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Sorry if this triggers your anxiety: remember how we once had to charge our phones overnight so they were ready for action the next day?
It took hours to charge devices from 0 to 100%, and we would frantically look for chargers if the battery level went below a certain threshold.
That has changed in the last couple of years, during which we’ve seen the evolution of charging tech that fully juices up phones in under half an hour. Phew.
Good old daysThere’s also a fast-charging arms race going on with companies trying to push hundreds of watts into phones to charge them in minutes, and claim the title of fastest charging technology on the market.
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But all of that has created a complex system of chargers, cables, and system lock-ins. I talked to a lot of companies, experts, and ecosystem players to understand where fast charging is going.
It’s a wild ride, so strap in.
I am going to cover a few basics of charging in this part, and it’s gonna get technical. If that sounds boring, feel free to skip ahead.
While you use your phone, electrons flow in a circuit from the battery’s cathode (negative pole) to the anode (positive) through a medium called an electrolyte. Once the process is over, your battery is at 0%, and you need to move those electrons back to the cathode to continue using your device. That’s the charging process.
Take a look at the video from tech YouTuber Mrwhosetheboss below to understand more.
But the process can take a lot of time, and that’s why we need fast charging technologies to help speed things along.
In the first part of a fast charging process, where you quickly want to reach from 0% to 50%, or 0% to 80%, the charging brick keeps a constant flow of current at a fixed amperage, and slowly increases the voltage (which you can think of as the pressure with which current flows). Once the charge reaches a fixed threshold, the charger keeps the voltage fixed, and slowly decreases amperage till the battery is fully charged.
Keep in mind that phone batteries operate under 5 volts (typically in a range of 3.3 volts to 4.4 volts). So you technically don’t need more than 5 volts to charge your device’s battery.
Brand Saunders, President of the USB Promoter Group, which lays out the standard’s specification, said that fast charging standards came about to facilitate quicker charging in phones by allowing them to accept a greater flow of current for a short period of time.
Our cables and connectors were limited on the amount of current they can put across the table. So if you’re still operating at five volts and your battery can take a little more current in order to shorten the charging cycle, and if your cable is limited to transmitting 1.5A or 3A, you can’t get more than 15W of power.
He noted that chemists solved this problem by designing phone batteries to take more current.
George Paparrizo, senior director of product at Qualcomm, said most manufacturers were using buck regulators, a type of component that converts high voltages to low voltages to achieve this safely.
But in order to accommodate charging at 45W and up, companies have had to rethink the designs of printed circuit boards, connectors, resistors, and even batteries in their devices. Many manufacturers have switched to a two-cell design to accommodate more voltage and quicker charging speeds.
To that end, some companies use a technique called a divide-by-2 (or divide-by-4) charge pump that doubles the current and halves the voltage when the charge reaches the phone, allowing the battery to charge quickly.
A phone’s charging system needs to maintain the same wattage at the charger and phone level. So if the charging brick supplies a higher voltage at the source, the fast charging system converts that into current, and brings the voltage level to around 5V when it reaches the phone.
For instance, a 45W charger can operate at 20A or 2.25A at the source, and at 5V/9A at the sink to maintain the wattage.
Paparrizo noted that to accommodate the heat companies have to reconsider the design of related components. As you operate at higher power levels, the level of heat increases, and there’s a chance that it might damage the device and the battery.
In the last decade, plenty of charging standards have emerged. The most common would be the USB-PD standard devised by the USB Promoter Group.
The first iteration of the tech was released in 2012. targeting the USB Mirco-B connector for phones. The current standard that’s commonly used in devices is USB PD revision 3.0, which can handle 60W power with a standard USB-C cable, and 100W with a fully-featured USB cable. Yes, it’s hard to know which is which.
The upcoming USB4 standard can support up to 240W, but there aren’t many devices and accessories compatible with that yet.
Another standard that’s not specific to a manufacturer is Qualcomm’s Quick Charge (QC). It made its debut in 2013. The first iteration aimed at getting more than 1A out of a charger using a 2.0 cable. Later versions concentrated on supplying power to a smartphone at a higher rate.
The tech has taken giant strides in terms of wattages with the last few iterations. While QC4, first released in 2017, paved the way for power supplies up to 100W (27W with USB-PD), QC5 made way for chargers with higher wattages than that.
History of Qualcomm’s Quick Charge tech.Paparrizo noted that the last two QC versions use something called a divide-by-2 charge pump that doubles the current and halves the voltage when the charge reaches the phone, allowing the battery to charge quickly.
Due to various limitations — including the maximum current capacity specified in these standards — a few phone companies have opted to design their own protocols. There’s Oppo’s VOOC fast charging, Vivo’s FlashCharge, and Xioami’s HyperCharge tech.
These firms have demoed charging at blistering speeds. Last year, Xiaomi showed off its 200W charging tech, and this year Oppo showcased 240W charging technology that could juice up a phone to full in just a few minutes.
In its latest flagship, the Xiaomi 12 Pro, the company included a monstrous 120W charger with the device. Theoretically, it could charge a phone from 0 to 100% in under 20 minutes. I got a chance to talk with the engineering team to ask them how they think about battery design.
The team said that Xiaomi started a charging research department in 2018. It first introduced 120W charging last year with its Mi 10T Ultra, but the battery design was different.
“The Xiaomi 12 Pro is the first phone where we’ve managed to include this tech with a single cell battery design,” the firm said.
The researchers mentioned that for the past few years, Xiaomi has also adopted graphene batteries. According to them, it allows for better thermal management, and higher current intake — so theoretically, its batteries could charge at a faster rate.
OnePlus has made its Warp Charging tech a marquee feature for its devices.They also said that with this new charging technology, they also use a technique to constantly monitor the phone temperature. If it gets close to its safety limits, the charger will automatically drop the wattage to avoid overheating.
However, Xiaomi’s not alone in pumping more wattages to charge your phone in minutes. That brings us to the next chapter in this saga.
In the last few years, many companies have entered the race to become the fast charging champion in the consumer hardware space.
Xiaomi now has a commercial phone with 120W charging and has demoed 200W charging capabilities. Oppo (and its affiliated companies, Realme and OnePlus) will release devices this year with 150W charging capacity, and has shown off 240W charging capabilities that can juice up the phone in roughly 9 minutes.
It’s fantastic having a phone that can charge in minutes, but to achieve those claimed speeds, you will have to use the company’s proprietary charger brick and cable. If any of those get damaged or are lost, you will need to buy those exact accessories from the company. So you’re locked into that system.
As an example, I’ve seen plenty of OnePlus customers in India complain that they have a hard time getting the company’s cables.
A few months ago, I used the Xiaomi 12 Pro, which comes with a 120W charging brick weighing 200 grams, and a custom cable. It was not travel-friendly and took up too much space on a power strip. I’d rather use a smaller charger that might take a few more minutes to juice up my phone.
To solve this problem, both USB-IF — the organization that maintains the USB standard — and Qualcomm have tried to promote USB-PD and QC as the common charging standards for phones. That means you can buy a standard charger and a cable that you can use across devices, and get similar charging speeds.
The Xiaomi 12 Pro charger is pretty chonkyBut that hasn’t always gone well. Only a few vendors like Apple, Google, and Samsung support USB-PD consistently.
Other manufacturers may or may not support both USB-PD and QC, but you’ll have to check a device’s specs every time to be sure. Phone makers like Apple and Samsung have removed the charging brick from their packages.
This works for consumers if they already had a charging brick that supported USB-PD charging, and had the compatible cable type. If you’re switching from one brand to another, you might not have the supporting combo.
A graphic provided by French phone analytics and testing company DxOMark describes how if you don’t use the prescribed cable + brick combo, you won’t get the marketed charging speeds.
Using a non-company charger doesn’t get you the marketed charging speed.So, for most phones, an off-the-shelf cable might not do the trick. And that’s a bummer.
There are also concerns about battery safety and longevity. Jeffrey Ravencraft, the President and COO of USB-IF, doesn’t feel that high wattage fast charging tech is good for our devices:
Now they can put six amps in the battery, right? What does this do? It allows the battery to charge quicker, but also has a thermal impact on the battery. Of course, batteries can only handle so much thermal energy before you could potentially damage the cells.
However, other experts I talked to said battery technology has advanced enough to handle high wattages for charging. But they also admitted that a lot of it has to do with product marketing, and a race to become the company with the fastest charging tech.
The Nubia Red Magic 7 Pro supports 135W fast charging.A lot of industry folks I talked to asked me, “Who needs this?”
Beyond a certain wattage point, returns of fast charging diminish. I wouldn’t REALLY care if my phone charged from 0 to 100% in 15 minutes instead of 9 minutes. It feels like a marketing gimmick that will get old real fast.
Over the last few years, phone components have gotten costlier. So, making custom hardware for fast charging could make a device that much more expensive. As a consumer, the tricky part is to figure out how much value it’s actually bringing to you — and buying something you’re happy with.
CHAdeMO is a fast-charging system for battery electric vehicles, developed in 2010 by the CHAdeMO Association, formed by the Tokyo Electric Power Company and five major Japanese automakers.[1] The name is an abbreviation of "CHArge de MOve" (which the organization translates as "charge for moving") and is derived from the Japanese phrase "o CHA deMO ikaga desuka" (お茶でもいかがですか), translating to English as "How about a cup of tea?", referring to the time it would take to charge a car.[1]
It competes with the Combined Charging System (CCS), which since 2014 has been required on public charging infrastructure installed in the European Union, Tesla's North American Charging Standard (NACS) used by its Supercharger network outside of Europe, and China's GB/T charging standard.
As of 2022 , CHAdeMO remains popular in Japan, but is being equipped on very few new cars sold in North America or Europe.
First-generation CHAdeMO connectors deliver up to 62.5 kW by 500 V, 125 A direct current[2] through a proprietary electrical connector, adding about 120 kilometres (75 mi) of range in a half an hour. It has been included in several international vehicle charging standards.
The second-generation specification allows for up to 400 kW by 1 kV, 400 A direct current.[3][4] The CHAdeMO Association is currently co-developing with China Electricity Council (CEC) the third-generation standard with the working name of “ChaoJi” that aims to deliver 900 kW.[5]
History
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CHAdeMO connector (left), with the competing Combined Charging System (CCS) Combo 2 connector (middle), and the AC Type 2 connector (right)CHAdeMO originated out of a charging system design from the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). TEPCO had been participating on numerous EV infrastructure trial projects between 2006 and 2009 in collaboration with Nissan, Mitsubishi, Fuji Heavy Industries (now Subaru), and other manufacturers.[6] These trials resulted in TEPCO developing patented technology and a specification,[7] which would form the basis for the CHAdeMO.[8]
The first commercial CHAdeMO charging infrastructure was commissioned in 2009 alongside the launch of the Mitsubishi i-MiEV.[9]
In March 2010, TEPCO formed the CHAdeMO Association with Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Subaru.[10] They were later joined by Hitachi, Honda and Panasonic.[11][12] CHAdeMO would be the first organization to propose a standardized DC fast charge system to be shared across diverse EVs, regardless of their brands and models.
CHAdeMO became a published international standard in 2014 when the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) adopted IEC 61851-23 for the charging system, IEC 61851-24 for communication, and IEC 62196-3 configuration AA for the connector. Later that year, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (EN) added CHAdeMO as a published standard along with CCS Combo 2, followed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2016.
A major blow to the international adoption of CHAdeMO came in 2013 when European Commission designated the Combined Charging System (CCS) Combo 2 as the mandated plug for DC high-power charging infrastructure in Europe.[13] While the European Parliament had contemplated transitioning out CHAdeMO infrastructure by January 2019, the final mandate only required that all publicly accessible chargers in the EU be equipped 'at least' with CCS Combo 2, allowing stations to offer multiple connector types.[14][15]
While CHAdeMO was the first fast-charging standard to see widespread deployment and remains widely equipped on vehicles sold in Japan, it has been losing market share in other countries. Honda was the first of the CHAdeMO Association members to stop equipping the connector on vehicles sold outside of Japan starting with the Clarity Electric in 2016. Nissan decided not to use CHAdeMO on its Ariya SUVs introduced in 2021 outside of Japan. Toyota and Subaru have also equipped their jointly developed bZ4X/Solterra with CCS connectors outside of Japan. As of June 2022 , the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and Nissan Leaf are the only plug-in vehicles equipped with CHAdeMO for sale in North America.[16]
As demand increased for EV charging services for Tesla vehicles after 2019, and prior to opening of the competing North American Charging Standard (NACS) in late 2022, several electric vehicle charging network operators had added some Tesla charging connector adapters to CHAdeMO-standard charging stations. These included, ONroute rest stop network in Ontario, Canada—where a Tesla adaptor was permanently attached to a CHAdeMO connector on some 60 charge stations—[17] and REVEL opened a charging station in Brooklyn for a while after they were denied a license to operate a Tesla ride-hailing fleet in New York City.[18] Also, EVgo, added a few optional Tesla adaptors to CHAdeMO connectors as early as 2019.[19][20]
Connector design
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CHAdeMOCHAdeMO electric vehicle connector
Type Automotive power connectorProduction historyProduced Since 2009General specificationsDiameter 70 millimetres (2.8 in)Pins 10 (1 reserved)ElectricalSignal high-voltage DCPinout Pinouts for CHAdeMO, looking at end of vehicle connectorFG Ground reference for control linesSS1 / SS2 Charge sequence signal start/stop chargingN/C (not connected) DCP Charging enable vehicle grants EVSE permission to connect powerDC+ / DC- DC power supplied powerPP Connector proximity detection charge interlock, disables drivetrain while connectedC-H / C-L CAN bus communication with vehicle bus to establish operational parametersDC fast charge
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Most electric vehicles (EV) have an on-board charger that uses a full bridge rectifier to transform alternating current (AC) from the electrical grid to direct current (DC) suitable for recharging the EV's battery pack. Most EVs are designed with limited AC input power, typically based on the available power of consumer outlets: for example, 240 V, 30 A in the United States and Japan; 240 V, 40 A in Canada; and 230 V, 15 A or 3φ, 400 V, 32 A in Europe and Australia. AC chargers with higher limits have been specified, for example SAE J1772-2009 has an option for 240 V, 80 A and VDE-AR-E 2623-2-2 has a 3φ, 400 V, 63 A. But these charger types have been rarely deployed.
Cost and thermal issues limit how much power the rectifier can handle, so beyond approximately 240 V AC and 75 A it is better for an external charging station to deliver DC directly to the battery. For faster charging, dedicated DC chargers can be built in permanent locations and provided with high-current connections to the grid. Such high voltage and high-current charging is called a DC fast charge (DCFC) or DC quick charging (DCQC).[citation needed]
Connector protocols and history
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While the notion of shared off-board DC charging infrastructure, together with the charging system design for CHAdeMO came out of TEPCOs trials starting in 2006, the connector itself had been designed in 1993, and was specified by the 1993 Japan Electric Vehicle Standard (JEVS) G105-1993 from the JARI.[21]
In addition to carrying power, the connector also makes a data connection using the CAN bus protocol.[22] This performs functions such as a safety interlock to avoid energizing the connector before it is safe (similar to SAE J1772), transmitting battery parameters to the charging station including when to stop charging (top battery percentage, usually 80%), target voltage, total battery capacity, and how the station should vary its output current while charging.[23]
The first protocol issued was CHAdeMO 0.9, which offered maximum charging power of 62.5 kW (125 A × 500 V DC). Version 1.0 followed in 2012, enhancing vehicle protection, compatibility, and reliability. Version 1.1 (2015) allowed the current to dynamically change during charging; Version 1.2 (2017) increased maximum power to 200 kW (400 A × 500 V DC).
CHAdeMO published its protocol for 400 kW (400 A × 1 kV) 'ultra-fast' charging in May 2018 as CHAdeMO 2.0.[24] CHAdeMO 2.0 allowed the standard to better compete with the CCS 'ultra-fast' stations being built around the world as part of new networks such as IONITY charging consortium.[25]
In 2014, CHAdeMO published its protocol for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) integration, which also includes applications for vehicle to load (V2L) or vehicle to home-off grid (V2H), collectively denoted V2X. The technology enables EV owners to use the car as an energy storage device, potentially lowering costs by optimising energy usage for the current time of use pricing and providing electricity to the grid.[26] Since 2012, multiple V2X demo projects using the CHAdeMO protocol have been demonstrated worldwide. Some of the recent projects include UCSD INVENT[27] in the United States, as well as Sciurus and e4Future[28] in the United Kingdom that are supported by Innovate UK.
CHAdeMO 3.0: ChaoJi
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Rendering of ChaoJi connectorIn August 2018, CHAdeMO Association announced they were co-developing the next-generation ultra-high-power protocol, named CHAdeMO 3.0, with China Electricity Council (CEC),[29] which would harmonise the CHAdeMO standard with the CEC GB/T charging standard 20234.3-2015. This project includes a new connector with the code name ChaoJi (Chinese: 超级; pinyin: Chāojí; lit. 'super'),[9] and plans to increase charging rate to 900 kW (600 A x 1.5 kV), all the while ensuring backward compatibility with the current CHAdeMO and GB/T 20234.3 (IEC 62916-3 configuration BB) DC chargers, according to the Association. It was revealed that ChaoJi can also be made backward compatible with CCS and such study is under consideration as of summer 2019.[30] The ChaoJi connector could also take the place of the DC connector of CCS Combo 2.[31]
By adopting liquid cooling within the cable and moving the locking mechanism from the connector to the vehicle, the ChaoJi connector is significantly lighter and more compact than the prior CHAdeMO design. IEC 68151-1 prohibits the use of adapters for high power charging; an amendment was submitted by the ChaoJi alliance to allow the use of adapters. A prototype adapter was built by Fujikura, but it was inflexible and heavy at nearly 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) because the cable did not use internal cooling.[9]
Deployment
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Charging stations
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CHAdeMO-type fast charging stations were initially installed in great numbers by TEPCO in Japan, which required the creation of an additional power distribution network to supply these stations.[32]
Since then, CHAdeMO charger installation has expanded its geographical reach and in May 2023, the CHAdeMO Association stated that there were 57,800 CHAdeMO chargers installed in 99 countries. These included 9,600 charging stations in Japan, 31,600 in Europe, 9,400 in North America, and 7,000 elsewhere.[33]
As of January 2022, a total of 260 certified CHAdeMO charger models have been produced by 50 companies.[34]
In vehicles
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CHAdeMO charging socket (left) on an all-electric Nissan Leaf. An SAE J1772 socket (IEC62196-2 type 1) is also shown on the right.Models supporting CHAdeMO charging include:[citation needed][35]
Gallery
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A TEPCO branded charger in Vacaville, California , U.S.
A charging site in Quebec, Canada with a 50 kW CHAdeMO / CCS "combo" DC fast charger and a Level 2 AC connector.
A "combo" fast charger station with Type 2, CHAdeMO, and CCS connectors
CHAdeMO plug
See also
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References
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