xfc charging XFC Reality - Xtreme Fast Charging

[G. David Felt]

XFC Reality - Xtreme Fast Charging

Tesla is the current GOLD standard of EV auto charging. Their roughly 400 North American Charging stations handle 120-140 kWh charging that allows Tesla to brag about their 90 kWh battery packs recharging in 1hr compared to 10 hrs for a Nissan Leaf, 8hr for a Chevrolet Bolt if you home charge. Tesla's customers have had this perk and until now been able to brag about it. Tesla made sure they had this by using a proprietary plug that kept other EV auto's from using the Tesla Network.

In comes IONITY, the European group consisting of Porsche, VW, BMW, Daimler and Ford. This is a 400 plus Xtreme Fast Charger network being built now in Europe. A 350 kWh network that covers from 200 to 920 volts at 350 Amps of charging that will allow EV Auto's to refill in 15 min or less. This allows EV auto's that need from 50 kWh to 350 kWh of capability to be handled by these new Liquid cooled Charging stations. The technological breakthrough is in the Charging cables that connect to your EV Auto. These are light, thin charge cables that remove the heat load by liquid cooling in high amperage use. These XFC system charge aproximately 20 miles of range per minute or 300 miles in 15 minutes.

How Does This Benefit North America, Specifically the US?

This is where the proprietary Nissans Charging (CHAdeMO) and Tesla interface are about to Lose the EV Charging race. The XFC interface uses the CCS (Combined Charging System) based on the J1772-2009 SAE standard. This has been adopted by pretty much every country in the world as the standard except China where they have this standard, Tesla and their own Chinese standard as the 3 plug types that have to be supported at this time. The US is expected to move forward with Nissan changing over in the near future.

Porsche is installing 500 of their XFC chargers across the US at dealerships and various EVgo sites. There is also Electrify America, a subsidiary of VW and funded by the $2 Billion plus funding they have committed to for installing XFC charging across America in addition to all the EV charging infrastructure funding that was paid to each state in the settlements. From Level 2 to Level 4 (XFC) charging will get installed from inner city places to suburban and especially highway stops that can support long distance driving by EV auto's.

The future is bright for the upcoming onslaught of EV auto's including the Electrify America's Chargers as shown below.

The Drive Story

SAE J1772 Org

SAE J1772 Info