New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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Number6
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New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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One of the problems with electric vehicles is the amount of time it takes to recharge them. For home recharging, a vehicle can be recharged over night but if you're going on a long-distanced trip it can take an hour or more on a fast charger to recharge your car. Ford and Purdue University and developed a prototype cable capable of recharging a vehicle in five minutes. The cable can handle up to 2,400 amp of current compared to 540 of those now in use. Don't expect to see these cables in use soon since they have to develop the batteries and chargers that can handle that much current.
The Detroit auto giant has teamed up with Purdue University to build a prototype of a cable that could fully charge an EV’s battery in just five minutes. There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done, but the cable could help overcome one of the last major obstacles standing in the way of battery-powered cars achieving mass acceptance.

EV driving ranges may finally be reaching acceptable levels, but slow charging times still make some drivers wary. The last couple years has seen charging times improve dramatically, but they’re still not great, especially when compared to the five minutes it takes to fill up a gas-powered car. Right now, the best you can hope for is around 20 minutes when connected to a DC fast charger. It’s even worse when you’re home. The Ford Mustang Mach-E is one of the more in-demand EVs on the market, but it takes 11 hours to charge to full capacity at home, even when connected to a Level 2 charging setup.

This is due in no small part to the fact that current charging cables just can’t handle the heat generated by the amount of power that would be needed to charge an EV as fast as gas can fill up a car. The cables connected to the Tesla Supercharger—currently the industry’s best charger—can handle a maximum of 520 amps of current. Ford and Purdue’s solution: Come up with a better method of cooling charging cables.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to fill up your EV that quickly anytime soon. In addition to Ford and Purdue’s cable—for which a patent is currently pending—new chargers and batteries capable of safely dealing with that much current will need to be developed. Still, the ability to fully charge a battery powered vehicle in minutes is now a very real possibility.
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Drak
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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Charging time is one of the reasons we’ve been holding off. That and the higher prices of EV.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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Wow, one of the reasons I am holding off is I dont have the charging system set up in my garage.

I dont know if I have the room or what it will cost or if it will in anyway interfere with my house...this was new when we bought it recently and had some electrical issues right away.

Was thinking since my wife just got the little Lexus hybrid I might get the new 2022 NX 300H I think it is, but I really like electric also.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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Drak wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 2:21 pm Charging time is one of the reasons we’ve been holding off. That and the higher prices of EV.
I've been thinking of buying a new car in the next couple of years and it most likely be an electric car. Since I rarely drive long distances, the charging time hasn't bee near the top of the list for a special feature. However, if these cables and charging stations that can handle them takes off then I'll want my car to be able to handle those chargers.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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i'm guessing that the size of the cables needed would not be practical for a home service, Think more like a charging station along the lines of a gas station. Pull in, top off in 5 minutes, and drive away.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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Number6 wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 2:34 pm I've been thinking of buying a new car in the next couple of years and it most likely be an electric car. Since I rarely drive long distances, the charging time hasn't bee near the top of the list for a special feature. However, if these cables and charging stations that can handle them takes off then I'll want my car to be able to handle those chargers.
It would be fine here too but for the fact that my inlaws live in Oregon. I'd love to have one now. I suppose we could keep the old Escape and use that for long D trips though.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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Drak wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 2:36 pm It would be fine here too but for the fact that my inlaws live in Oregon. I'd love to have one now. I suppose we could keep the old Escape and use that for long D trips though.
Love those huge screens in the Tesla.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

Post by sam lefthand »

Number6 wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 2:17 pm One of the problems with electric vehicles is the amount of time it takes to recharge them. For home recharging, a vehicle can be recharged over night but if you're going on a long-distanced trip it can take an hour or more on a fast charger to recharge your car. Ford and Purdue University and developed a prototype cable capable of recharging a vehicle in five minutes. The cable can handle up to 2,400 amp of current compared to 540 of those now in use. Don't expect to see these cables in use soon since they have to develop the batteries and chargers that can handle that much current.
I read the article and found out how they did that:

"The new cable, which is creation of engineering Professor Issam Mudawar and his students, utilizes a liquid coolant that changes to vapor as it heats up, according to a press release. The automaker didn’t go into too much detail about how this process works, but the new cable could handle up to 2,400 amps of current, which would result in charging times four times faster than is possible with the cables connected to Tesla’s supercharger."

That's a very familiar cooling process to me. It's called refrigeration. The liquid which changes to vapor is called a refrigerant.

:)

Water is the most common and least expensive of the vast long list of refrigerants. It's the one I would select for that application. It has a large heat capacity, a pressure/temperature range which would make it most suitable for that application. It's not flammable, not toxic, no global warming potential, not electrically conductive unless it's contaminated.

Water would be ideal.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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Libertas wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 2:38 pm Love those huge screens in the Tesla.
I like to support North American but I can't help but fancy that VW EV Bus.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

Post by sam lefthand »

Libertas wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 2:31 pm Wow, one of the reasons I am holding off is I dont have the charging system set up in my garage.

I dont know if I have the room or what it will cost or if it will in anyway interfere with my house...this was new when we bought it recently and had some electrical issues right away.

Was thinking since my wife just got the little Lexus hybrid I might get the new 2022 NX 300H I think it is, but I really like electric also.
Is your electrical entrance, meter, and breaker box in, or close to your garage?

If it's within 10 feet then the cost of setting up a charging system in your garage will be the cost of the charger, plus about $200 in materials, plus about two hours of an electrician's labor.

If it is on the other side of the house then add an additional $300 to $500 to that for the cost installing a heavy duty circuit.

:)

Its about the same as setting up a house for a hot tub in the back yard.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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sam lefthand wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 2:39 pm I read the article and found out how they did that:

"The new cable, which is creation of engineering Professor Issam Mudawar and his students, utilizes a liquid coolant that changes to vapor as it heats up, according to a press release. The automaker didn’t go into too much detail about how this process works, but the new cable could handle up to 2,400 amps of current, which would result in charging times four times faster than is possible with the cables connected to Tesla’s supercharger."

That's a very familiar cooling process to me. It's called refrigeration. The liquid which changes to vapor is called a refrigerant.

:)

Water is the most common and least expensive of the vast long list of refrigerants. It's the one I would select for that application. It has a large heat capacity, a pressure/temperature range which would make it most suitable for that application. It's not flammable, not toxic, no global warming potential, not electrically conductive unless it's contaminated.

Water would be ideal.
so but if the cooling process is interrupted by a disruption or a break that's a lot of uninhibited and unprotected heat and voltage to deal with and hold back.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

Post by sam lefthand »

Motor City wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 3:25 pm so but if the cooling process is interrupted by a disruption or a break that's a lot of uninhibited and unprotected heat and voltage to deal with and hold back.
That's why water is ideal as the refrigerant to use. It has a very high heat capacity and the pressure/temperature range is such that the residual amount of refrigerant held in the cable in the event of a system breakdown would be able to continue to cool for as long as the supply of water residual in the system lasted. Certainly long enough for safety systems to shut off the power.

Breakers in that amperage range trip really fast, a quarter to half a second. That trip can be triggered by over amperage or a system fault like a cooling system breakdown, or over heat sensed in the cable.

:)

To give you a size comparison what is being discussed is the transference of about 400 to 500 horse power for 5 minutes. That's not all that big.

:|

The largest electric motors I ever hooked up were 5,000 HP. They ran on three phase 4160 Volts. The three wires were about 2 to 3 inches in diameter. Without cooling, and they did not have cooling, they would heat up to about 140 degrees F at full load.

The switch that turned them on and off was larger than a whole Tesla car.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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sam lefthand wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 4:11 pm That's why water is ideal as the refrigerant to use. It has a very high heat capacity and the pressure/temperature range is such that the residual amount of refrigerant held in the cable in the event of a system breakdown would be able to continue to cool for as long as the supply of water residual in the system lasted. Certainly long enough for safety systems to shut off the power.

Breakers in that amperage range trip really fast, a quarter to half a second. That trip can be triggered by over amperage or a system fault like a cooling system breakdown, or over heat sensed in the cable.

:)

To give you a size comparison what is being discussed is the transference of about 400 to 500 horse power for 5 minutes. That's not all that big.

:|

The largest electric motors I ever hooked up were 5,000 HP. They ran on three phase 4160 Volts. The three wires were about 2 to 3 inches in diameter. Without cooling, and they did not have cooling, they would heat up to about 140 degrees F at full load.

The switch that turned them on and off was larger than a whole Tesla car.
Do you think we will ever have wireless chargers for electric vehicles?
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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Ted wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 4:34 pm Do you think we will ever have wireless chargers for electric vehicles?
Not a chance without their being a sea change in the physical science end of it. The inefficiency factors are too great to overcome. It only barely works for electric toothbrushes and phones. Cars need 15 horse power when they are operating.

:|

I would view an investment opportunity to develop such a thing as likely to be a scam and as thus my wallet would be closed for business.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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Current designs being proposed for wireless chargers use RF to transfer the power to the car batteries. In other words, they are super-power transmitters, and the fraction of the output that dissipates off into space would still be enough to render large bands of frequencies useless for communication. No one wants their band to be the one that goes away.

Vapor cooling is an old concept in common ordinary radio transmitters used for communication. The water hits the red-hot anodes of the output elements and vaporizes, absorbing heat in the precise manner Sam describes. It works.

A wired charger drawing 2400 amps would require new wiring from the point of use back to the AC distribution. If every home had one, the peak loads would require new distribution all the way back to the generating stations.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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sam lefthand wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 5:19 pm Not a chance without their being a sea change in the physical science end of it. The inefficiency factors are too great to overcome. It only barely works for electric toothbrushes and phones. Cars need 15 horse power when they are operating.

:|

I would view an investment opportunity to develop such a thing as likely to be a scam and as thus my wallet would be closed for business.
Though I have no technical expertise, I would think not. I would think pushing that much power wirelessly through the air might be akin to being in a microwave oven!

And yeah, my phone has to be on top of the charger to work.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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ZoWie wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 6:01 pm Current designs being proposed for wireless chargers use RF to transfer the power to the car batteries. In other words, they are super-power transmitters, and the fraction of the output that dissipates off into space would still be enough to render large bands of frequencies useless for communication. No one wants their band to be the one that goes away.

Vapor cooling is an old concept in common ordinary radio transmitters used for communication. The water hits the red-hot anodes of the output elements and vaporizes, absorbing heat in the precise manner Sam describes. It works.

A wired charger drawing 2400 amps would require new wiring from the point of use back to the AC distribution. If every home had one, the peak loads would require new distribution all the way back to the generating stations.
You get it.

People don't understand the scale of it, nor what the time interval does to the scale of it. One can charge a car overnight or maybe longer with a small charger that comes with the car, plugging it into a regular 120 volt outlet in their home. Like what a microwave oven needs.

Or if they want to do it in a five minute "hurry" they need a big honking V-8 Caterpillar diesel engine pulling a big generator.

:)

Suppose someone wanted to set up a 5 minute fast freeway charging station that could charge 6 cars at a time and send them off with full charges in 5 minutes. Like what a normal gas station is.

They would either need a three phase power line with a service like what a large supermarket has, or they would need a full sized railroad locomotive without the wheels to generate the juice.

:|

A railroad EMD is a large enough engine it could rumble along generating enough power to charge 6 cars every 5 minutes, at a rate of 120 fully charged cars an hour.

I suppose one could place 120 cars on a train and that same EMD locomotive engine could pull it at 65 miles an hour down the tracks. So that's an easy way to visualize the scale. The weight of the cars, times the speed one wants them to go, times the number of cars sets the size of the engine needed to power it.

I expect to see old used railroad locomotives without wheels out in the desert where power lines are scarce rumbling away charging electric cars in a hurry.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

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sam lefthand wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 4:11 pm That's why water is ideal as the refrigerant to use. It has a very high heat capacity and the pressure/temperature range is such that the residual amount of refrigerant held in the cable in the event of a system breakdown would be able to continue to cool for as long as the supply of water residual in the system lasted. Certainly long enough for safety systems to shut off the power.

Breakers in that amperage range trip really fast, a quarter to half a second. That trip can be triggered by over amperage or a system fault like a cooling system breakdown, or over heat sensed in the cable.

:)

To give you a size comparison what is being discussed is the transference of about 400 to 500 horse power for 5 minutes. That's not all that big.

:|

The largest electric motors I ever hooked up were 5,000 HP. They ran on three phase 4160 Volts. The three wires were about 2 to 3 inches in diameter. Without cooling, and they did not have cooling, they would heat up to about 140 degrees F at full load.

The switch that turned them on and off was larger than a whole Tesla car.
So the cooling part of this aside it still doesn't solve what's happening at the micro level between the battery and the charger, which is where the problem is.

oh I see (from the article)
.....Unfortunately, you won’t be able to fill up your EV that quickly anytime soon. In addition to Ford and Purdue’s cable—for which a patent is currently pending—new chargers and batteries capable of safely dealing with that much current will need to be developed.
but the water cooled electricity still seems bit dangerous because they don't mix well and leaks and obstructions and other things can happen. sometimes breakers fail and or malfunction misread the temperature and steam can be dangerous especially around the general public who may not know what to do if something goes wrong and instead make matters worse.
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Re: New Cables May Enable Electric Cars to be Recharged in Five Minutes

Post by sam lefthand »

Motor City wrote: Sat Nov 13, 2021 8:15 pm but the water cooled electricity still seems bit dangerous because they don't mix well and leaks and obstructions and other things can happen. sometimes breakers fail and or malfunction misread the temperature and steam can be dangerous especially around the general public who may not know what to do if something goes wrong and instead make matters worse.
There is no perfect solution when transference of energy is concerned. All of those concerns don't hold a candle to the day to day danger inherent in filling a car's tank with gasoline.

https://jwkblog.com/wordpress/fire-at-g ... tion-tips/
Gas stations are fire-prone areas, that’s a fact, there is no argument about it!

According to the National Fire Protection Association, every year more than 5000 gas station fires are reported in the US.

These fires cause plenty of damage.

Talking in numbers, on an average, gas station fires cause 48 civilian injuries, 2 civilian deaths, and $20 million in property damage every year.
All of the dangers inherent with automobile travel don't hold a candle to the danger of riding horses back when horses or walking were the only two means of travel overland.
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