StoreDot wants to extend EV battery lifetimes
The Israeli battery developer StoreDot has presented a technology that is intended to extend the service life of batteries in electric vehicles – also with a view to connection use in stationary energy storage systems.
According to the company, StoreDot’s batteries retain 70 per cent of their original capacity even after 1,700 charging cycles – and 80 per cent up to 1,000 charging cycles. The technology uses the company’s silicon-dominated cells and recently announced technology for “self-repairing” cells.
1,000 charge cycles is considered a kind of unofficial industry standard for use in cars – even though many vehicles are unlikely to reach that mark with customers. The question is how much of the originally installed capacity is still usable then. In addition to cell chemistry and design, this also depends heavily on how the customer loads the battery in the vehicle. Frequent fast charging with high charging powers is considered particularly stressful. But since StoreDot’s XFC technology (“Extreme Fast Charging”) focuses precisely on this, the new development approach is apparently intended to alleviate consumers’ fears about the service life of the XFC cells.
Even if at a certain point the batteries are no longer considered automotive-grade, StoreDot says they could still be “highly effective in second life usage for less dynamic applications such as in energy storage and grid load balancing systems” at 70 per cent of their capacity – at 1,700 cycles, well above the unofficial benchmark.
“We now have the ability to hugely extend the life of our batteries, long after their vehicle service life,” says StoreDot CEO Doron Myersdorf. “This not only has benefits for the drivers of EVs, allowing them to maintain performance of their vehicles for many more years, but also in second-life applications.”
StoreDot aims to offer a 50 per cent shorter charging time at the same cost with the production version of its XFC batteries. Together with Chinese cell manufacturer EVE Energy, series production is planned for 2024, a figure confirmed by StoreDot in its latest announcement. The cell is likely to be a round cell in the 4680 format. In addition, StoreDot is in “advanced talks” with several global car manufacturers.
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