Patent-free electric bus charger is 4x faster than Tesla’s Supercharger – 10-minute charge gets 48 km

Historically, range anxiety and long charging times have been among the consumer reservations when it came to the adopting of electric vehicles on a regular basis. However, the switch the EVs becomes more palatable when quick and widely available charging facilities are in place, as Tesla and its Supercharger network have demonstrated.

Electric powertrains work well in urban transportation, provided they operate with minimal downtime. EV manufacturer Proterra is aiming to speed up progress in the EV industry by opening up patents for a fast-charging system it has developed for buses, as it recognises the need to extend the benefits of electrification beyond small passenger vehicles.

Proterra’s high-voltage, overhead charging system uses robotic control and some autonomous software installed on the buses to replenish batteries in as quickly as 10 minutes, depending on the size of the battery pack. The system is claimed to be eight times quicker than the CHAdeMO fast-charging standard, and between three and four times faster than Tesla’s Superchargers.

“The interesting thing is these diesel buses have such massive fuel tanks — given how inefficient they are — that it takes longer to completely refill an 80- or 120-gallon diesel bus system than it does to recharge our electric vehicles,” says Proterra CEO Ryan Popple in an Ars Technica report. “So we’re actually getting to the point where the vehicles that are configured for fast charge can be replenished faster than you can stick a hose in the side of a diesel bus, and fill it with fuel.”

Proterra’s fast-charger can recharge a 100kWh electric bus in just ten minutes, sufficient for a circulator bus route of 48 km or less, says Popple. “We’ve gone from something that would have been considered a negative for EVs—slow overnight charging, and now we’ve gone to the point where EVs are advantaged relative to combustion powertrains in terms of speed and ease of refueling.”

The company goes beyond developing the technology on their own, instead they have decided to open up the patents to other industry participants. “We’re growing very quickly—we have a backlog that extends to the end of next year, we’re tripling shipments in 2017, and yet we still need to work out how to make this industry grow even faster.

“We discovered that competing electric bus offerings out there lack this kind of fast charging equipment, which for larger fleets is a core tool you need in the kit to do a large-scale EV deployment. So by offering these patents to any other industry participants we think we can get this market to go even faster,” Popple added.

The decision to release core patents started from one of Proterra’s early customers asking if it could buy electric buses from another company and still use Proterra’s infrastructure. The first customer was given a transferable license for the intellectual property, but rather than repeat the long, drawn-out process for every customer over and over, Proterra decided to package the relevant patents and offer them under an open license.

“It helps heavy-duty urban electrification to move faster, but allows us to stick to our core business,” Popple said.

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