[Dargo]

A student team from the university (Eindhoven University of Technology) began developing a new battery pack in 2022, aiming to bring down the charging time of an electric car. The students call the tight four-minute charging time a "pit-stop-worthy" speed. That they are testing with a race car is not for nothing, says team manager Julia Niemeijer. "If our technology works in the toughest conditions, it could be applied anywhere. At race speed, the battery will last about eight laps on a circuit, but the maximum range is about 250 kilometers." But the system can be adapted so that a range of 500 kilometers can also be achieved, without increasing the four-minute charging time, says Niemeijer. "If we make the package bigger and enough energy goes to it, we achieve the same charging time."

During development, the students focused mainly on cooling the batteries. With fast charging, the quality of a battery decreases because it can get very hot. "What we have done now is cool each cell in the battery pack," says Niemeijer. "This allows us to get much more heat out of it and we can charge much faster." For this purpose, a cooling system has been developed that runs coolant between the battery cells. The students say cooling at the cell level is not yet common. Therefore, they had to develop this themselves. "It was especially challenging that there were only a few millimeters of space between the cells. As a result, we had to be very precise. We are extremely happy to have found a method that makes this possible," says Niemeijer. By showing that it is possible to reduce the charging time of an electric car, the students aim to make electric driving more attractive to consumers. "You can say 'only buy electric cars', but then it is also important that consumers find it user-friendly," says Niemeijer.

When the technology can be applied in regular cars, Niemeijer does not dare to say. "I hope it will be soon, but we depend on external parties for the cells. We make the battery packs around them."