Full Charge In 5 Minutes: The EV Breakthrough Is HERE

Everybody knows EV charging is slow, right? Well, not anymore. BYD, the Chinese car company, just dropped a game changer. 1,000 kilowatt EV charging. One megawatt. That is crazy. This might be the technology that allows you to charge your electric car as quickly as a diesel or a petrol. But you do have to take high speed charging figures with a pinch of salt. Any electric car owner will always tell you that their car won't necessarily charge at the maximum advertised speed. Okay, quick science. With a normal three pin household socket that delivers 2.3 kilowatts, the battery in your electric car can take 42 hours to charge. A fast charger, which is usually seven kilowatts, that's what you get from a dedicated home wall box, can take 13 hours to charge a car from zero to full. That's what most EV users charge with overnight and it works well. But then you have what's called rapid charging or DC charging from a public charger, which is often between 50 kilowatts and 350 kilowatts, depending on where you go. But it's not just down to the charger. It's also down to the car. This seal can accept a charge rate of up to 150 kilowatts. Not bad. However, BYD have just changed the game with a battery and charger combination that can deliver 1,000 kilowatts. How does it work? Well, it's part of BYD's Super E platform, which consists of a lithium iron phosphate blade battery and new high revving motors that can deliver over 1,084 horsepower in a pair. The battery is what they call a flash charge battery, which is designed to allow faster transfer of ions through the diaphragm. They support 1,000 volts and 1,000 amps, allowing for a charge output of 1,000 kilowatts. That's a lot of thousands. Here's what it means. With today's technology, cars like the BYD seal can refuel from 10 to 80 percent in around half an hour. Cars that use the next generation of BYD technology will be able to add 248 miles of charge in as little as five minutes. And that, all things considered, is about as quick as refueling a petrol car. So, which cars will benefit from the Super E platform? To start with, it will be the new Han L saloon and the Tang L SUV. Both will support a single motor with up to 788 horsepower or dual motor configurations delivering around 1,100 horsepower. They'll both allow up to one megawatt charging speeds. And this can be done from a single 1,000 kilowatt high-powered charger, or the cars will allow you to connect two separate 500-kilowatt chargers to separate ports on opposite sides of the same car. It's very clever and could revolutionize the way we charge and how long we wait for those charges. 250 miles in five minutes, according to BYD. Well, that's the theory anyway. But you do have to take high-speed charging figures with a pinch of salt. Any electric car owner will tell you that their car doesn't always charge at the maximum advertised speed. Your charge speed will depend on many factors, including factory temperature, your state of charge, how many cars are charging from the same hardware, or the grid itself. In some cases, even the fastest-charging cars like the Porsche Taycan, which charges at 320 kilowatts, may only achieve half that. This 1,000-kilowatt figure will likely be a best-case scenario. But at least it's progress. And the good news is that BYD isn't alone. Tesla recently announced their V4 superchargers. These can deliver 250 kilowatts to some of their current cars, including the Cybertruck. But the chargers will support higher speeds in the future, up to 500 kilowatts for cars or 1,200 kilowatts for Tesla semi-trucks. On the subject of rapid charging in the UK, speed isn't the only problem. Availability is another factor. But things are improving. In the UK, there are 75,000 public charge points for EVs, 14,000 of which are rapid or ultra-rapid. Tesla makes some of the best, fastest, most reliable chargers in the market. And the good news is you can now charge non-Teslas at superchargers. I guess that's one more reason not to buy a Tesla. But there's another one, because Tesla, and indeed BYD, are not the only players in the ultra-high-speed charging game. Huawei. Yes, the phone people. They're working on a new EV charger that supports 1,500 kilowatts on a 2,400-amp circuit. Geely, another Chinese company, the owners of the Lotus brand, joined the war too, with their Zika brand offering 1.2 megawatts of power. We've heard promises about the evolution of EV batteries and charging speed for decades, but all of this is suddenly happening very quickly. BYD's new chargers are hitting the market from April 2025. The dawn of a new era might be upon us. I actually can't believe I'm sitting here getting excited about how fast my car might charge. I used to get excited about how fast they drive. Who am I? What have I become? Anyway, it all sounds good. But let's get a little bit of perspective here. These chargers can charge at 1,000 kilowatts, but how many cars today will actually allow you to do that? Just as I thought. If you live in Europe, there is not a single car you can buy today that will allow you to charge at 1,000 kilowatts. The fastest-charging cars available right now include the likes of the Lotus Elettra and Emea. They'll do 350 kilowatts. The Model S, that does 250. For most EVs, you'll be lucky if you get, what, 200 out of them? This megawatt-charging stuff sounds great, but the reality might be a little bit different. And the other thing we need to consider is, do we even need chargers to be this fast? There is a phenomenon called dwell time. That's the amount of time a person spends at a charging station or petrol station. The average dwell time at a petrol station forecourt is around 15 minutes. You might think you're in and out in five, but most people spend quite a bit of time wasting their lives at services. Pulling in, parking up, getting the pump out of the holster, putting it in the hole, pulling the trigger, waiting, waiting, waiting, putting the pump back, walking to the shop, possibly having a wee, staring at snacks, making a coffee. And all of that faff, on average, adds up to a 15-minute dwell time. If you've got a charger that recharges your car in five minutes, well then that's potentially overkill, right? Although maybe not, because the general public do seem to still have an appetite for faster charging. So Adi, what car do you drive and what do you think of it? I drive a Model Y and I absolutely love it. I love the speed, I love the space, I love the colour and I love the tech. I currently spend around an hour charging my car. It's a bit long, but I don't mind the way I read a book or I go to the shops. Now BYD are coming out with a charger that can charge you up to 258 miles in five minutes. How does that make you feel? Yeah, that'll be so exciting. I think it'll be really helpful for my schedule as well, because I'm very busy, so I would appreciate that. Do you not think it's too fast? If you haven't got much time to get a coffee, get something to eat? No, I would dedicate, I'll just treat it as if I'm putting petrol in my car, a quick charge and then I'm off to do my daily activities. So you drive an electric car, you use that for taxi purposes? I use that for taxi purposes. I normally work in a data centre and this is my side hustle. So what's it like charging an electric car as a taxi? At the moment it takes a bit of time, an hour, 10 minutes, and it's a time we don't have, to be honest with you, especially in London, busy life. So BYD are coming out with a new system that will allow you to charge 258 miles in five minutes. Really? Yeah. How would that change your routine, your life? I think that would be a game changer because that would save us an hour at least, and who would say no to an hour of an extra time, yeah. Do you think it's too fast maybe though? No, never. Okay, so people seem to really want it, but what's the reality in the UK today, and how likely and how soon will we get there? To find out, I went to speak to Andreas Atkins, head honcho for Ionity in the UK, one of the pioneers of high-speed charging in this country. So Andreas, is this the breakthrough that the industry have been waiting for? Well whilst what BYD have shown us is both impressive and inspiring, and I think it's important that you have companies like this that advance in technology, it helps push the industry forward, but we don't see the demand for one megawatt in the near future at least anyway, not in mass market terms. What you're saying is that customers are happy with your 350 kilowatt charging, and it's going to be a long time before one megawatt even crosses their mind as being a real benefit? Yes, and there's also other factors. There's a cost-benefit ratio that customers need to consider as well. So already with the type of charging that we have here, the 350 kilowatts, it's quite typical for a battery to charge in 10% to 80% in about 20 minutes. Some vehicles, like the Porsches we mentioned, could already do this in 15 minutes, and we believe that this will soon come down to around 10 minutes, and that will be the standard. The question is then, does that extra five minutes matter, the five minutes that BYD have promised? It costs more to deliver one megawatt charging. It's more expensive, grid connection costs, the cabling is more, the substations are more, which will result in a higher per kilowatt price. And I guess only the future will tell us if this is what customers are willing to pay for that extra five minutes. Is there an element of them having come along and stolen your crown? Because you guys have always been recognized as the leaders when it comes to ultra-rapid charging, and suddenly you're doing 350, they're doing 1,000. Do you see yourselves going down the route of allowing one megawatt charging at some point in the future? As I mentioned before, we feel pretty confident in being future-proof at the moment, but we do listen to the marketplace, and if we need to change and react to that, then we will. With faster and faster charging, obviously the customer is probably going to have to pay more money. Is this going to be feasible for everyone to be able to afford? Yes, and I think that's exactly the additional question to ask. How important are those extra minutes? With the technology we've been able to deliver over the years, we've been able to reduce that cost stack down, and we're offering pricing now from as cheap as 43 pence a kilowatt for a 350 kilowatt charge, which is pretty outstanding, I'd say. Some people's domestic rates aren't far from this. Once you make that extra step up to the one megawatt charging, you add more in the cost stack. It gets more and more difficult to achieve customer end pricing in this manner. I want to know what the future looks like in terms of charging speeds. Are ordinary people going to be content with the likes of 350 kilowatts, or are we going to be surrounded by one megawatt charges in 10 years' time? It comes down to cost. So we need to have customer choice. There needs to be that spectrum of customer choice. As there are with cars today, even with non-electric, you have cars on the cheaper end and the more expensive end of the spectrum, and that will be the same with EV, and then the charging that's associated with that, you have that spectrum of price that people are willing to pay to fuel that type of vehicle. And that's the important thing, is customer choice. In reality, people don't only fuel at ultra-rapid, they fuel at home, they fuel when they visit the supermarket at various destinations on slightly faster AC or slower DC and at hubs, and it's part of that fueling mix. So, megawatt charging. This sort of thing seemed like a pipe dream a few years ago, but if BYD are to be believed, it's definitely on its way. Will they actually be able to roll out this technology in the real world? What obstacles will they face? Will existing EV fans flock to it? Do we need it? Or is the reality just too good to be true? Well, we'll find out for sure as BYD rolls out this technology in China over the coming months, and keep our fingers firmly crossed that it reaches the rest of the world in the not-too-distant future as well. Let me know what you guys think about this down below. Thanks for watching.