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Sedan

Other than range, the speed with which an electric vehicle can be charged can either encourage or deter you from choosing it. Lucid used this point to punt its Air sedan, boasting that the EV can add 300 miles of range in a mere 20 minutes. This year, Toyota will unveil a prototype vehicle with a solid-state battery that can be recharged in a mere 10 minutes.

Well, how about a car battery that can be fully recharged in five minutes? An Israeli company called StoreDot has developed just that and it could be a game-changer. While lithium-ion batteries are currently used in many EVs, solid-state batteries were expected to take over in the future.

However, StoreDot's extreme fast charging (XFC) battery is also a lithium-ion design. Described as engineering samples rather than a lab prototype, the design sees the key replacement of graphite in the battery with what is called metalloid nanoparticles. It's this change that has allowed for the far superior charging rates of StoreDot's battery.

"Today's announcement marks an important milestone, moving XFC for the first time beyond innovation in the lab to a commercially-viable product that is scalable for mass production," said CEO of StoreDot, Dr. Doron Myersdorf.

Myersdorf said that the company's plan is to launch its second-gen battery later this year. This version uses silicon and is intended for use in electric vehicles.

As you can see in the video above, the first-gen battery has already been demonstrated in a two-wheeled electric scooter, when it charged from 15 to 100 percent in just five minutes. The only barriers now are the existing charging stations and grids, which will need to be upgraded to work with the capabilities of StoreDot's new batteries.

With the gulf in price between EVs and conventionally-powered vehicles rapidly closing, and charging times potentially dropping to around the same time it takes to fill up your car with gas, the final major hurdles to EV ownership are set to come tumbling down. With Tesla having set up an R&D office in Israel, perhaps Musk's EVs would be a worthy first recipient of the groundbreaking battery tech, giving them a one-up on competitors from Porsche and Lucid.