Using a Quirk in Batteries to Improve Charging Infrastructure

Batteries are weird. It is the reason why they have not really taken off as a form of power storage until recently (AA batteries, like the ones for a television remote, hold approximately four watt hours). Recent technological developments since the turn of the century have made them more and more practical for various uses, such as for phones and electric vehicles, and one aspect of how batteries work may just be the key to making a nationwide charging infrastructure for the trucking industry run a little more smoothly.

Details

Take a cell phone with an empty battery and plug it in. You will see that it gains charge as a percentage of capacity very fast. As it increases, the rate of charging decreases, to the point where 0% to 80% and 80% to 100% take roughly the same amount of time. This is for a variety of reasons, some of which involve complicated math. The easiest analogy is sponges: they are more absorbent when they are dry.

To that end, one way the trucking industry may be able to adopt electric vehicles sooner is if charging stations enforced a hard limit of 80% capacity, where the charging rate is at its fastest. If a trucker using a powerful charger can get 80% of a 500-mile battery in the amount of time it takes to have lunch, that would give them 400 miles and more than enough to make it to another charging station for dinner.

This would also allow the batteries to last longer: charging a battery to full capacity generates a lot of heat and wears out the lifespan of the battery, causing the need for a replacement sooner.

Conclusion

It will still be a long time before we have an adequate electric charging infrastructure for passenger vehicles, let alone for commercial vehicles. However, a requirement of a maximum charge of 80% while someone is waiting for their turn to get a charge can help get as many electric trucks on the road as possible, if that is something that the government wants to pursue.

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