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Toshiba launches fast-charging lithium ion battery

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JeroenH:
Toshiba has today announced a new lithium ion battery, which, it claims, can recharge 80% of the battery's energy capacity in just one minute, 60 times faster than the other lithium ion cells. It takes an unspecified 'few' more minutes for a complete recharge. The battery has a long life cycle, losing only 1% of its capacity after 1,000 cycles of discharging and recharging. Due to be launched next year, it will initially be used to power hybrid electric vehicles but could be used for smaller devices in future, such as mobile phones and digital cameras.
For the full press-release:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0503/05032903tosh1minbatt.asp
If it's true (big IF if you ask me) it would be a big step forward for electric vehicles.
But it would require some serious power. The Li-ion battery in my digital camera is 1500 mAh / 7,2V. That's 10,8 Wh. 90% of that is 9,72 Wh. Filling that up in 1 minute would need nearly 600 Watts flowing into the battery. At 7,2V that's a stunning 81 Amps. They would need to seriously redesign the conncetors for that.
Electric cars present an even bigger problem: say you carry 30kWh of battery power with you. To fill 90% of that up in 1 minute you'd need 1,6 MW of power. Now that's a big-size PV-installation. Imagine a 'gas'-station with 4 of 6 fill-up point operating simultaneously.

wgatenson04:
Quite amazing if it is true.  Imagine the connectors you would need for charging up a car like that.   1.6MW @ 220V = 7272 Amps!  Still, I would like to get my hands on a couple of thoes.

PCHedglin:
"CAN RECHARGE 80%"
I think the important thing to remember here is that the life

of most batteries is affected by how low you drain them, how

often, and how hard to charge them.  There was another link to

a www.newscientist.com article posted recently.  The name of

the article was "Charge a battery in just six minutes."
This newer technology should lend itself nicely to high power

applications like electric cars, power tools, battery backups,

etc.  The article also mentions that the number of charging

cycles of typical LI-ION batteries is around 400, but with the

new technology that number has been estimated at as many as

20,000 cycles!  Even if reality only puts this at 1/4 of this

estimate with minimal capacity loss over time, this would be a

huge improvement!  This would be 10+ years of charging/discharging

the batteries every day, if we stick with a conservative 5,000!
Also, I believe that charging most batteries to 80% capacity is

the fastest part of the cycle, and the remaining 20% is where you

need a longer, more gradual charge.  My battery charger that

switches to trickle charge comes to mind here.  
However, if these batteries are as "TUFF" as they are claiming,

then perhaps charging to 80% capacity would be sufficient for

most applications.  For example, I could see waiting 5-10 minutes

get my batteries to 80% for example at a "FILLING" station, but

wouldn't want to wait around for maybe 2-3 or more times that just

to get them to 100%.  However, if I could plug it in at a Park &

Ride or a station at a large retailer while I shop, then this

wouldn't be that big of an issue.  
Just my thoughts on this issue!
Patrick

richhagen:
You would probably require a second battery bank, or a really heavy duty grid connection to dump that kind of power that quickly.  Rich

wgatenson04:
If you can charge the battery in 1 minute, then could you drain it that fast also?  Affording higher output ranges with a smaller battery would be very usefull to a car as  far as peak HP goes.

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