China’s electric carmakers are outclassing their Western competition so much that it’s almost not news at this point. But their technological supremacy hit such a crescendo in recent weeks that even people who aren’t car nerds had no choice but to perk up.
BYD, China’s leading electric-vehicle maker, unveiled what you could call the holy grail of EV technology: A car that can charge up nearly as quickly as filling your gas tank.
Hefty tariffs on Chinese automobiles mean BYDs aren’t coming to America anytime soon, and that got us thinking: What would it take for this kind of tech breakthrough to hit the U.S. market? After all, any EV driver would welcome charging stops that are quicker than the current norm of 15 to 40 minutes.
There are two main components at play here: the cars themselves and the necessary charging infrastructure. Let’s break down what would need to happen in each of those areas for ultra-fast, high-powered charging to take off in America.
BYD’s Big Charging News
The core of what BYD revealed was vehicle technology—not a new, more powerful kind of EV charger. So if other automakers want to match this kind of capability, they’ll need to overhaul their cars from the ground up.
BYD’s new “Super e-Platform” debuts in the Han L sedan and Tang L SUV, which went on sale this week. Its most eye-popping claim is that it enables 400 kilometers (250 miles) of range to be added in just five minutes of charging. Even if we shrink that figure to account for the generosity of China’s EV range estimates—under more realistic EPA testing, we’re talking about roughly 165 miles—that still blows away the competition.
Tesla says its new Model Y can add 169 miles of range in 15 minutes of charging. So the BYD notches charging times that are about three times quicker. The kicker: The Han L costs about the same as the Model Y in China.
The Cars
So what’s BYD’s edge? It starts at the core of any EV: the battery. BYD has made strides that other manufacturers would need to emulate in order to achieve similar levels of performance.
Attempt to shove too much power into a battery cell that can’t handle it, and you get nasty side effects, said Bryan McCloskey, a chemical engineering professor specializing in batteries at the University of California, Berkeley.
If the lithium ions in a cell move too quickly from a battery’s positive electrode to its negative one—that’s the process of charging—metal deposits can build up over time in a process called lithium plating. Too-fast charging can also create excess heat. Both outcomes can spur unwanted reactions within a cell, degrade its energy capacity over time and, in the worst case, lead to catastrophic failure.
But for its latest “Blade” battery, BYD says it has cut the internal resistance of its cells to allow ions to flow more freely. And it seems to have managed the heat issue at both the cell and pack level too.
“I think there's no question that it's a breakthrough,” McCloskey said, adding that the five-minute charge that BYD demonstrated, which added roughly 60% to a Han L’s state of charge, is “wildly impressive.” Still, he’d like to see how these batteries hold up over years of repeated charging and if any major incidents occur.
Another important caveat: Generally speaking, you can make a battery that packs a ton of energy or charges crazy fast—but not both. So the lithium-iron-phosphate cells BYD developed probably can’t contain nearly as much energy nor deliver as much range as batteries from rivals. That helps explain why the Han L offers the EPA equivalent of under 300 miles of range, which is fine but not great.
BYD also needed an electrical system that could handle the same monstrous power as its battery. That’s why the Super e-Platform is rated for a whopping 1,000 kilowatts, 1,000 volts and 1,000 amps.
In EVs, more kilowatts equals faster charging. The Model Y can support a peak charging power of 250 kW. The Lucid Gravity, now America’s fastest-charging EV, can suck in an impressive 400 kW. BYD has produced the first passenger EV that can take in 1,000 kW, otherwise known as one megawatt.
The 1,000-volt electrical system is key to getting those kilowatts up, and BYD says that’s another first. The laws of physics say that at a higher voltage, you can pump in higher charging power while keeping the current (aka amps) constant, or not raising it too much. This helps boost charging speeds without generating too much heat, the enemy of faster charging.
So why doesn’t every car company make 1,000-volt EVs? They are moving in that direction, and toward faster and faster public charging, but it isn’t easy.
Vehicles like the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Porsche Macan Electric and Tesla Cybertruck have 800-volt electrical systems. The Gravity pushes the bar higher with a 926-volt architecture. But 400-volt systems have been the industry standard for years. Most components available to automakers are designed for 400-volt systems, and engineering new systems increases development costs.
To understand why this leap forward in vehicle technology happened in China and not the U.S., it helps to recognize how far ahead China’s EV market is in almost every way. That country’s government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to make its auto industry a global powerhouse. Moreover, China has experienced intense consumer demand and ruthless competition between EV manufacturers. So BYD and its rivals have a huge incentive to crank out mind-blowing stuff to stay ahead.
“A lot of that innovation is pushed because every six or seven weeks, there's another announcement from Huawei, from Zeekr, or from Xpeng,” said Tu Le, managing director of the consulting firm Sino Auto Insights, naming just a few of China’s cutting-edge EV brands. “Who’s pushing Tesla here in North America?”
The Charging
Vehicles are one limiting factor for megawatt charging in America right now. But we would also need new, higher-powered EV charging stations similar to what BYD unveiled alongside the Super e-Platform.
The automaker revealed a 1,360-kW charger and said it planned to deploy 4,000 of them across China. The unit has two cables, which drivers can plug into their Han L or Tang L’s dual charging ports for maximum charging power. BYD also says drivers can plug into two standard chargers simultaneously for twice the juice.
Most DC fast chargers in the U.S. are rated for 150-350 kW. But charging industry executives told InsideEVs there’s not much standing in the way of megawatt chargers in the U.S. apart from a lack of demand.
“On the infrastructure side, we can get there,” said Andrew Cornelia, CEO of Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging, which operates 400-kW plugs at its stations.
Companies like Tesla have already been developing megawatt chargers for heavy-duty electric trucks, which have enormous batteries and need extremely high-powered charging to reduce downtime. Kempower, a charging hardware manufacturer, is working on a 1.2-MW charging unit for electric semis.
“Our target really has never been: we want to charge a car in 10 minutes,” said Jed Routh, Kempower’s vice president of markets and products for North America. “There’s no reason why we couldn’t. It would be the same technology, assuming the cars could take it.”
Installing megawatt charging stations could require expensive, time-consuming grid upgrades in certain areas. That’s already hampering the rollout of electric-truck stops in California. BYD said large stationary batteries, also known as microgrids, will help augment the grid at some locations, per CarNewsChina.
So five-minute, megawatt charging is achievable in the U.S. But is it even necessary? Some experts and executives in the EV space aren’t convinced. Cornelia called BYD’s announcement a “watershed moment,” but he also said typical gas-station stops are between 10 and 12 minutes.
“So that’s actually the number we’re solving for,” he said. “Do we need to charge in five minutes? The answer is probably no.”
Then again, BYD’s announcement just made a lot of headlines in America, a country where it doesn’t even sell cars. It’s hard to believe other automakers wouldn’t kill for that sort of attention—especially in a place where car buyers are driven by “want,” not “need.”
Got a tip about the EV or charging world? Contact the author: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com
