Quicker Electric Vehicle Battery Recharging Times by GM

[G. David Felt]

Bloomberg is reporting that Delta Americas has a three year project with GM to develop GM's new fast charging system. This would recharge a battery with 180 miles in less than 10 min or 360 miles in less than 20 minutes. This is a quicker recharge than Tesla's own Supercharging system. With GM having 20 electric vehicles on sale by 2023, GM is wanting to be on top of the go to for best recharge rate. Currently Tesla is 6 min of charging time per mile, Porsche has committed to 12.4 miles per min of recharge as has BMW and Mercedes-Benz. GM has committed to 18 miles per min minimum of recharge time. Per GM, customers have stated very clearly that recharging of an electric auto needs to replicate filling a gas tank. This becomes even more important for those that live in a city where they will not have a garage or dedicated slow charging outlet and need to park on the street or use a recharger at work. In the suburbs, this is not such a critical issue as most people can easily recharge in their own driveway or garage.

Currently Tesla markets recharging their batteries to full in 30 min at one of their supercharger stations. The Chevrolet Bolt recharges 90 miles of range in 30 min at a fast charge station.

GM in addition to working with Delta Americas on faster recharging of their battery system for electric auto's has just announced a $28 million investment into their Suburban Detroit R&D Lab for denser batteries to take advantage of their extreme fast charging system and increasing the range of the battery packs.

Update to this story: To clarify, GM is not trying to develop their own charging infrastructure, like all other OEMs, a fast charging system is made up of the battery, controllers and conditioning of the battery system to handle an xtreme fast charge in just minutes. Electrify America is already installing a national Xtreme Fast Charger system. The OEMs have to figure out how to handle a fast charge coming into the auto. Condition and handle the heat build up of the battery pack for long life and proper battery management via an onboard controller.

The fact that GM like everyone else is finally investing in how to allow a battery system / electrical system to handle the high power movement is what this is all about.

Bloomberg story

Automotive News Story

[ykX]

Still going to take time until it is developed and widespread.  But once they do it it will probably give a big push to electric vehicles.

[ccap41]

Why are they referring to charging time in miles? Shouldn't they be saying they will charge a 100kW(example) battery in X minutes?

That range will depend on the vehicle and it might take 20kW for a CUV but only 15kW for a car to travel 100 miles  which would be two different charging rates. 

It is also nice everybody is looking to overtake Tesla's Supercharger system but how long until those are widespread like Tesla's already is? I mean they've got to be 5-10 years behind Tesla in that regard even though their charging rates will be much quicker. This is 3 years of development away plus they have to actually implement it. 

[Suaviloquent]

This is hopeless GM will build vehicles to a standard but will not actually build the infra for it.

 

this is almost a fluff piece about GM DFelt.

let’s clap our hands when someone even attempts to match Tesla’s supercharger network.

[G. David Felt]

7 minutes ago, ccap41 said:

Why are they referring to charging time in miles? Shouldn't they be saying they will charge a 100kW(example) battery in X minutes?

That range will depend on the vehicle and it might take 20kW for a CUV but only 15kW for a car to travel 100 miles  which would be two different charging rates. 

It is also nice everybody is looking to overtake Tesla's Supercharger system but how long until those are widespread like Tesla's already is? I mean they've got to be 5-10 years behind Tesla in that regard even though their charging rates will be much quicker. This is 3 years of development away plus they have to actually implement it. 

One thing is that the VW payout is already doing the XFS charging units with liquid cooled charge cords. So these are 800V Xtreme Fast Charging. XFS. These are following the industry standard SAE J1772 plug standard and with XFS ads CCS which is 2 additional plugs.

All the work being done by the auto companies are in making their battery packs accept the fast charge and properly condition and manage the life of the battery and range. They will not be building their own charging networks like Tesla. They will use the network being installed now by Electrify America, the subsidiary set up by VW to build our electric infrastructure.

In regards to your question about why how many miles per min of charging, Tesla has started this as they have quoted their cars and CUVs in miles per minute charging on their supercharger system. As such everyone else is stating what they will do better than tesla in the same terms that people have come to expect.

1 minute ago, Suaviloquent said:

This is hopeless GM will build vehicles to a standard but will not actually build the infra for it.

 

this is almost a fluff piece about GM DFelt.

let’s clap our hands when someone even attempts to match Tesla’s supercharger network.

You are not understanding that Electrify America is already installing and building the liquid cooled XFS chargers. The work GM is doing is much like every other auto company. How do they build denser batteries, build the control modules and conditioner for the battery to allow it to take a xtreme fast charge and not degrade the battery. See my response above to CCAP41.

[ccap41]

8 minutes ago, dfelt said:

In regards to your question about why how many miles per min of charging, Tesla has started this as they have quoted their cars and CUVs in miles per minute charging on their supercharger system. As such everyone else is stating what they will do better than tesla in the same terms that people have come to expect.

That's just stupid to me. X does something stupid so A, B, C, and D all follow along...

[Robert Hall]

18 minutes ago, ccap41 said:

That's just stupid to me. X does something stupid so A, B, C, and D all follow along...

First mover advantage...Tesla has set the bar and set the standards for the terminology, so followers are conforming.   Standards bodies/organizations are behind the curve... 

[G. David Felt]

24 minutes ago, ccap41 said:

That's just stupid to me. X does something stupid so A, B, C, and D all follow along...

I totally agree with you as it would be better to say all 80kWh batteries charge to full in 10 min. 90kWh batteries charge to full in 11 min and 100 kWh batteries in 12 min.

Totally agree with you that that is better, but Tesla started this and everyone else is using their yardstick to measure their own EV by.

[ykX]

1 hour ago, dfelt said:

I totally agree with you as it would be better to say all 80kWh batteries charge to full in 10 min. 90kWh batteries charge to full in 11 min and 100 kWh batteries in 12 min.

Totally agree with you that that is better, but Tesla started this and everyone else is using their yardstick to measure their own EV by.

 

1 hour ago, Cubical-aka-Moltar said:

First mover advantage...Tesla has set the bar and set the standards for the terminology, so followers are conforming.   Standards bodies/organizations are behind the curve... 

I think for general public it is much easier to understand charging in terms of range than kWh, 99.9% of people have no idea what is kilo or watt or kwh.  Approximate range is what people understand.  Same thing with gas cars, most people look at how far they can get on a tank of gas, or $20 worth of gas,

[ccap41]

42 minutes ago, ykX said:

 

I think for general public it is much easier to understand charging in terms of range than kWh, 99.9% of people have no idea what is kilo or watt or kwh.  Approximate range is what people understand.  Same thing with gas cars, most people look at how far they can get on a tank of gas, or $20 worth of gas,

I get that but that $20 goes vastly different ranges if it is a Cruze or if it is a Duramax 3500. I know that is an extreme difference but a compact car vs a mid size CUV get very different fuel economy. 

[ykX]

23 minutes ago, ccap41 said:

I get that but that $20 goes vastly different ranges if it is a Cruze or if it is a Duramax 3500. I know that is an extreme difference but a compact car vs a mid size CUV get very different fuel economy. 

Not arguing with that, but I hear constantly people at gas station put either full tank or $20 worth of gas regardless of car or truck they are driving,

Edited September 5, 2018 by ykX