Nanodot-Based Smartphone Battery Recharges In 30 Seconds

Zothecula (1870348) writes "At Microsoft's Think Next symposium in Tel Aviv, Israeli startup StoreDot has demonstrated the prototype of a nanodot-based smartphone battery it claims can fully charge in just under 30 seconds. With the company having plans for mass production, this technology could change the way we interact with portable electronics, and perhaps even help realize the dream of a fast-charging electric car."

Comments

Interesting, but they admit low-current capability

[digsbo]

TFA states that they would need to substantially improve current capabilities for a car-size battery. Not that it doesn't make it cool, but at the same time, it's a bit presumptive to assume this will be the basis of car batteries given existing capabilities. Good luck to them, though!

Phones yeah

[3.5 stripes]

I'm not sure charge speed is so important for cars, I'd imagine that reducing the battery weight and size would be more important.. having twice or three times the capacity in the same space would be much more important than charging fast, especially considering how much power you'd have to put through a cable/connector to charge EV batteries in under an hour (as an example)..

Re:Phones yeah

[Nemyst]

Very fast charge (on the order of 1-2 mins for current battery sizes) would make "gas stations" viable for electric cars. It'd immediately remove the current big stumbling block, which is that once your capacity is depleted you need to wait for a few hours to recharge. Bigger capacity would be nice, but it'd just delay the issue. Fast recharge would let current gas stations convert to electric, allowing us to reuse existing infrastructure and easing the transition between gas and electric.

Re:Phones yeah

[Mr D from 63]

Going to need superconducting charge cables. My mom sure isn't going to be wrestling 00 gauge charge cables into a connector.

>

No problem, we'll just 3D print em'. 3D printing will solve all our problems.

For that matter, why don't we just 3D print a fully charged battery?

Re:Very bulky.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Don't forget to count into the bulkiness the size of the inevitable mandatory fire extinguisher.

Re:Very bulky.

[werewolf1031]

I hear consumer electronics have this funny way of getting smaller (and cheaper) as time goes by. But that's just a rumor.

Now it's the grid engineers' problem to solve...

[mpoulton]

A Tesla S has an 85kWh battery. To charge that in 30 seconds requires 10,200,000 watts of power - approximately the full electrical service to a decent size skyscraper. That's 42,500 amps at 240V, the full maximum power available to over 212 modern homes and a totally impractical amount of current to handle with any reasonable electrical equipment. So while fast-charging batteries are great and a necessary step forward in technology, the universal adoption of electric cars will require not just upgrading our infrastructure, but a complete rethinking and redevelopment of the electrical grid using not-yet-imagined technologies.

Re:Very bulky.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Nah, that's just an illusion, you've simply grown up. I remember my brother's dumbbells seemed awfully large to me at one time when I was a kid.

Re:Interesting, but they admit low-current capabil

[jcochran]

You forgot the obvious solution since a service station doesn't need to handle a lot of cars at once. Namely have the service station hold its own set of batteries. These batteries can be "slow charged" based upon the available power. Then when a car pulls up needing a fast charge, the station batteries can do the job. Yes, this will cause an extra layer of inefficiency, but it should be quite doable.