Experience New Dimensions of Charging with ELF | Tech Explained
Charging an electric car used to take ages. I could read a whole magazine, but now I barely have time to compose a LinkedIn post because Mercedes-Benz is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with electric car charging. I’m Rob, I’m your Tech-explainer, and this is Tech Explained. This is more than a rolling innovation lab. It’s called the experimental Lade Fahrzeug, but that’s a bit of a mouthful, so we call it ELF. ELF pushes the boundaries of what’s possible with super-fast charging, and for that there are three main things to think about. The charging path, reducing the amount of blockages between the grid and the battery. Then you need to look at the battery itself, how it’s constructed, what it’s made of, how it works. And then the thermal management, keeping everything nice and warm, but not too hot, not too cold. There are two main things to think about when talking about the charging path, where the electricity comes from the grid through the transformers into charging stations. Real ones are much bigger. And then getting the electricity from here into your car through the cables. So, let’s talk plugs. ELF is fitted with two kinds of plugs. The CCS, or combined charging plug, that you might know, but it can use it twice as fast as normal. But this is an experimental vehicle, so we need to go beyond what’s feasible and test everything. That’s why it’s got this unwieldy mega plug, and the coolest charging port I’ve ever seen. If you’re pumping way more than a thousand kilowatts in through the nose of the car, the final part of the charging path to take care of is the battery, and the liquid cooled battery in the floor of ELF has a cooling system seven times more powerful than a regular road car. And to cool the liquid in the liquid cooled battery, we need to remove the heat using an enormous fan, the size of a snow cannon on a mountain side. It’s incredibly powerful. Joking aside, already some of the fast charging technology that’s pioneered in ELF is being shared with the record-breaking concept AMG GTXX, which recently broke records on the test tracks of Nardo in Italy. Projects like this are really helping shape the future of mobility for all of us around the world. Let me know what you think of ELF in our comments, and if you’d like to know more about fast charging, I’ll see you again soon. Anybody got a phone charger? Hello? Anyone?
In this new episode of Tech Explained, our Techsplainer Rob Halloway electrifies you. Using our new experimental vehicle, named Experimentelles Ladefahrzeug (ELF), he explains how the electricity from the grid gets into the car via the charging station.
Watch the film and experience new dimensions of electric car charging!
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