By Steven Scheer
JERUSALEM Israeli start-up StoreDot said on Thursday Polestar Automotive will be the first automaker to incorporate its fast-charging battery cells, which can be recharged almost to full in 10 minutes, in its vehicles.
The Swedish EV maker, backed by Volvo and Geely, is already one of about 15 automakers and others including BP, Daimler and Volvo Cars who are strategic partners with StoreDot.
Under the terms of the deal the two companies will collaborate on incorporating the fast-charging technology into Polestar vehicles.
A prototype will be demonstrated next year, and StoreDot said it hopes Polestar cars using its extreme fast-charging batteries will be on the road by 2027.
Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath said the collaboration with StoreDot would give EV owners "the ability to recharge in minutes".
"What used to be range anxiety in electric vehicles is now transforming to charging anxiety," StoreDot CEO Doron Myersdorf said. "Charging speed is now considered the number one barrier for adoption of electric vehicles."
"We still have lots of work to do to fully integrate our systems into a production car, but our teams are already fully engaged, and we will be demonstrating those results in the coming months," he added.
Myersdorf told Reuters he expects further collaborations with other automakers in which a battery at 10% charge could be charged to 80% in 10 minutes more than 1,000 times consecutively.
Charging stations will need to be upgraded to 350 kilowatts to handle the faster charging, he said.
"We are presenting a technology... that does not degrade because of fast charging," Myersdorf said, adding this was due to StoreDot's batteries being silicon-based instead of graphite.
He said StoreDot, which has already raised $200 million, is looking to raise another $150 million in private funds. StoreDot was founded in 2012 as a fast charger of mobile phones, but shifted to EVs when Daimler became a strategic partner in 2017.
Polestar last month said deliveries of electric vehicles (EV) rose 50% in the third quarter from a year earlier but fell 12% from the second quarter.
Electric vehicle sales are still growing strongly, but partly due to inflation that demand is not keeping up with the expectations of carmakers and other companies that have invested billions of dollars in the EV space.
(Reporting by Steven Scheer; Editing by Jan Harvey)
