This sounds more like a capacitor than a battery. That might still be interesting but probably not for automotive applications any time soon.
> Everyone knows that the larger the battery, the longer it takes to charge
This is actually not entirely correct. Batteries are made out of cells. If you configure them in parallel, they can all charge at the same time. Increasing the number of cells doesn't increase the time to charge them. Also the charge time of individual cells has a lot to do with the chemistry of the battery.
The so called C-rate is what matters here, this is the rate at which a battery charges/discharges its capacity. C rate of 1 means its capacity (e.g. 50kwh) is charged in an hour. State of the art batteries can charge at C rates up to 8-10 now, which means they charge well below 10 minutes. What matters here is how much power you can dump in a battery without damaging it. Also, the speed at which batteries charge is usually not linear. 10-80% is usually a lot faster than the last few percent. Some Chinese batteries get to 80% in as little as 3 minutes now. The remaining 20% can take another 6 minutes.
- “at present, the prototype battery can only hold a very small amount of energy – a few billion electron volts – for a matter of nanoseconds”
- “The key point is that quantum batteries are not about storing a great amount of energy, but about delivering it faster and with greater control”
1 Watt-hour is about 2 × 10²² electron volts. That’s a factor of about 10¹³/2⁴³.
For the sake of an argument, let’s give this tech faster than Moore’s law growth, doubling in charge time and amount of charge every quarter. Then (if my math is right), we’ll have a 1Wh battery (about what an AAA battery stores) that holds its charge for about a day in 10 years.
So, what is this useful for? It can discharge way faster than it gets charged, but don’t we have capacitors for that?
Highly controlled discharging might give it niche applications, but otherwise, I wouldn’t hold my breath for this tech to power “or even your phone?”.
At this point I already have "ad blindness" but towards "traditional news publication declaring some technology revolutionary" — probability of thw mentioned tech being a nothing burger is just getting closer and closer to 100% with every publication.
I think all of us have read tangentially related battery articles over the last decade. All of them promise new and magically. None have upturned the market.
Now that standard LFP batteries can already charge in 5 to 10 minutes, and we will probably see 3 to 5 minutes in a few years with semi-solid and solid-state tech, anything faster feels like a marketing gimmick for most people. Sure, a battery might be able to take that much juice so quickly, but where are you actually going to get enough power to charge it that fast?
Half an hour for a full charge would be fine for a break during the trip, but even those chargers are not always reliable or available. I think we are very far away from charging being measured in single digit minutes.
Even if the technology exist, it will take a while for infra to follow.
A week ago I traveled partly through Germany. On the highway stops we stopped (5 in total) only one had a working charging station and that one was only a single cable. There is a long way to go. It's probably better off the track though. (Don't need to charge but since I have a plug-in hybrid I do abuse the good parking spots if need be)
I think as with most human undertakings, building isn't too much of a problem. Maintaining is. Even with what is still a relatively tame number of chargers you get a large number of them that are broken.
That is in the US but they are becoming very common in China and now that they bringing these chargers to Europe and rest of the world I think US might be the only one left out.
A bigger battery is just more modules right? So (theoretically) large batteries charge at the same speed as small ones? You just just need more power than we can deliver though a cable in the time we want to charge them all to 100% at their maximum charging speed. How does "Quantum" solve that?
It's superabsorption that's responsible for the battery's most surprising property. In classical physics, molecules are little individualists – each acting on its own and absorbing energy at a rate independent of the molecules around it. But with quantum effects, they're a little more collectivist: they "act in unison and synergise", says Quach. "So that the rate at which you can absorb energy increases with the number of molecules there are."
This is really interesting. I've been fascinated with new and unusual battery tech for a while. A few months ago I had one of the reasoning models crunch the numbers on using a superconductor as a battery.[1] (It's not viable.)
Electric airplanes: the power density (per weight) of current batteries is very low compared with fuel, if you look at electric airplanes they are only able to make short flights due to the battery weight. If a quantum battery of large size could end up with a high all-in power density for the entire system, then it could power electric airplanes.
One of those articles written by someone trying to explain a complex subject in simple terms when they don't understand it at all in the first place. Don't waste your time.
What's hard to understand? Quantum charging means it both charges and not charges your car at the same time. You then get and not get to work on time. Really good progress!
Anyway, the important part about the tech in its current state:
"However, at present, the prototype battery can only hold a very small amount of energy – a few billion electron volts – for a matter of nanoseconds. To power conventional devices, it would need to store far more energy for far longer."
> Everyone knows that the larger the battery, the longer it takes to charge
This is actually not entirely correct. Batteries are made out of cells. If you configure them in parallel, they can all charge at the same time. Increasing the number of cells doesn't increase the time to charge them. Also the charge time of individual cells has a lot to do with the chemistry of the battery.
The so called C-rate is what matters here, this is the rate at which a battery charges/discharges its capacity. C rate of 1 means its capacity (e.g. 50kwh) is charged in an hour. State of the art batteries can charge at C rates up to 8-10 now, which means they charge well below 10 minutes. What matters here is how much power you can dump in a battery without damaging it. Also, the speed at which batteries charge is usually not linear. 10-80% is usually a lot faster than the last few percent. Some Chinese batteries get to 80% in as little as 3 minutes now. The remaining 20% can take another 6 minutes.
Get 7 boxes and 7 batteries and you have a 99% chance of getting a charged battery every morning.
In which case you may as well remove all that and just set the charger to "on".
- “at present, the prototype battery can only hold a very small amount of energy – a few billion electron volts – for a matter of nanoseconds”
- “The key point is that quantum batteries are not about storing a great amount of energy, but about delivering it faster and with greater control”
1 Watt-hour is about 2 × 10²² electron volts. That’s a factor of about 10¹³/2⁴³.
For the sake of an argument, let’s give this tech faster than Moore’s law growth, doubling in charge time and amount of charge every quarter. Then (if my math is right), we’ll have a 1Wh battery (about what an AAA battery stores) that holds its charge for about a day in 10 years.
So, what is this useful for? It can discharge way faster than it gets charged, but don’t we have capacitors for that?
Highly controlled discharging might give it niche applications, but otherwise, I wouldn’t hold my breath for this tech to power “or even your phone?”.
I remain sceptical.
But it seems we got increments of all technologies use in parallel.
Instead of a revolution, yet this is still netting more-than-linear growth in most of human power use.
Even if the technology exist, it will take a while for infra to follow.
The future of gas stations
It's superabsorption that's responsible for the battery's most surprising property. In classical physics, molecules are little individualists – each acting on its own and absorbing energy at a rate independent of the molecules around it. But with quantum effects, they're a little more collectivist: they "act in unison and synergise", says Quach. "So that the rate at which you can absorb energy increases with the number of molecules there are."
note that whereas many preprints will be verbatim the same text, this one seems to be slightly different but it describes the same research.
Electric airplanes: the power density (per weight) of current batteries is very low compared with fuel, if you look at electric airplanes they are only able to make short flights due to the battery weight. If a quantum battery of large size could end up with a high all-in power density for the entire system, then it could power electric airplanes.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47731696
Anyway, the important part about the tech in its current state:
"However, at present, the prototype battery can only hold a very small amount of energy – a few billion electron volts – for a matter of nanoseconds. To power conventional devices, it would need to store far more energy for far longer."
this system does work for mopeds in Taiwan though (Gogoro)