EV battery charges in three minutes, lasts 20 years

Harvard-backed start-up Adden Energy has developed an EV solid-state battery capable of fully charging in three minutes and lasting 20 years.

Adden Energy has received US$5.15 million in funding led by Primavera Capital Group, with participation by Rhapsody Venture Partners and MassVentures, to commercialise the battery, with the technology gaining a license from Harvard’s Office of Technology Development.

The start-up will now advance the technology after successfully demonstrating a coin-cell prototype with 5000-10,000 cycles in a lifetime — as against 2000 to 3000 charging cycles for the present best-in-class batteries, CNBC reports.

“EVs need to recharge at comparable times to internal combustion vehicles, essentially in the time you’d currently spend at the gas pump,” says Adden Energy chief executive William Fitzhugh.

The license and the venture funding will enable the start-up to scale Harvard’s laboratory prototype toward commercial deployment of a solid-state lithium metal battery that may provide reliable and fast charging for future EVs to help bring them into the mass market.

Adden Energy aims to scale the battery up to a palm-sized pouch cell, and then upward toward a full-scale vehicle battery in the next three to five years.

Developed by researchers in the lab of Xin Li, associate professor of materials science at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), the prototype has high energy density and a level of material stability that overcomes safety challenges posed by some other lithium batteries.

Twig-like growths called dendrites that can penetrate through the electrolyte to the cathode and cause damage are defeated by structural and material designs before they can cause issues, says Adden Energy chief technical officer Luhan Ye.

“As a result, the device can sustain its high performance over a long lifetime. Our recent study shows that this nice feature can also be maintained at scale-up.”