UFC FlashBattery recharges drones in five minutes

This is the claim of StoreDot, an Israeli company that has developed the UFC FlashBattery, a power source that works in tandem with the required ultra-fast charging (UFC) station to recharge 18 times faster than existing drone batteries and provide a flight time of 31 minutes.

The Future of Mobility: Shared and Ultra-Fast 

Fast smartphone charge technology based on biological semiconductors

According to StoreDot CEO Dr Doron Myersdorf, the UFC FlashBattery could recharge in one minute, but this would incur a penalty in terms of the number of cycles it could go through, which would be around 30 compared to 100-150.

A further trade off occurs relative to energy density, which stands at 170Wh/kg and 430Wh/l compared to industry ranges of 150-250Wh/kg and 300-700Wh/l respectively.

However, it can take between 60 to 90 minutes to charge a commercial drone, with full charge giving a flight time of just over 30 minutes. Slow charging - plus the added cost of extra batteries and manually swapping them out between flights – is hindering the growth of a commercial drone market estimated to be worth $129bn by 2025.