如果停下来花费五到六个小时，您会重新考虑这次公路旅行吗？一个小时怎么样？当涉及电动汽车时，加上“坦克”确实需要很长时间，这是更广泛采用电动汽车的主要障碍之一。因此，毫不奇怪的是，有积极的推动力来改善电池和充电基础设施，目的是停止充电与汽油停车没有什么不同。
But pushing a lot of power into a little battery in a short time presents daunting technical challenges. Standard lithium-ion batteries simply aren’t optimized to receive a charge quickly; the car, the plug, and even the wiring would likely need to be revamped in order to enable substantially faster power flow. And there are serious questions about whether the power grid is sufficiently robust to allow massive hits from thousands — or millions — of rapidly charging EVs.
尽管如此，从通用汽车和日产等主要电动汽车公司到Envia，Polyplus和A123 Systems等较小的电池制造商等主要电动汽车公司都在追求耐用耐用的电池。这意味着要开发较高的能量密度，较小的电池，并且（以减少充电时间）降低了对离子流的内部阻力。在减少灾难性故障的机会时，必须实现所有这些创新，例如电池燃烧，并降低制造成本。
Paul Braun, who works on battery materials at the University of Illinois, said a car cruising down the road uses about the same power as 100 hundred-watt light bulbs. Charging rapidly would mean moving the power through the battery 20 times faster than it discharges — a major slug of
Many think rapid charging is coming within 5 to 10 years.布劳恩说：“多次提供给您房屋的东西。”
尽管如此，仍在取得进展，许多人认为快速收费在5到10年之内。迫切需要进行此类改进：采用低排放电动汽车一直很慢，奥巴马总统在2015年之前在道路上拥有100万辆电动汽车的目标似乎似乎过于乐观。
The longest range EVs on the market now, such as the recently released Tesla Model S, can go up to 300 miles on a single charge, but still cost more than $70,000. The Nissan LEAF, which costs about $30,000, can travel less than 100 miles on a single charge, and the slightly more expensive Ford Focus Electric can travel a similar distance. Tesla’s Model S will yield about 60 miles of range per hour of charging with the best home plug-in systems, and even the LEAF’s smaller battery takes around an hour to charge.
“Part of the drive for the [Chevy] Volt, or even for the [Toyota] Prius, was to minimize changes in consumer behavior,” says Dane Boysen, a program director at the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). “You can buy a Prius and not change your behavior at all.” (The Volt and Prius are hybrid vehicles, sometimes running on electricity and sometimes on gasoline.) But at this point, all-electric vehicles still require significant changes in consumer habits.
那么减少充电时间的主要障碍是什么？
布劳恩说：“主要挑战之一是电池具有内部阻力。”锂离子电池是通过将带电的颗粒从阴极转移到阳极的；将这些离子推入阳极需要花费时间，并迫使它们更快地加热电池并造成效率损失。而且，如果您的努力推动，锂离子可能会在阳极的表面上以金属形式堆积，这是一种称为镀层的现象，可以大大缩短电池的寿命。即使没有电镀，快速充电的效果也可能使数千个循环的电池寿命降低到数百个周期中。
布劳恩说：“在传统的电池中，离子的途径非常随机，并且并不总是良好的连接。”“这增加了内部抵抗力。”他的小组和其他人正在努力创建高度结构化的内部电池体系结构，从而使电子和离子运输速度更快。他们的技术已由一家名为Xerion Advanced Battery Corp.的公司许可。
Gleb Yushin, a materials scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, says improving the design of the anode part of the battery, which is most commonly made out of graphite, is an active area of research for both
Scientists are aiming to get between 10 and 50 miles of driving range per minute of charge.increasing speeds and reducing plating issues. Smaller particles of graphite would enable a faster charge by allowing the ions to move in and out more easily, but small particles also mean lower capacity. Yushin says his lab and many others are trying to make anodes out of materials like silicon and tin that ideally would avoid plating when charged rapidly and would also increase energy density of the batteries.
Others are taking more radical looks at lithium-ion design. Prieto Battery, spun out of research at Colorado State University, uses copper nanowires as the anode and separates them from a cathode array with a polymer rather than the standard liquid electrolyte separator. The three-dimensional structure created by the tiny wires makes the distance a lithium ion must travel much shorter.
These approaches could yield a dramatic cut in charge time. Instead of one mile per minute, Braun says there is a reasonable goal of getting between 10 and 50 miles of driving range per minute of charge. At that pace, even a large battery could top up a 300-mile range in less than 10 minutes.
Braun says that in the lab, at least, very rapid charging is already here. In a paper published in the journal自然纳米技术布劳恩（Braun）的小组在2011年报告达到充电率，将在短短两分钟内产生90％的全电池，使用三维纳米结构。与此同时，Prieto的设计理论上可以产生400英里范围的电池，该电池只能在10到20分钟内充电。该公司认为它可以在明年内将电池进行商业化；布劳恩说，在接下来的两到五年之内，每分钟收费30英里。
“真正的问题是，电池的成本基础能否足够低以竞争？”问布劳恩。“成本增加了50％，这将无法容忍。”
大型汽车公司显然专注于使这些成本降低和改善范围。据报道，下一个日产叶子将有更长的时间
Some companies are pursuing other avenues for rapid charging, like battery swapping.155英里的范围和低端版本的价格仅为27,000美元。GM has invested $7 million into a company called Envia Systems that has achieved an energy density in its battery of two to three times those currently in use, meaning 300-mile or greater range is possible at far lower costs than the Tesla Model S. Envia’s batteries could be used in future versions of the Chevy Volt or other EVs.
不仅需要改进的电池。ARPA-E的Boysen说，随着快速充电技术的改进，开发充电基础设施至关重要。例如，在不久的将来，当电动汽车在家里插入电动汽车时，将发生真正的快速充电（每分钟费用30英里或以上）。房屋中电源插座的电源能力根本不是为交付此类费用所需的大量电流而建造的。取而代之的是，重点是充电站，就像加油站一样。
一些“快速充电”电台已经开始在美国各地涌现，其中有更多的电台在世界其他地方，最著名的是在日本。挪威已经安装了3200个电台，可提供较慢的充电电动汽车，但计划在今年年底之前增加70个快速充电站。总部位于加利福尼亚的Aerovironment正在美国战略帐户总监Frank Wong安装快速充电站，他说，他们的快速充电器可以在30分钟以下的时间内将Nissan Leaf从20％到80％。该公司在华盛顿和俄勒冈州设有20多个电视台，在德克萨斯州和其他地方有更多的车站。特斯拉（Tesla）最近还宣布了计划在一年内安装在高流量走廊上的“增压器”电台的计划，该站将能够在一个小时内为300英里的电池充电。
If rapid charging stations become ubiquitous, though, they may overload the grid. Braun imagines a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike at rush hour, 100 cars all plugging in and trying to charge up in a matter of minutes. “If they were all trying to put in 300 miles of electricity in five minutes, you’re going to need a major power plant sitting next door,” he says.
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Self-Driving Cars: Coming Soon to a Highway Near You
All of the attempts to improve charge time basically boil down to the desire to keep using cars as we always have. People don’t complain that it takes a few minutes to put gas into the tank. If EVs are ever going to take over the market, refilling the battery will most likely have to be just as painless.