Many who reject the option of an electric vehicle say that they’ll consider one only when EVs have the range for occasional long-distance drives and can recharge about as quickly as you can refill a car’s tank with gasoline. Well, that time is nearly here?a lot sooner than even many experts in charging technology anticipated.
Charging hardware being installed this year will be upgradable to the capability to restore 300 miles or more of driving range in just 10 minutes. In ?charging miles per hour,? as the upstart electric-car maker Faraday Future and others have called it, that’s 1800 mph.
Although designed to be capable of that rate, few of these new-generation public-charging cabinets will be equipped to do so initially, in part because few cars are ready to swallow electrons as quickly as these devices can pump them into the batteries. The point is, we?re at a place in the evolution of electric cars in which commercial charging hardware is no longer trying to play catch-up to the batteries and the cars. Instead, charging technology is poised to be well ahead of the hardware on most cars, to a point that surprises industry insiders. Current DC fast charging, on either the CHAdeMO or Combined Charging System (CCS, or Combo) interfaces, runs at up to 50 kW?even though some carmakers list higher numbers that are still only theoretically possible. Both systems are in the process of being upgraded to be compatible for up to 150 kW, with the first publicl...