The Israeli start-up StoreDot first caused a stir at CES in Las Vegas back in 2015, when it showed how to charge a smartphone battery in about a minute. The company has now applied the technology to the batteries of electric vehicles in order to fully recharge them in only five minutes. BP is so impressed by this technology that the group has invested $20 million in StoreDot. Daimler had already invested $60 million in the company in 2017, and Samsung is also on board.

The secret of StoreDot is the lithium-ion batteries developed in-house, which consist of chemi-cally synthesized organic molecules of non-biological origin. The company also uses enormously high currents (about 40 amps for smartphone batteries) when charging to increase electron mobility. An electric vehicle's battery charged in this manner apparently offers a range of 480 km. This is nevertheless expected to require a new class of chargers that StoreDot has not yet presented. In January 2018, BP had already invested $5 million in FreeWire , an American com-pany that has developed mobile charging stations for electric cars.