TL;DR
Waiting at the charger could soon take about as long as a coffee run. A new solid-state battery design from QuantumScape went from 10% to 80% charge in five minutes in early testing and kept roughly 80% of its capacity after 1,000 full charges, which works out to nearly three years of charging every single day. It did that under light pressure, about the same as the air around us, which matters because many solid-state designs need heavy clamping to work, and it kept running below -4°F. These are the company's own figures from a white paper, reported secondhand by a tech outlet, and the design, called Osprey, is offered to other companies for licensing rather than built into a car. Still, a battery that refills most of a car's range during a coffee stop is the thing that would make electric driving feel like filling a gas tank. Our odds on when a car that charges this fast goes on sale are below the line; to see them, and the timeline of breakthroughs that leads there, subscribe.
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