China’s BYD Claims New Charging Tech Good for 400 km in 5 Minutes
Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker BYD claims its newest charging technology is capable of adding 400 km of range in just five minutes — quick enough that it might just turn skeptics into believers.
OK, there’s a lot to unpack here, starting with where and how this is supposed to work. Unsurprisingly, the ultra-fast EV chargers are set to launch in the automaker’s home market of China, where it says it plans to build 4,000 of them across the country, according to The Associated Press. The chargers themselves are capable of maximum speeds of a whopping one megawatt — nearly three times faster than the 350-kW stations in Canada. Those are currently the fastest public chargers available here.
The other caveat to consider is the voltage levels necessary to facilitate such rapid speeds. According to the Associated Press report, that would be 1,500 volts — again, nearly double that of the maximum capacity in Canada, which currently stands at 800 volts. That same report says the technology relies on silicon carbide power chips developed internally by BYD.
Of course, it’s important to remember that EV charging is affected by factors like ambient temperature and infrastructure load, meaning such pie-in-the-sky speeds are achievable in ideal conditions. But then anything close to a full charge in the time it takes to maw down a Happy Meal might be enough for fence-sitters to consider the switch to electrification.
