The cable is one of several bottlenecks in the charging system. Existing DC fast chargers already circulate liquid coolant through the charging cable. That's one reason they are so short and heavy.
TBH, it kind of freaks me out to handle even just the 50 kW cables.
From the article:
"Ultimately, charge times will be dependent on the power output ratings of the power supply and charging cable, and the power input rating of the EV’s battery. To obtain a sub-five minute charge, all three components will need to be rated to 2,500 amperes."
Yeah, existing cables carry enough energy to boil a kettle in a few seconds, for comparison sake. 2500 amps at 480 volts pushes boiling a liter down to about half a second (so even a large kettle would boil in 2 seconds if you figured out how to just heat the water with the energy).
unlikely. electricity is easier to control safely than gas.
you don't need to start out full blast with electric cables. ramp up over a minute if necessary. we are also well versed in circuit breakers, and digital safety checks.
How many simultaneous safety system failures are needed for a problem to occur? Multiply the odds of that by the number of charging stations in service worldwide, which is a pretty big number.
My thoughts exactly. I charge drone batteries (with caution) and their "C" rating determines how fast you can charge them. It is a physical property of the cells. You need a beefier battery (higher "C") to charge at a higher speed, not a better charger. I need more details, as obviously drone batteries are clearly not EV batteries!
C rating still applies, charging at 1C is usually "fast" charging for most cells and that takes an hour, charging in 5 minutes is is 12C which is normally "bad", would need lots of active cooling.
50kw would take 2 hours on a 100kwh pack so it would only be 0.5C. To do it in 5 minutes would require 1.2 megawatts of charge rate.
TBH, it kind of freaks me out to handle even just the 50 kW cables.
From the article:
"Ultimately, charge times will be dependent on the power output ratings of the power supply and charging cable, and the power input rating of the EV’s battery. To obtain a sub-five minute charge, all three components will need to be rated to 2,500 amperes."