Here’s the “but.”
The press releases were out about 2 weeks ago with comments like “charging times reduced from 5 hours to 15 minutes,” have their links disappeared. Also of note is that for these to work it was suggested that there would be required super capacitors and battery electrolytes of Epyon’s design. The idea that a charger would be smart and address the individual cells in a battery pack isn’t new. Then there is the issue of grid power supplies at rates where what was a longer period coming in a few minutes charging the battery. That makes two issues to work out, the costs to use a proprietary battery and super capacitor technology with a proprietary charger and the matter of grid power to answer the very quick charge demand.
Hard to say just what's going on there; time will tell, I expect.
The good news is:
On the other hand, AccelRate of Vancouver, BC, Canada has fast chargers on the market now for Lead acid, Nickel cadmium, Nickel Metal hydride and Lithium ion now. Lead acid charges are reduced from 8-10 hours to 2 hours, NiMh from 2 hours to 20 minutes and Lithium ion from 5 hours to under an hour. Its clear there are improvements here.
Things are clearly changing steadily in this critical segment of the energy market. We're probably not quite to the mass market stage of development yet, but we are clearly entering the stage that retail consumers need to begin their evaluation and comparison of available technology and start deciding how to begin their personal transition to the new tech. This won't be a quick process, if only because there are so many variables to consider.
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