Charging electric cars is much better than it used to be, but it's still far from as convenient as filling up on gasoline Fortunately, there are many efforts underway to make it happen, including this brand new charging cable from Ford

Developed in conjunction with Purdue University, this charging cable can theoretically charge an EV's battery in about five minutes Not quite as fast as filling up with gasoline, but remarkably close

Currently, even the best electric vehicles take about 30 minutes to charge This is because the battery charge slows down considerably once it starts to reach 100%

One of the biggest challenges with fast charging is heat The more current that powers the battery, the more heat is generated This is true for all batteries, whether they are large batteries for EVs or small batteries in cell phones

Heat also negatively affects the long-term health of the battery, accelerating degradation and reducing the amount of power the battery can store While this is annoying for cell phones, it is a major problem for cars costing tens of thousands of dollars

Modern EVs have cooling systems to combat this, but they only work up to a certain point, limiting overall charging speed However, the Ford/Purdue cable has a unique cooling system that removes a lot of excess heat before it reaches the battery, thus reducing the strain on the battery itself and the car's own thermal management system [Ford claims that these cables can remove more heat than conventional cooling systems

Unfortunately, this technology will not be implemented anytime soon First, there are no EV batteries that can handle the high voltages required for such a fast charge To reduce the charging time from 30 minutes to just 5 minutes would require a tremendous amount of current, but Ford has not specified the amount of current this cable can handle

This is not to say that this news is a big deal The process of speeding up charging requires solving multiple problems, and removing the heat blob from the equation would solve one of the big problems with fast charging

Let's just hope this vapor-enabled cooling system doesn't end up in the wrong vaporware Because a future may be coming when we won't have to ask how long it takes to charge an electric car