Fast Isn’t Fragile: Why Breathe Charge Delivers Speed and Stability
Fast charging sits at the centre of electrification. It’s what transforms “electric” from a compromise into a convenience. It turns adoption into everyday confidence.
As energy densities increase to meet the range and runtime demanded of modern products, electrodes face rising stress during charging. The very progress that makes batteries more capable also makes their control more critical.
At Breathe, we see that challenge as worth solving. Chemistry and cell design define what’s possible, but software decides how close you can get to those limits while remaining healthy and safe. Making fast charging better means more than saving time. It makes electrification effortless, desirable, and scalable.
The unseen bottleneck
Every battery has limits, but the real limitation isn’t always where we think it is.
In most systems today, charging is governed by what we can measure and estimate: voltage, current, temperature, and state of charge. Those are important signals, but they don’t tell the full story. They describe what’s happening at the surface and terminals, not what’s happening inside the cell.
Deep within each electrode, lithium moves and redistributes. Those microscopic dynamics determine how safely and quickly a battery can charge. While internal states can be studied during development using models and experiments, they can’t be observed directly during operation. Each charging session is unique, so engineers set broad safety limits to cover every possible scenario.
That’s why conventional charging often feels unbalanced. Sometimes it’s too aggressive when the cell isn’t ready; other times, it holds back when the cell could go faster without compromising health, and of course safety. Without visibility into what’s happening inside a cell, control systems struggle to strike that balance.
At Breathe, we saw that as an opportunity. If you can estimate a battery’s electrochemical states in real time, on-device, you can control it with more precision. You can replace static charge profiles with dynamic, physics-based decisions that extract more performance safely.
That realisation became the foundation for Breathe Charge. A charging approach built not on assumptions, but on understanding.
Watch the proof: Fast charging without compromise.
See how Volvo and Breathe are redefining what “ultra-fast” really means - reliable, adaptive, and proven in the real world.
Explore the full story of how our partnership with Volvo Cars brought adaptive charging to life in the new ES90: Read the announcement.
The shift from static profile to real-time control
With Breathe Charge, we embed physics-based estimators into the Battery Management System (BMS). Every second, it estimates internal states such as anode potential and cathode overpotential: the true indicators of how fast a battery can charge, while remaining healthy. With that visibility, it adjusts the charging current dynamically, in real time. Rather than a static charge curve, you get closed-loop control that adapts to every cell in your system, responding to its temperature, state of charge, and ageing pathway in real time.
Because the software:
estimates internal states such as anode potential and cathode overpotential.
dynamically adjusts charging current to stay within optimal margins, second by second.
inherently adapts across ageing, cell-to-cell variation and temperature changes.
meets the industry’s high standards with a successful ASPICE Level 2 assessment.
Fast becomes stable, because the system adjusts in real time to the unique behaviour of each cell.
Engineering for the real world
We designed Breathe Charge to be as seamless and easy to adopt as possible. That’s why it’s embedded software that works with your existing sensors, estimators, and battery cells, no new hardware needed.
Onboard compute is in high demand. The modern software-defined vehicle requires memory and compute cycles, while new AI features customers love, place a further demand. So, Breathe Charge is designed with the smallest possible footprint. Even when running over 160 instances of its physics-based estimator on a modern 800V EV pack, it only requires 35 kB of RAM, 40 kB of ROM, and 0.5 kB of Non-Volatile Memory (NVM), for example. It’s fully compliant with industry quality standards and scalable across chemistries, cell formats, and pack architectures.
So far, we’ve parameterised more than 75 cell types, from sub-20 mAh cells to over 200 Ah, covering LCO, NMC, LFP, silicon-graphite and pure graphite chemistries. That diversity ensures our control models perform not just in the lab, but in production.
From smartphones with OPPO, to electric vehicles with Volvo, and now to premium audio with Bang & Olufsen, Breathe Charge is proving that fast charging can be achieved without compromise across industries, form factors and chemistries alike.
Where speed meets control
Fast charging fails when control is coarse. It succeeds when control is precise. By working at the level of internal electrochemical states, Breathe Charge ensures that every milliamp is purposeful.
For engineers and product teams, that precision delivers tangible advantages:
Safely unlocks untapped performance by managing current through physics-based estimation, improving both headline metrics and everyday user experience.
Provides the flexibility to adapt charging strategies late in development as performance targets or hardware evolve, without leaving capability unused.
Delivers the same fast-charging performance as hardware upgrades at a fraction of the cost, reshaping how you work with suppliers and accelerating development.
It’s a different way of thinking about charging - one where speed and safety reinforce each other.
The next step
Breathe Charge makes fast charging a capability, not a compromise. It works deep within your system, tuned to your cells, responsive to every condition, proven in the real world.
Breathe Charge is already on the road today, powering the next generation of electric vehicles. And there’s more to come.
Stay tuned as new launches arrive, built on the same physics-based control that makes fast charging stable.
Learn why fast charging doesn't mean fragile batteries.
Dive deeper into the physics-based control that makes adaptive charging both faster and safer.