll make range anxiety a thing of the past — and it seems that whoever gets there first will have an enviable advantage.
On Tuesday, Polestar officially threw its hat in the ring, announcing its investment in the Israeli battery manufacturer StoreDot.
To create extreme fast-charging (XFC) batteries, StoreDot has used two different techniques.
First up, it has replaced the conventional graphite in the battery’s anode with silicon nanoparticles, synthesized together with proprietary small-molecule organic compounds.
The company says that this mix does away with silicon’s inherent challenges, such as its expansion during the charging cycles and the subsequent energy loss.
Secondly, StoreDot developed a hybrid-solid electrolyte, which creates a low-resistance flow of ions between the battery’s electrodes, increasing energy density.
Impressively, the company expects its batteries to deliver 160km of charge in five minutes by 2024, three minutes by 2028, and a mere two minutes by 2032 — imagine living in that EV era!
As part of its partnership with Polestar, StoreDot will adapt and apply its technology to the brand’s proof-of-concept EVs. Providing that the pilot program is successful, StoreDot will put its fast-charging batteries into Polestars by 2026.
So if you were already looking forward to Polestar 3, now you have one more thing to eagerly anticipate.