EV charging: 160km in 5 minutes? Polestar 5 XFC "extreme fast charging" prototype coming

Polestar, the popular sports-luxury spinoff of Volvo and Chinese parent Geely, has confirmed an investment with Israeli battery developer StoreDot to utilise its XFC system – which, Polestar claims, can achieve its extreme charging speeds with existing lithium-ion EV battery designs.

Last week's Polestar Day in Los Angeles was the scene of the announcement, but for now, the companies are offering no details on how the XFC system works and what sort of power outputs it will deliver.

The brand has yet to say if it will integrated StoreDot's tech into the production Polestar 5, but determining that is of course part of the prototyping process. Polestar is a StoreDot investor, however, so it will undoubtedly be planning to drive the XFC system to production in time for the 5's launch.

How the XFC tech will be integrated into public charging stations is still to be seen, and with North America rapidly moving towards Tesla's Supercharger network as a new standard (NACS) – including Polestar [↗] – it'll be interesting to see if Tesla will need to come on board with XFC.

“StoreDot is making huge strides forward in the development of their extreme fast charging technology and we are a proud investor and partner in its evolution," Polestar boss and former Volvo design chief Thomas Ingenlath said.

«StoreDot’s pioneering extreme fast charging batteries, combined with our upcoming top-of-the-line electric powertrain, can revolutionise the ownership experience for EV owners with the ability to recharge in minutes.”

First, it plans to get its XFC charging speed down to three minutes for 160km of driving by 2028, and two minutes by 2032 – about as long as it takes to fuel a petrol car (albeit without the same amount of range).

StoreDot's '100inX' roadmap, announced in 2021, will then call for advancing its battery designs to a semi-solid state, and then a post-lithium design.

»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," Dr Myersdorf said.

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