BYD, China’s Electric Vehicle automaker set the world of Electric Vehicles abuzz recently with a demonstration in which a car could add 150 miles of charge in just 5 minutes, addressing the reason potential car buyers when asked in surveys provide as answer to why they are not going electric, the charging. BYD plans to build 4000 charging stations across China and two new vehicles set to launch in April will be able to add 250 miles of range in just 5 minutes, when electric vehicles at large take between 20 minutes and 8 hours to fill up a battery.
This charging is twice as fast as Tesla’s next generation of Superchargers. Tesla’s fastest will charge 170 miles in 15 minutes while Mercedes claims 200 miles in 10 minutes.
Ultra high voltage current and a large current are required to maximize charging speeds, BYD’s founder Wang Chuanfu said in a statement, “To completely solve users’ anxiety over charging, our pursuit is to make the charging time for EVs as short as the refueling time for fuel vehicles,” Wang said.
The company also said that it’s flash-charging system relies on silicon carbide powder chips with voltage levels of up to 1,500v that it developed on its own while its Blade lithium-iron phosphate battery is perhaps the safest and most efficient EV battery, with Tesla opting to use it in some of its EVs, industry analyst Michael Dunne said in a recent report. Most popular EVs, including the Tesla Model 3, are built on 400 volt “platforms” which are usually cheaper to manufacture, however 800-volt models are on the rise, the upcoming Lucid Gravity has a 926-volt powertrain while BYD trumps it all.
Even though BYD’s ambition is to have 4000 chargers across China, Gil Tal, who directs the Electric Vehicle Research at UC Davis said it’s “Going to take a while” for BYD to get those chargers off the ground. Buillding charging stations can already be a multimonth, if not multiyear journey in most countries, due partially to lengthy permitting processes, but also the time it takes to find, build and assemble charging components. Larger megawatt charging stations have larger megawatt power needs, and might require pricey grid connection updates. An advanced Liquid Cool system, like the kind described by BYD, needs thick and heavy and specially manufactured cables and connectors that can dissipate heat quickly, they “neeed “Need more copper, more cooling, more everything.” says Gil Tal.
Is it Real?
BYD’s competitors are highly skeptical, current thinking in battery design suggest charging at this speed requires thin anodes and cathodes and thus less capacity, it’s true however that if one could charge this fast could tolerate less capacity and more charging stops as they would be shorter stops, other suggest charging at this speed was always possible but with high risk of battery degradation.
