China is back with another engineering marvel. This time, in the form of BYD’s new battery system which is reportedly capable of charging an electric car in just five minutes – roughly the same amount of time as refueling a combustion vehicle.
The industry has long aimed to accomplish this feat, one that is often seen as the last hurdle against EV adoption. BYD's system is termed the "Super e-platform" and is claimed to be capable of adding one mile of range every second when charging.
This results in roughly 250 miles (400 km) of range in five minutes. That’s quicker than going to your nearest gas station for a quick refill. BYD's new 1-megawatt flash chargers will officially roll out in China first, with 4,000 new fast charging stations to be built across the country.
BYD’s claimed charging speeds are more than twice that of current EV manufacturers including Tesla. At a high-voltage Supercharger, Tesla's best charging rate can boost range by 170 miles (273.5 km) in 15 minutes. In the US, the majority of fast chargers on the market range between 200-350 kW, so in practice, it's double the standard.
"BYD officially releases flash charging battery with ultra-high voltage of 1000V, ultra-large current of 1000A, and ultra-large power of 1000kW, achieving global mass production of megawatt flash charging with the highest peak charging speed of 1 second and [1.2 miles], completely solving users’ charging anxiety when traveling," BYD stated on its Weibo page last week.
In addition to outperforming Tesla, BYD has also declared that it will be equipping all of its cars with cutting-edge self-driving capabilities. And the performance of BYD's autonomous system has been praised by early-stage reviewers.
China is one of Tesla's most important markets, so the company is also feeling the pinch of BYD's technological progress. In an attempt to regain market dominance, the US manufacturer has started providing free trials of its own autonomous driving system of late, after seeing a 49% decline in Chinese sales in February. BYD on the other hand, experienced a 161% increase.
Mercedes-Benz recently announced its new CLA coupe would be able to add up to 200 miles (321.8 km) of range in 10 minutes, while the Chinese companies Zeekr and CATL debuted batteries that could almost fully charge in 10 minutes last year. So, we’re clearly on the right path.
However, there are widespread inhibitions against the use of fast chargers, as they’re widely believed to reduce the total lifespan of an EV battery – although there is currently little data to support the theory.
BYD's new Han and Tang L EVs, which will retail later this year for 270,000 to 360,000 Yuan (or US$37,300 to $49,800 respectively), will be the first to employ this battery tech technology.
Since existing chargers are often slow or damaged, and charging infrastructure has been slow to expand, the shift to EVs has caused more growing pains than many in the industry had anticipated.
But just as the current gas-powered car infrastructure took decades to create, it's only natural that EV maturity will also take time. Even if this technology was created for China, at least at present, BYD's Super E-Platform launch is a significant day for the EV industry as a whole.
Your move, Tesla.
Source: BYD
The parallel with gas stations is not totally true. First, ICE have longer range thus need less stations in general. Secondly, refilling is easy and you can easily store gas at home or in your trunk or buy it in any general store. A pump is a plus but is not needed in fact as you can fill directly from jerrycan. Thus, there was not really the need of an infrastructure at first, just to sell gas in existing stores, that was indeed already selled for other uses.