Battery Tech Update / What If Charging Was Faster Than Gassing Up?

Recently, I’ve written about battery and charging tech that showed it might be possible to zap motorcycle (or some electric car) batteries to an 80% or better charge in about 10 minutes. With the average gas stop on a motorcycle generally taking less than five minutes, that puts it in the realm of acceptability for users outside the early adopter crowd, with certain caveats, mainly around the (still low) availability of DC fast chargers that can load in the juice that quickly. Still, it signals steps in the right direction. So how about a long jump instead?

Recent experiments and research have resulted in possible battery and charging advances that may allow what I have long suspected will eventually happen: charging times will eventually be shorter than gas fill-up times, and likely less flammable in notable ways. These new developments around battery and charging tech have sort of hit all at once, which is not surprising given how much R&D money is being dumped into these efforts. And even if these particular efforts don’t pan out, it’s clear that at some point in the near future, they or variations on these ideas likely will, and charging your motorcycle or car will be completed in minutes —maybe less. Here’s the latest:

Fast Charging Even Faster

As noted, recent research indicates EVs could recharge to 80% or so in 10 minutes under certain conditions. Now, that number may fall to five minutes—or a lot less. Researchers at Morand were able to hot-charge a hybrid super-capacity battery to 80% in just 72 seconds, but the battery was “only” 7.2 kWh—a far cry from the 60 to 100 kWh packs in most electric cars.

But in case you missed it, one of the latest Zero electric motorcycle releases, the FXE (above), features a battery pack of—you guessed it—7.6kWh. If the Morand tech can be realized on a production level, then a hot charger could have you on your way again after checking your texts while you sit on your bike for a literal minute. If you need a 100% charge, that might add a minute or two—no great sacrifice there, either. Again, this is with all possible factors in place: the right kind of battery, a hot charger and the tech to safely regulate the energy flow, tech that is in the works by teams around the globe. Obviously, if the tech is scaled up to, say, a 20kwH battery, you’re still looking at a charging time of a few minutes, not hours. But wait, there’s more.

Battery Formula Research at MIT

The smart folks at MIT continue to grind away at one of the biggest puzzle pieces in EV tech: battery formulation. Their latest efforts address one primary battery issue: Battery energy density (how much energy it can hold in a given space) and how quickly it can dump that power into the motor without over-stressing the battery and other components (which can lead to battery fires in worst-case scenarios). The short version of their latest work? A new battery design ups energy storage by a factor of four, while also upping power delivery significantly without undue stress – which usually results in the form of heat. It’s not like energy delivery is even really an issue even today for electric cars or motorcycles, which are already able to deliver performance at far higher levels than even the most exotic gas-powered machines. But hey, better performance in that regard also goes a long way toward elongating battery life so it’s good news all around.. The big news here though is the density bump: more power in the same space means more range with little to no added weight. That’s where the real advances in the short need to be made for electric motorcycles to find parity with ICE machines.

Speaking of battery energy density, new research from Australia indicates a battery based on sodium and sulphur might also be able to pack as much as four times the energy density of current lithium-ion tech. Li-ion battery technology, good as it is, is now 40-year-old tech, and has been developed to be about as good as it’s going to get without some sort of major breakthrough, which is also a topic of research, of course. A new battery formulation needs to replace it, and this one shows promise. Plus, sodium (salt) and sulphur are readily available materials that do not require the mining operations lithium requires, so it should also be cheaper – if it works. Which brings us to:

Solid State Battery Advances

The ultimate goal for many companies and battery researchers is the Solid State Battery (SSB), which is radically different from the batteries in EVs (and everything else) today. Solid state battery technology has actually been around for decades but only at very small scales for things like hearing aids and other specialty applications. Scaling the tech up for use in cars (or any kind of vehicle) has proven very difficult, but if the many problems could be solved, it will mark a turning point in battery-powered… everything.

A true solid state battery would be revolutionary, not just evolutionary, in terms of storage capacity, recharge time and service life. Storage capacity and density over lithium-ion based batteries would likely increase by a full factor of 10, giving an electric motorcycle with 100 miles of range on lithium-ion tech a range of 1,000 miles or more, let alone what the range increase for electric cars and trucks would be. Additionally, solid state batteries will be able to charge very quickly—in minutes for large vehicles, possibly seconds for motorcycles or ebikes, etc. They would also have service lives perhaps ten times longer as well, and likely weigh much less. And because an SSB can take in energy at levels far beyond wet battery formulations, charge times would be extremely quick, a few minutes or less. Again, this isn’t theoretical tech, it exists now on small scales.

Why are these batteries so great? Because they don’t use an inefficient “wet” storage medium like the lithium-ion mixture in current batteries that “wears out” (relatively) quickly. The energy storage in an SSB is literally a solid, usually crystalline in nature. This would also make the batteries much less prone to fires if damaged since SSBs could be built in modular pieces that aren’t affected by damage to one part of the battery.

The problems with solid state battery development are in the materials science; both the storage medium and electrode technology are still subjects of intense research and development. Whoever gets there first—and billions are being spent in this race—could have a market-dominating product on their hands. Recent work at the University of New South Wales has shown what could be a breakthrough in electrode technology for SSBs, which goes towards solving half of the SSB puzzle. SSBs remain a top priority at companies like Panasonic, LG, Tesla, Samsung and other battery producers.

Solar Power Keeps Powering Up – And Slimming Down

Let’s not forget solar power, which continues to see incremental increases in efficiency and design sophistication. A new hybrid silicon/peskovite thin membrane panel developed at MIT harvests more power, weighs very little and are very flexible, so we could soon have large solar panels the roll up like a laminated poster and could charge up your e-ADV bike miles from nowhere—and maybe quite quickly.

A lot of this tech sounds like science fiction, but like a lot of science fiction, it’s rooted in actual science, so don’t be surprised when these “research projects” appear as actual commercial products sooner than later. As has been stated many times here and elsewhere, we are in the very early days of the modern electric vehicle era, and EVs, including motorcycles, cars, trucks, and even airplanes will likely be radically different ten years from now, if not sooner.

We’re always interested in your take an EV moto tech. How far would a motorcycle have to go on a charge and how fast would it need to recharge for you to consider buying one? Leave a comment below.