BYD unveils world’s fastest EV charger

From the newsletter

Electric vehicle manufacturer BYD has unveiled the world’s fastest charger with a power of 1 MW, capable of fully charging a car in five minutes and providing a range of 400 km. The first EV models to support the super-fast charging technology will be the Han L saloon and the Tang L SUV. Pre-orders of the vehicles have begun in China before they are opened to the rest of the world.  

• The superfast charger is a gamechanger for electric mobility as EVs will now take nearly as much time to charge as it takes to refill a fuel car at a filling station. It obliterates the power of ABB’s Terra 360, which has been the world’s fastest charger with a capacity of up to 360 kW. 

• BYD will begin the construction of supercharging stations that support 1 MW of charging power, with plans to build more than 4,000 such facilities. It will however take months and possibly years before the chargers and the vehicles that support the charger are available to the wider world. 

More details

• Despite advancements in EV technology, charging anxiety, where EV users fret about the long time it takes to charge their vehicles, is still a major concern. BYD’s new charger will solve that. For comparison, a home mains plug offers about 2.3 kW, meaning the BYD charger is 435 times more powerful.

• To achieve this power, ultra-high voltage and current are necessary. A 1 MW charger demands significant power, so locations with robust grid infrastructure such as high capacity transformers will be essential. 

• The Chinese company is however not the only company that is developing high capacity chargers. Tesla is developing a charger with a capacity of 500 kW, which will have half the power of the BYD charger. India’s Exponent Energy has also revealed plans to introduce 1.5MW charging technology later this year, which will be the world’s most powerful charger. 

• BYD’s super-fast EV chargers will however not have a smooth sailing in the market. The obvious one is cost: the new electrical technology will add to the cost of producing the vehicle – although the speed of the charging could make the cars more desirable for people with range anxiety.

• Another big problem will be the cost of energy. Faster charging costs more, because more power is needed. That requires expensive connections to power grids, which means that the fastest chargers command a big premium.

• The rapid advancements in the global EV charging technology come at a time when the lack of widespread fast EV chargers in Africa presents a significant hurdle to the continent's transition to electric mobility. 

• The number of charging stations in Africa is minimal, but countries such as Egypt and South Africa are making significant steps in accelerating their charging networks, led by companies such as Infinity EV, Blu EV, Rubicon, and GridCars. The continent is seeing the number of charging station providers grow by the minute, helping ease concerns by prospective EV buyers. 

Our take

• BYD, Tesla, Exponent Energy and many others show that we'll see a continued push for even higher charging speeds, far exceeding the current 350-400 kW standards. Chargers with capacities of more than 1 MW will be the norm in the coming years, drastically reducing charging times and making EVs even more convenient.

• The use of superfast chargers exceeding 1 MW will be slow considering that there are not many EVs that can support that amount of power at the moment. This means that it will take years to see such EV models built at scale and reach frontier markets such as Africa. 

• Despite the emergence of powerful chargers, home charging will continue to dominate the EV charging landscape. Many EV users – and particularly those with private charging – will rarely need to charge at public chargers except for the occasional long-distance trips. Instead, they will continue to charge at home especially overnight when power prices in some countries are lower.