Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer BYD has revealed new fast-charging tech that can add 400km (249 miles) of range from a five minute charge. With the announcement, BYD has also promised to make a major investment in charging infrastructure, building over 4,000 of the new fast chargers across China.
The “Super e-Platform” tech is capable of charging at peak speeds of 1,000kW, double the fastest Tesla V4 superchargers, which will peak at 500kW when they roll out this year. The faster charging tech is initially available in two new vehicles, the Han L sedan and Tang L SUV, which start at 270,000 yuan (around $37,330).
“In order to completely solve our users’ charging anxiety, we have been pursuing a goal to make the charging time of electric vehicles as short as the refuelling time of petrol vehicles,” BYD founder Wang Chuanfu said from a Shenzhen launch event. “This is the first time in the industry that the unit of megawatt has been achieved on charging power.”
Trivial answer is there - They raised voltage to whooping 1kV (compared to 480V in tesla chargers) - but that creates a whole bunch of new issues
In theory, higher voltage × lower amps = same power (W=V×A, you can double V and halve A and get the same power). Or in this case, double the double the voltage, same current, double the power maybe?
There is still some voodoo happening with the batteries to be able to take the charge so quickly. More battery cells charging in parallel is probably part of it, but it couldn’t be all of it.
Really tough to speculate off of this thin announcement.
Charging in parallel vs in series.
Putting the battery cells in parallel doesn’t change the stress that each cell needs to handle in terms of charging power. It is quite impressive to put 1MW of power into a <100kW battery and expecting it to last >10 years.
10C* charging isn’t all that exceptional
But also charging a Tesla on a road trip takes ~15 minutes each couple of hundred kilometres, that’s often not enough time to get a coffee and use a toilet; it’s never long enough to get a meal.
On a thousand kilometre trip recently for a lunch break my partner would find a place to get lunch and order for themself and me while I waited in the car for it to become charged enough. I would generally get to the lunch place before food was served
Faster isn’t much use until it’s fast like filling a petrol tank
*10 times capacity – Charging rate 10 times faster in kilowatts than the battery capacity in kilowatt-hours