The original note, as written at the time
A fast charging unit that takes advantage of an on-site cooling system that plugs into your car or device together with the power cable, in a bid to achieve super fast charging of electric batteries.
Ongoing development
A fast charging unit that uses an on-site cooling system, plugging into the car or device together with the power cable, to achieve super-fast charging of electric batteries.
This is the correct answer to the right question, and it is the opposite of the direction the industry took. We spent a decade making chargers more powerful; the limit was never the power, it was the heat.
A battery charges fast when it is cool and refuses when it is hot, so a charger that can remove heat while pumping current can go faster than one that merely pumps harder. The cooling belongs at the point of connection, because that is where the heat is generated and where a car can be reached without redesigning it.
The systemic consequence is that fast charging stops requiring a battery built for it. If the thermal problem is solved externally, the pack can be optimised for cost and life rather than for the one afternoon a year it needs to take 300 kW. That is a much cheaper vehicle for everybody.
The cost is the infrastructure. A cooled charger is a refrigeration plant, and refrigeration plants need maintenance and a supply chain that a market stall with a generator does not have. So this works first where vehicles are already pooled — a fleet depot, a bus terminal — where one plant serves fifty vehicles.
The detail that decides whether it is worth anything is the interface: the cooling has to couple to the pack through a surface that is clean, mated properly and used a thousand times. That is a connector problem, and connector problems are where good ideas go to die.