Polestar has been working to develop a new extreme fast charging battery, capable of topping up 100 miles worth of charge in just 5 minutes. The Chinese-owned Volvo sub-brand announced during its Polestar Day event, that a Polestar 5 prototype has already been fitted with these batteries, and the system is essentially production ready.
In an average EV, 100 miles equates to around 30 kWh of energy, meaning this prototype would be accepting juice at a rate of around 350kW. There are some chargers already on the market which can deliver electricity at that rate, but they remain few and far between, and there isn’t much on the market that can take full advantage of them. At its peak charging rate, Lucid claims its Air sedan can match this Polestar prototype on power, and the company claims it can get a charge of 300 miles in just 20 minutes. The Hyundai Ioniq 6 and Porsche Taycan use advanced 800v architecture, and by comparison can only accept around 60 miles of additional charge in the same five minutes.
Polestar partner StoreDot claims to have “revolutionized the conventional li-ion battery by innovating and synthesizing proprietary organic and inorganic compounds.” The company exists solely to investigate speeding up EV charging rates. It claims that it is on track to reduce that five minutes per 100 miles rate down to just three minutes by 2028, and is aiming for two minutes in 2032.
StoreDot Chief, Dr. Doron Myersdorf said, “We are extremely pleased and proud that Polestar aims to be the first automotive company to showcase our extreme fast charging battery cells in a full-scale, driveable prototype.” He continued, “We still have lots of work to do to fully integrate our systems into a production car, but our teams are already fully engaged, and we will be demonstrating those results in the coming months.”
Polestar CEO, Thomas Ingenlath added, “StoreDot’s pioneering extreme fast charging batteries, combined with our upcoming top-of-the-line electric powertrain, can revolutionize the ownership experience for EV owners with the ability to recharge in minutes.”
Unlike those in the Lucid Air, StoreDot says its batteries have a completely flat charge curve, meaning there is no ramp up or ramp down. It also claims there is no charging degradation to the cells, and that its packs will keep charging at these rates for their full lifetime. StoreDot says that the big game changer in this battery technology is replacing the graphite in its lithium ion batteries with silicon.
Polestar has recently committed to joining the NACS standard charging port revolution, which means this ultra-fast charging won’t actually help any time soon. Tesla’s NACS standard Supercharger, now in Gen 3, currently tops out at just 250kW of power delivery. The company will need to roll out its V4 Superchargers worldwide in order for the network to be capable of delivering the 350kW needed for these speeds (which Electrify America already offers on the CCS standard).
Polestar claims this “100in5” battery pack will go into production by 2027, and the “100in3” solid-state battery packs should be ready a few years after that.