How About Recharging in the Time It Takes to Refuel?

Two main obstacles stand between the electric vehicle and a bright future: range and recharge time. While one has created a new shopper condition called “range anxiety,” the other is still causing headaches for the manufacturers who see their EV spending more time standing still, plug-in, than on the roads they were supposed to be traveling.

Both obstacles will likely be overcome in the not-so-distant future, that's a given fact. When will that be, nobody really knows, but the important thing is that research is moving forward in both cases.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is renowned for coming up with solutions to all sorts of problems. This week, a group of MIT engineers published in the Advanced Energy Materials the results of their research into a battery that can be recharged in the same time it takes to fill up a tank on an ICE car.

Using a semi-solid flow cell architecture, the battery divides the two main attributes of such a device, to be used when there are needed. Simply put, the battery stores energy into one component and discharges it through another.

Designed by Romanian MIT graduate Mihai Duduta and MIT student Bryan Ho, with the help of two of their professors, the flow battery might usher a new era for these energy storage devices and their use in vehicles. Batteries might become smaller, cheaper and, perhaps above all, easier to recharge.

In the coming weeks, autoevolution will run a complete story on the flow battery subject, so stay tuned to see the hows and whys of a device that might rethink the automotive industry.