Shell says new immersion-cooling fluid can cut EV charging to under 10 minutes
Shell Lubricants and RML Group developed a Gas-to-Liquid thermal fluid that the company says enabled a 34 kWh battery to charge 10–80% in under 10 minutes during laboratory testing.
Shell Lubricants announced a proprietary immersion-cooling thermal fluid that the company says allowed a test battery to charge from 10% to 80% in under 10 minutes, a development Shell described as part of its effort to "enable more value with less emissions." The company said the technology can tolerate higher charging currents without compromising battery safety, lifespan or performance.
Developed in collaboration with RML Group and built on Shell's Gas-to-Liquid (GTL) technology, the Shell EV-Plus Thermal Fluid is an electrically non-conductive liquid designed to fill the interstitial spaces within a battery pack and provide direct contact cooling to each cell. Shell said it built and tested a 34 kWh pack immersed in the fluid and that the approach reduces thermal stress and allows faster, more uniform heat removal during high-rate charging.
Jason Wong, global executive vice president of Shell Lubricants, said the work "is a testament to our commitment to collaborative innovation towards enabling more value with less emissions — building on our experience in high-performance transformer oils, proprietary GTL technology, and single-phase immersion cooling fluids for data centres." Robert Mainwaring, Shell's lead engineer on the project, said the ambition was to show how the fluids could "support significant reductions in charging time without compromising cell integrity and lifetime." Both quotes were provided by Shell.
Shell said the thermal fluid accommodates the high levels of heat generation associated with rapid charging, ensures consistency and control of temperatures across the battery pack, and offers protection against adverse thermal events. In its briefing, the company asserted that immersion cooling can enable production of smaller, lighter batteries that require fewer components and can be charged via the existing EV charging network. Shell also said, in a hypothetical example, that if a lightweight aerodynamic vehicle operating at about 10 km/kWh used the fluid, it would achieve a charging rate of roughly 24 km per minute spent charging — a figure Shell contrasted with a typical rate of about 5 km per minute for many current battery-electric vehicles.
Shell described the EV-Plus Thermal Fluid as building on its experience in transformer oils and single-phase immersion cooling technologies used in data centres. The company framed the development as addressing two common barriers to EV adoption: charging speed and range anxiety. Shell also said the immersion approach "optimises performances whilst significantly reducing the number and mass of components," and claimed the method could enable "up to five times more range addition than typical BEVs," phrasing those results as outcomes of its testing and design assumptions.
The announcement comes amid a broader industry push for faster-charging solutions from automakers, charging-network providers and other suppliers. Immersion cooling has been used in data centres and has drawn attention within the automotive supply chain as a potential way to manage heat in high-power charging scenarios, but widespread deployment in production vehicles would require vehicle design changes, supplier integration and regulatory clearance.
Shell did not provide a public timetable for commercial release of the fluid or details on long-term durability testing beyond the 34 kWh pack mentioned in its materials. The company said the work with RML Group demonstrates a feasible pathway to faster charging through advanced thermal management and that further engineering and collaboration with vehicle manufacturers would be needed to scale the solution for consumer models.
Shell's announcement highlights growing interest from energy companies in electric-vehicle technologies as automakers and charging providers pursue a range of technical approaches to shorten charging times while preserving battery health. The company presented the EV-Plus Thermal Fluid as one element in a portfolio of technologies aimed at improving energy efficiency and lowering emissions in transport applications; Shell characterized the project as part of an "evolution" in its lubricants and thermal-management businesses.