Research Funding Project D-SEe

In the fall months of 2018, the research funding project “Continuous fast charging concept for electric vehicles” – D-SEe for short – started, which was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. In the summer, the D-SEe project came to a successful conclusion.

Background to the project: For the next few years, car manufacturers are announcing the installation of traction batteries of approx. 100kWh, which will enable ranges of up to 500km. However, charging stations with today’s charging power of 50kW need about 1.6 hours for this battery size to recharge 80% of the battery capacity – about enough for 400km range. The goal of the overall project – to reduce the charging time for 80% full charge to a quarter of an hour – was achieved.

Together with the cooperation partners Hofer Mechatronik, Sensor-Technik Wiedemann, ElringKlinger, Voltavision, Keysight Technologies and the Bochum University of Applied Sciences, innolectric spent four and a half years analyzing and optimizing the entire energy flow chain from the power grid, charging electronics and charging cable to the vehicle battery. The result is a fast charging station with 450 kW charging power and a prototype vehicle suitable for reproducibility, which together are capable of charging the energy required to drive 400 km into the vehicle battery in just 15 minutes. A 450 kW charging station is equivalent to 11 times the charging power of today’s systems.

The sub-project of innolectric consisted in realizing an intelligent charging communication for DC charging. The developed module takes over the entire communication between charging station and vehicle and ensures a smooth charging process.

In order to be able to reliably implement the fast charging process, a fast-charging vehicle battery had to be developed based on available cell technologies, which, among other things, has both high economic efficiency and high-performance yet compact thermal management. In addition, existing charging standards as well as requirements of the electrical supply network had to be taken into account. Components were also optimized on the charging station side, while complying with all applicable standards.

In a realistic test program, the development components of all cooperation partners were set up and put into operation. These include the fast-charging station and vehicle battery. The charging process on the prototype was demonstrated to the public for the first time in October 2022.

You can find more about the project here.