Electric cars have become popular in the past few years as the world ventures into renewable energy to cut carbon emissions. This move is deemed inevitable because of the growing energy demands and limited nature of fossil fuels.
Car manufacturers have researched and developed alternative ways to power their vehicles, hence the rapid adaption of electric vehicles. But it takes a lot of time to charge electric cars compared to gas-powered vehicles. A new study based on quantum physics claims that quantum battery technology could make charging time from 10 hours to three minutes, just like pumping gas.
Charging Electric Cars Could Become As Fast As 3 Minutes With Quantum Battery Technology, Study Claims
Long Charging Time of Electric Cars
Charging electric cars are not quite as straightforward as pumping gas into a conventional car, according to Insider. Filling the latter would only typically take a few minutes regardless of their model, machine, or gasoline station. However, recharging electric vehicles is complicated as it could take anywhere from 30 minutes to multiple days to replenish the battery.
The larger the battery, the more time it will take to fill up. More so, it is like filling up a bucket versus filling up a bathtub since hot or cold temperatures can affect charging times. However, the biggest factor of charging speed is the power source because, unlike conventional cars, electric vehicles rely on batteries to store electricity that will power them.
The vast improvements in batteries seem to be insufficient for today's consumers as the slow charging time affects them. Currently, it takes an average of 10 hours to fully charge at home, and even the fastest superchargers at charging stations can take up to 20 to 40 minutes to fully charge an electric vehicle, which also incurs additional costs and inconvenience to the user.
Phys.org reported that scientists have looked into quantum technology that may promise new mechanisms of faster charging electric vehicles. The use of quantum technology was first proposed in 2012 and is believed to speed up the battery charging process by charging all the cells simultaneously in a collective manner.
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Quantum Battery Technology Could Speed Up Charging of Electric Cars
In the paper titled "Quantum Charging Advantage Cannot Be Extensive Without Global Operations" published in the journal Physical Review Letters, researchers from the Center for Theoretical Physics of Complex Systems within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) explored the possibility of using quantum technology to create quantum batteries.
According to a similar report in SciTech Daily, the quantum battery could contain numerous cells that are not possible in the traditional batteries, where each cell is charged in parallel independently from one another. Researchers said that the collective charging of quantum batteries gives an advantage in charging electric vehicles.
Researchers provided an explicit way of designing quantum batteries and precisely quantifying the charging speed they can achieve. They showed that the maximum charging speed increases as the number of cells increases, which means that the quantum batteries using global operation can achieve faster-charging speeds.
To illustrate, researchers explained that charging a battery with 200 cells using quantum charging would lead to 200 times increase in speed compared to classical batteries. To put it simply, home charging electric cars could cut the 10 hours to 3 minutes, while high-speed charging stations would be cut from 30 minutes to just a few seconds.
This amazing technology can also extend beyond charging electric cars and consumer electronics as it could someday be used in future fusion power plants that require lots of energy.
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