Harvard-backed Adden Energy is developing a solid-state battery for EVs that gets fully charged in 3 minutes.
“EVs need to recharge at comparable times to internal combustion vehicles, essentially in the time you’d currently spend at the gas pump,” said William Fitzhugh, CEO of Adden Energy in a release.
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Broad adoption of electric vehicles requires batteries like this, he added.
The battery will also have 10,000 charge cycles in a lifetime, compared with 2,000 to 3,000 charging cycles for even the best in class batteries available in the market now, according to the release.
“That could be a game changer,” said Xin Li, PhD, co-founder of Adden Energy.
Electric vehicles cannot remain a luxury fashion, literally the ‘one percent’ of vehicles on the road, if we are to make progress toward a clean energy future. The technology needs to be accessible to everyone. Extending the lifetime of the batteries, as we’re doing here, is an important part of that, he added.
The battery also has a high energy density and a level of material stability that overcomes the safety challenges posed by some other lithium batteries. It may offer other crucial advantages, according to the release.
Lithium-metal anodes in other solid-state designs develop dendrites, or twig-like growths that can gradually penetrate through the electrolyte to the cathode and damage the battery. The new battery, however, stops the growth of dendrites before they can cause damage. Thus the device can sustain its high performance over a long lifetime, said Luhan Ye, CTO of Adden Energy.
The company aims to scale the battery up to a palm-sized pouch cell, and then upward to a full-scale vehicle battery in the next three to five years.
