NASA has proposed an experimental cooling system it funded that could eventually allow EV users to charge their cars in five minutes.
The agency said a team led by a Purdue University professor developed “supercooled flow boiling” technology for experiments, hoping it could control the temperatures of future systems in space.
“A team sponsored by NASA’s Division of Biological and Physical Sciences is developing a new technology that will not only achieve orders of magnitude improvement in heat transfer to enable these systems to maintain proper temperatures in space, but also a significant one.” Reducing the size and size will allow hardware weight,” NASA said in a blog post last week.
“Furthermore, the same technology could make owning an electric car easier and more viable here on Earth,” the post continued.
NASA stated that achieving such a feat in charging electric vehicles within five minutes would require chargers capable of delivering 1,400 amps of current, far more than currently available technology.
Most currently available chargers support currents of less than 150 amps, while some of the most advanced chargers on the market deliver currents of up to 520 amps, the post states.
However, NASA said Purdue University’s development cable can deliver currents of up to 2,400 amps by dissipating heat through the new technology, which would enable charging at 4.6 times the rate of the current fastest charger.
“The application of this new technology has resulted in an unprecedented reduction in the time it takes to charge a vehicle and could remove one of the key barriers to the global adoption of electric vehicles,” NASA wrote.
President Biden has emphasized a shift to electric vehicles as an essential part of his climate initiatives, but the proposals have drawn criticism from some in the GOP, who portrayed the plans as elitist and a boon to the wealthy.
Questions have also been raised as to whether the US power grid could even handle a hard EV transition.
The Inflation Reduction Act, a bipartisan reconciliation package passed in the summer, provides billions in funding for electric vehicle tax credits and other financial incentives.
It also includes a $7.5 billion investment to build a network of charging stations across the United States
“The great American road trip will be fully electrified,” Biden said in Detroit last month. “Whether you’re driving coast-to-coast along I-10 or I-75 here in Michigan, charging stations will be available and easy to find just like gas stations are now.”
