The second-generation Blade battery can charge from 10-70% in just about five minutes and from 10-97% in under 10 minutes. More impressively, the company showcased the battery charging flawlessly from 20-97% at -22°F (-30°C) in just about 12 minutes, only around three minutes slower than it charges in normal temperatures.
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The EV was plugged in at 9% state of charge with 93 kilometers of range (57 miles). In 9 minutes and 51 seconds, it charged up to 97% with the range prediction in their gauge cluster displaying 1,008 kilometers (626 miles). This is likely calibrated for the China Light-Duty Test Cycle (CLTC), which tends to be more optimistic than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) test cycle in the U.S.
Still, these charging speeds are way faster than the 20-40 minute charging stops on the latest EVs in the U.S. The new BYD EVs can basically recharge in nearly the same time it takes to refill a gas car. Even the new 1,500 kilowatt (1.5 megawatt) Flash charging stations are arranged like a traditional gas station for cars to quickly drive in and drive out.
There is no incentive for US companies to improve their products when they are protected from market forces by import restrictions.
They’re fully in thrall to market forces. Those forces simply dictate that they lobby for protected markets. It’s far cheaper to buy off a lobbyist than to build a cutting edge battery factory
You do realise China also have very high tariffs? And pump hundreds of billions dollars in incentives into their industries.
Yes, of course. A larger point that I’ve tried to make is that when China interferes with the market, they do it in a way that improves Chinese products, lowers prices for consumers. Conversely, when the US interferes with the market they increase prices, reduce consumer options, and reduces the quality of products.
I bet they actually have incentives to create better technology.
Charge time sounds great, but what about the number of charge cycles (I.e. longevity), the article did not mention that.
They don’t mention it, but I highly suspect its actually not significant.
I used to think fast charging did the same thing, but it turns out that even the heaviest wattage implementations have negligible effects on cycles and health.
As long as your driver is smart enough to control or manipulate the voltage at certain capacities (<15% and >85%), the higher power won’t affect the cell quality.
As long as your driver is smart enough to control or manipulate the voltage at certain capacities
I feel like this is the important detail here…
When buying a car, you can’t have a clue whether that is the case.
I used to believe fast charging is harmless in phones too. It isn’t. I charge my phone only to 80%, and not daily. I haven’t lost a single % of battery health in almost a year. Meanwhile my friends charge to 100% and very often, always on fast charging. I got a friend to install accubattery to check their health and it was at 93% after only about 1.5 years.
Tl;dr: I suspect the driver will be dogshit and cause batteries to get destroyed in anything but the flagship car models to increase battery service revenue BY A LOT…
Do I understand correctly - you charge to 80%, have zero degradation, but also only use 80% of your battery at most because of that.
Your fast-charging friend, meanwhile, has been using all 100% down to 93% battery for these 1.5 years. Maybe, in a bad scenario his battery will degrade to 80% in 1-2 years and he’ll start using only 80% of his like you?
Where’s the upside in this, unless you’re both planing to use same phone in e.g. 5 years and you might get ahead in battery capacity finally?
There are many upsides.
One is my phone survives longer and when I sell it second hand to a less fortunate person, they get a phone with a battery in perfect condition.
Another is that my phone holds more value.
Another is that I remove a worry from my head. I’m no longer questioning whether I am destroying my battery.
Though I don’t see the upside of charging to 100%. I literally dont need to. An 80% charge lasts me like 3 days so I usually charge every 2 days in case I need my phone.
Where’s the upside in this, unless you’re both planing to use same phone in e.g. 5 years and you might get ahead in battery capacity finally?
Not EVERYTHING is about having something better than someone else, jesus, I’m so tired of this mentality of “I gotta have just a little more than that other guy”. Why should I try to get more if I literally don’t need it?
Why would I want my phone to charge in 5 minutes if I spend 6-8 hours sleeping myself???
Why would I want to charge to 100% if 80% lasts me 3 damn days? (And that’s if I use my phone a decent amount)
If you need 100% charge daily by all means charge to 100% at full fast charging speed but I literally don’t need it.
Though I have no idea how anyone would go through 100% of their battery before they go to sleep for any less than 2-3 hours that it takes to “slow” charge a phone… I guess using the phone as a dash cam would do that as an example.
Every time I’ve seen someone test this hypothesis - as in doing a long-term experiment with the specific purpose of testing whether fast charging harms battery health - the result has come back that it doesn’t make much deference at all
It’s also worth pointing out that every battery is different and apps like Accubattery are imprecise. It’s entirely possible that your 100% and your friend’s 93% are actually exactly the same. It’s also possible that their battery would have displayed 93% when brand new
I crossreferenced my testing a lot though I cant 100% guarantee what I found is accurate.
Though I can say this: I don’t think built-in health monitors in phones are worth a damn. My gran’s phone was showing at 100% health when accubattery was at a whopping 73%. Testing the old and new battery, the new battery held up just about 30% more time than the old one on youtube playback.
I did other things that I wont get into
This is why I chose to trust accubattery and pretty much invalidate other testing in my head. I know it’s one single test and sample but this is my information and I trust it at lleast for now.
Some phones get over 70°C while fast charging, which is not healthy for the battery first.
Yea the temperature change is what kills afaik.
can charge from 10-70% in just about five minutes
Why is that always a metric? Yeah, with a tiny battery or a kilowatt line maybe.
More important is the cycle count.
Edit: btw, why don’t charging stations have a supercapacitor?Because the power charging curve is non linear. You have to charge the battery slowly when it’s almost depleted or full. So they only post the numbers that make them sound best.
Got it. Thanks!
Cycle count is important for the lifetime estimate on the battery, how long before you have to spend a large portion of the cost of the car on replacing / refurbishing a key component.
“Fill up” time is the most obvious and common ‘maintenance’ anyone will ever do on their vehicle. One of the biggest objections large swaths of the population have about EVs is/was that could take an hour or more for each stop on a long road trip or if you can’t charge at home. (apartment / street parking / etc.) They usually do 10-70%r 80 or whatever because the speed trails off exponentially closer to 100%. (logarithmically? whichever.)
Energy density or GTFO.
I’m tired of articles that purposefully skip the actually important data
Makes me think about the third-rate makers whose EV batteries consist of nothing but hundreds or thousands of LiPo cells soldered together then packed in a plastic container.
I saw one of those videos, with batteries from vapes, but it wasn’t about saying “look at this cool battery I made”, but rather about saying “look at the waste of throwing away vapes with rechargeable batteries”.
Yeah, I oppose the sale of disposable vapes on the grounds of it being a fucking batshit use of resources. I miss when vapes were usually those repairable and upgradable things that you poured juice into. I didn’t vape then or now, but it just seems better for everyone for it to be that way.
15 years ago it was a revolutionary idea
Isn’t that just a modern Tesla at this point?
wtf is that headline. Its a nice improvement but I wouldnt go that far. Its 5-10mins afters and has a better operating temp(allegedly) and ~10-20% extra range. Its nice but the gap isnt that huge.
Copium
Those are some impressive numbers but I’m skeptical of anything China claims about their own tech. I don’t doubt their battery tech is great but I’ve seen so many AI/CGI videos of their humanoid robots doing crazy shit and people online are eating it up.
I hear you but it’s not like western tech does not outright lie about their specs and/or make up awards to seem better than it is
Totally fair, you’re not wrong
Who spends 12 minutes putting petrol in their car?
Given the responses and the downvotes i can only assume that people have misunderstood the post. I’m not saying “electric bad because long change time“. I’m responding to the claim in the article that it takes the same amount of time as refuelling a combustion engine. This is not true
I don’t have a gas station on my garage wall.
5 minutes to get it to 70% capacity, with a battery that drives several hundred miles on a charge.
But if you’re at the mall and there’s a charging station, you can plug it in and refill it while you do your shopping.
Don’t worry about down votes, this isn’t reddit. That said, useful context from the article is always helpful to prompt meaningful discussion.
Oh, i don’t care. It was just a cute that maybe i should have quoted the sentence i was referencing
The only Fast Charging most EV owners do is on road trips. The rest is more like plugging your cell phone in while you sleep. So the relevant comparison is: how long do you usually stop for a bio-break & snack+checkout. I wish I could get the family in and out a convenience store as fast as the EV6 charges (though it’s much slower than Blade2’s high-speed charge).
Of course, most petrol users fuel-up weekly in the USA, so the petrol car is starting each road trip at a disadvantage. If you fuel-up with petrol for 4 minutes, 4x/month, and road-trip 1x/month, then the petrol car starts each road trip 16 minutes behind.
