Charging an electric car still isn’t as quick as grabbing gas. But it’s getting there, and the tech is moving faster than ever.
Last month, China’s BYD unveiled next-generation vehicles that promise to add 250 miles of range in just five minutes of charging. Then CATL, the world’s largest battery manufacturer, said “hold my beer” and announced a pack that it claims can add over 323 miles in the same short period. Factoring in China’s overly optimistic range estimates, we’re looking at around 170 miles of real-world range for the BYD and 210 for the CATL pack—still super impressive, and unlike anything the industry has ever seen.
Here in the U.S., Lucid Motors is the new charging king. The Gravity SUV hits the general public this month as the quickest-charging EV outside of China, according to testing by InsideEVs contributor and State of Charge YouTube host Tom Moloughney.
So when I attended a media preview for the Gravity this month, I was eager to catch up with Emad Dlala, Lucid’s senior vice president of powertrain, about charging tech. Dlala gave me the download on how Lucid got its SUV to charge so quickly and why BYD’s news may not be all it’s cracked up to be.
The Gravity: A 400 kW Charging Monster
First, though, just how fast does this SUV juice up? For that, we turn to Tom’s test at a 350-kilowatt EVgo dispenser.
The Gravity is theoretically able to accept 400 kW of peak charging power. In Tom’s test from a depleted battery, it maxed out at 375 kW. That’s only a bit more than EVs like the Porsche Taycan or GMC Hummer EV, which top out at 350 kW.
What may be even more important is that the SUV also sustained high charging power for a significant chunk of the charging session. The way charging power ramps up and then declines over the course of a fueling stop is known as an EV’s “charging curve,” and the Gravity has a very good one. It charged at over 300 kW until almost a 40% state of charge. It maintained over 200 kW up to nearly 50%.
In mileage terms, the Gravity added 100 miles of EPA-rated range in just over five minutes, 200 miles in 10.9 minutes, 250 miles in 15 minutes and a whopping 300 miles in 20 minutes. These numbers are pretty much unheard of this side of the Pacific.
How Lucid Did It
So, how did Lucid beat Tesla, Rivian, Hyundai and everybody else at charging? That started with a new battery cell capable of accommodating lots of energy in a short period of time, Dlala said. Lucid worked with Panasonic to develop a new cell with better energy density (800 watt-hours per liter) and charging abilities than what came in the startup’s first car, the Air.
According to Dlala, the new cell also performs better in extreme heat and cold. It’s a cylindrical 2170 cell, meaning it’s 21 mm wide and 70 mm tall.
There’s always a push and pull between how much energy (aka miles) a battery can store and how quickly it can recharge. This is because packing more active material into a cell creates resistance as lithium ions flow from one electrode to the other.
“Here's the thing people still don't understand: You can get a power cell that gives you much less energy, but gives you much faster charging speed,” Dlala said. Importantly, he said, Lucid’s new cell charges quickly without compromising energy density. That helped the Gravity land a stellar EPA range rating of 450 miles.
The battery was just the start. Lucid then had to engineer the rest of the Gravity to also accept super-fast charging speeds. “We had to also rethink and redesign the entire thermal system and architecture in order to support this very high-power cell,” Dlala said. Thermal issues are a big reason why many cars cannot charge at peak rates for too long. Overheating can cause parasitic reactions in a battery that degrade its capacity over time, for example.
The Gravity isn’t just a taller, longer Air. It uses an entirely new powertrain and platform. It runs at 926 volts—more than double the voltage of typical EVs—which was key for increasing charging speeds. At higher voltages, you need less current (aka fewer amps) to achieve the same level of charging power and speed (aka kilowatts). That’s a big help because more current generates exponentially more heat.
To help manage the heat of faster charging, Dlala’s team developed a new thermal system. They changed the layout of the vehicle’s radiators, optimized for better air intake up front, installed separate cooling systems for the drive units and charging system and developed a new cooling plate for the battery pack.
Why doesn’t every automaker do this? Many are moving in the direction of higher-voltage systems. But the development costs are higher, and there are more 400-volt components available off-the-shelf. Excluding engineering costs, Lucid’s 926-volt system doesn’t add much cost to the Gravity, if any, Dlala said. That likely wouldn’t be true for legacy automakers, though, which often source many components from existing suppliers. Lucid, Tesla and other newer companies design far more components in-house, making it easier to transition to higher-voltage systems.
Since the system is working at a lower current, Lucid actually saved money on cables, connectors, inverters and motors, he said. The battery management system gets a little more expensive because it’s dealing with more cells. “So overall I think it’s a wash, or $100, $200 more expensive,” he said.
Efficiency is also a critical ingredient here that many other automakers overlook. (Looking at you, General Motors, with your 9,000-lb electric Cadillac Escalade.) Maximizing the distance the Gravity can travel per kilowatt-hour goes a long way toward shortening charging stops. The Gravity can go just about as far as the Escalade, but the latter has an additional Tesla Model Y’s worth of battery capacity. So even though the Escalade offers up to 350 kW charging, its real-world charge time on a road trip will be far longer.
Dlala said Lucid thinks about efficiency in terms of three major areas: rotating parts (wheels, brakes, motors), electronics (the battery and other systems) and aerodynamics.
“You break it down in those families of energy consumption sources, and you start tackling all of them,” he said. Small improvements can have cascading effects across the whole vehicle. For example, by making the motors more compact, the automaker was able to also shorten the overall height of the vehicle and reduce drag.
The Tesla Supercharger Problem
One challenge was making sure the Gravity could perform well on Tesla Superchargers. The Gravity is among the first EVs to come from the factory with the Tesla-designed North American Charging System port that the auto industry is slowly migrating toward. And the Gravity, like an increasing number of EVs from non-Tesla manufacturers, can access the formerly exclusive Tesla Supercharger network.
The problem is that most Superchargers operate at 500 volts, because most Teslas can’t accept more than that. Lucid needed a way to step the electricity coming from a Supercharger up to 926 volts, or else charging wouldn’t work. So it repurposed the Gravity’s rear drive unit to act as a voltage booster. I won’t pretend to understand how this works, but you can listen to Dlala explain it in-depth here.
The Gravity still can’t do 400 kW on most Superchargers—that’s only possible on more modern 1,000-volt dispensers like those from Electrify America and EVgo—but it can manage a solid 225 kW. Tesla is also slowly rolling out its so-called V4 chargers, with 1,000-volt capability. They currently support charging speeds of up to 325 kW, and promise to support 500 kW later this year.
Dlala said Lucid also developed the first NACS port rated for 500 amps and 1,000 volts.
Charging Showdown: Lucid vs. BYD
So what about BYD’s bombshell charging breakthrough? I was curious to hear Dlala’s thoughts, given that the Chinese firm beats Lucid’s charging performance on paper. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he sees some drawbacks to BYD’s approach and thinks Lucid’s tech is better.
He said that BYD clearly prioritized charging power and speed over energy density and range for its new battery, which isn’t Lucid’s style. Sure enough, the BYD Han L, which uses its “flash-charging” tech, has an EPA-equivalent range rating of under 300 miles.
Plus, BYD’s tech works best with 1,000-kilowatt charging stations. Dlala doubts the usefulness of that, given that that caliber of infrastructure isn’t widely available right now. The highest-powered chargers in America dispense 350-500 kW.
Of course, you could also argue that the reason we don’t have even beefier chargers is that we don’t have any vehicles that could use them. In China, BYD, Huawei and Zeekr are deploying ultra-high-powered charging dispensers to meet demand from a new generation of fast-charging cars. And, to BYD’s credit, its new cars have dual charge ports and can juice up from two stalls simultaneously. That means they can get a lot out of current EV charging infrastructure.
“We could even make this charge faster. But is it going to be utilized on our infrastructure? And also: Is it worth the added cost and, of course, compromising some of the range? That’s the question,” he said. “I think we really hit the right balance.”
Got a tip about the EV world? Contact the author: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com
