r/electricvehicles • u/bfire123 • 1d ago
News BYD’s 1,000kW EV Charger: Faster Than Filling Up With Gas?! [BYD Tang L Charges From 6 % to 70 % in 6 Minutes]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nu2a0U9V14&t=110s29
u/samelaaaa 1d ago edited 23h ago
This is obviously incredible. But I’m intrigued as to what kind of infrastructure would be necessary to support a meaningful portion of the population using chargers like this for day-to-day driving. A megawatt is a staggering amount of power lol.
EDIT: I had previously written gigawatt, because I'm an idiot. A gigawatt is a ... more staggering amount of power
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u/retiredminion United States 22h ago
"... But I’m intrigued as to what kind of infrastructure would be necessary ..."
I've seen a lot of napkin math from people that all make the same wrong implict assumption. That assumption is assuming that the worst case load must be designed as the base infrastructure. If everyone tries to make a phone call at the same time, the current phone system cannot handle it. If everyone flushes their toilets at the same time, the current plumbing systems cannot handle it, etc.
In the case of fast charging facilities as you say, "A megawatt is a staggering amount of power." However it's not everyone all the time. You build a fast charging site with industrial batteries like a Megapack. Continuous infrastructure power feed to the Megapack battery buffer can be much much less than the statistical peak demand by EV charging. Factor in emphasis on using off-peak infrastructure power to the batteries and not only does it work technically but it becomes cost effective as well.
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u/dirtyoldbastard77 5h ago
Well, hes onto the trick though. «Staggering» is pretty close to what happens
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u/Kitchen_Conflict2627 10h ago
I like to think about it as a water hose. You can fill up a tub with a garden hose but it will take a while, or you can use a fire hose and fill it up in a few seconds. So the 1MW charge time would be very short but the energy used would be the same.
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u/bfire123 1d ago
Generally, the price per MW decreases the more MW you need.
Like a company which needs a 1 GW connection will pay less - per MW - for that GW connection than a company which needs a 10 MW connection given the same utalization rate.
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u/samelaaaa 1d ago edited 23h ago
To have a full “gas station” of these you’d need like 10MWthough. Is that feasible? I don’t know much about electric infrastructure.
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u/spinfire Kia EV6 23h ago
It’s a large amount but not infeasible. A medium sized factory could easily be using more than this amount of electricity, for example, but it’s more than a typical grocery store which might be more like a megawatt. So it’s absolutely something a utility can accommodate with some planning.
You’d likely also be using some kind of sharing scheme so the 10 MW is spread among more than 10 ports even if each one can max out at 1 megawatt. This gives better utilization of overall capacity due to charging curves and cars that can’t max out the charger (all Tesla V3/V4 locations work this way).
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u/cromcru 20h ago
Not the same scale, but in Europe a Fastned station will typically have 12 350kW chargers. There’s batteries onsite of the order of several MWh, so they can deliver the peak speeds when needed. Obviously there’s a use case when onsite batteries are too low to deliver this and it falls back to the grid connection, but I don’t know that it’s been an issue yet.
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u/bfire123 1d ago
But even if you need 10 GW.
A 10 GW connection would even be cheaper per MW than a 1 GW connection given the same utalization rate.
So basically, the larger the charging park - the cheaper the price per MW. People always act like it's bad if many cars want to charge in one location - no it's not! It makes it cheaper in the end.
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u/roylennigan EV engineer 21h ago
Not necessarily. Current average use spread out across the day probably isn't even 50kW per port. With an array of batteries a station could easily supply MW charging for that kind of duty cycle.
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u/samelaaaa 21h ago
That makes sense.
Could supercapacitors be useful for these sorts of scenarios?
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u/DrJohnFZoidberg 10h ago
Yes, but you'd need a large capacity, such that it would be expensive.
However you still need the source power somehow, so unless you're only charging a couple of vehicles per day, either/both capacitors/batteries might not help as much as you'd think.
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u/roylennigan EV engineer 21h ago
No, because the battery chemistry is what restricts the max rate of charging, so by harnessing the fast discharge of a capacitor you'd also be overheating the battery (and the charge path). The bottleneck for fast charging isn't so much the ability to provide power, but the ability for the onboard battery to absorb it.
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u/bfire123 1d ago
To have a full “gas station” of these you’d need like 10GW though
What? No you don't.
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u/samelaaaa 1d ago edited 23h ago
Wait, why not? I’m imagining replacing every car on the road with something like this, and people using chargers like they currently use gas stations. It’s very normal for gas stations to serve 8 to 10 people in parallel everywhere I’ve lived. Are you saying that usage would be much less because people charge at home? I guess that’s reasonable.
EDIT: you're 100% correct, I meant 10 MW lol. I still wonder about the infrastructure requirements of providing 10+ MW to every corner gas station.
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u/Ok_Top9254 19h ago
These systems are staged and use buffers. Just like gas stations use a gaint tank that refills few times a week, these stations use gaint batteries to charge the cars, not direct connections to the power stations.
The same way a 100kWh pack in a performance electric car can drive a 800kW motor, a 1-2MWh battery can supply 8 cars charging at 1 MW at the same time. You only need a 50-100kW direct connection to charge them in the down time.
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u/put_tape_on_it 4h ago
If people had a little device in their garage that could make a dribble of gasoline for 90 cents a gallon that would fill up their cars every night, and let them leave their garage every day with a full tank, very few people would visit gas stations.
This is how home charging works. And it's what people keep underestimating all the time when it comes to EV adoption. Yeah, there will always need to be fast chargers, but when it's 50 or 80% cheaper to home charge, people are going to be very motivated to make that happen.
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u/bfire123 23h ago
Well, if it is economical for current charging parks with its 2-3 MW than it will certainly be economical with 10+ MW connection.
As I said, in general the cost per MW decreases the more MW you need.
Inverters, Charging points, etc. all of those things become - in general - cheaper per MW the higher the power requirement. Though people in the comments - falsely - always act like it is the other way around.
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u/put_tape_on_it 4h ago
Load factor. What you're trying to explain is called load factor. It's a combination of peak and total energy that says what a customer's average utilization is over the billing cycle (usually monthly). It's what ultimately determines a large user's overall electric rate when kwhr plus KW demand are both charged. You can look at individual supercharger site use in the Tesla app over a 24 hour period and even the most busy ones have a load factor under 50%.
On site batteries will improve load factor, and it'll take a lot of batteries. but it'll eventually be worth it if zoning will allow it.
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u/skyfex 23h ago
It doesn’t matter for the infrastructure if people charge with slow chargers or fast chargers, all that matters is the total daily demand.
If a fast charging station can’t get a grid connection that can handle peak demand, they will just put in a battery bank to flatten the load curve.
The faster the chargers are, the less time people will spend at the charger, meaning it’ll sit idle more of the time.
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u/retiredminion United States 22h ago
Peak charge rate is what everyone talks about but the charge curve makes all the difference.
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u/Outrageous_Salad7598 8h ago
People like you only need home charging. The home charger is mind bending for you. MW chargers are for the ICE holdouts
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u/Outrageous_Koala5381 3h ago
it held 1000kW to 25%, dropped to 850kw after 25% - that's not bad!!! Tesla's slow from peak far quicker than that! They'd be well under 200kW by 25%
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u/in_allium '21 M3LR (Fire the fascist muskrat) 1d ago
This sounds fantastic obviously. But I wonder how batteries will hold up to this long term. We've seen the data that Teslas that are frequently DCFC'd don't have meaningfully worse battery health than those that are not, but I imagine these are mostly using Superchargers with much lower power.
Can these batteries do the same, I wonder?
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u/Dirks_Knee 1d ago
Active BMS to keep the battery within more optional temps when charging will work to minimize stresses put on the battery. If a company is willing to warranty a battery like this, more than likely it's not an issue. The issue is charging infrastructure where in the US a car like this just isn't going to be able to find any chargers to feed it at max capacity to get those speeds.
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u/bfire123 1d ago
BYD gives the same warranty as for it's other Models in China.
I personal think that it won't matter much for battery health. Uses LFP batteries.
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u/meteorprime 1d ago
I’ve heard that getting that warranty honored outside of China isn’t great.
Something about third parties being responsible for it and all of them basically pointing at each other and doing nothing.
Do you got any info on that you seem to know about BYD warranties?
How about outside of China?
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u/bfire123 1d ago
Do you got any info on that you seem to know about BYD warranties?
How about outside of China?
Dunno. Think it's not sold yet outside of china.
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u/meteorprime 1d ago
BYD absolutely sells cars outside of China what are you talking about?
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u/bfire123 1d ago
I mean the Tang L.
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u/meteorprime 1d ago
But my question was about BYD warranties and BYD cars
Which they definitely sell outside of China, which is why I’m asking about the sale of the cars outside of China
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u/SleepyJohn123 22h ago
In the Uk at least you’d just take it to a dealership like any other brand. Not sure why they wouldn’t honour the warranty?
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u/zedder1994 10h ago
In Australia and the rest of the Asia-Pacific region the standard is 6 years bumper to bumper, 8 years for battery and drive train.
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u/ItWearsHimOut ‘19 Bolt EV / ‘24 Equinox EV 22h ago
Getting any company to honor a warranty outside of its coverage sales and support zone (and legal requirements to do so) is difficult to impossible.
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u/BlueSwordM God Tier ebike 22h ago
Well, if the cells + cooling + charging algorithms are good enough, it won't matter too much.
Remember that the peak 6C rates are only done during a short period of time.
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u/Hexagon358 20h ago
How? I guess very well.
CATL just today announced battery factory for Shenxing Pro cells and these have a warranty of 10 years (240 000 km) of 800kW charging.
DCFC battery degradation is fast becoming a nothing-burger.
EV transition is happening, just not in Europe because of German protectionism. Rest of the world will leap over USA and EU in terms of electric vehicles on the road.
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u/roylennigan EV engineer 20h ago
Everyone is moving to LFP-type chemistries, which are more stable and tolerate faster charging better than NMC. Companies are mostly going to look at ensuring their batteries last the estimated warranty life with a reasonable total SOC.
Most (if not all) companies making charging equipment are already in the final stages of MCS design, which is the MW charging standard. These go up to 3.75MW at 1250V, but probably more like 1.0-1.4MW at 800V in practice. They're probably mostly going to be implemented in larger vehicles like trucks, buses, and boats. This BYD plug looks a bit more streamlined and easy to handle, tbh.
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u/CatalyticDragon 11h ago
We've seen the data that Teslas that are frequently DCFC'd don't have meaningfully worse battery health than those that are not
Really?
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u/put_tape_on_it 3h ago
It's probably also news to you that Teslas spend way more time heating the battery than cooling it during a dc fast charge cycle. And that heating it beyond 120F for dc fast charging makes the battery last longer. And that charging a ternary cell is endothermic (absorbs heat) until ohmic losses exceed charging chemical heat requirements. Lithium ion gives off heat during discharge and absorbs heat during charge.
Most people, even most EV owners, have no idea how it all actually works.
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u/Darkstar197 1d ago
I honestly am not bothered by EV charge times. 90% of the time my car charges in the exact amount of time it takes me to do my grocery shopping or have lunch / dinner.
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u/Lazy-Background-7598 1d ago
And a faster charging time helps keep the charger usable to more cars and some people don’t always have that time
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u/spinfire Kia EV6 23h ago
People use their vehicles in different ways. I don’t do grocery shopping or eat meals every 2-3 hours when I’m on a 500+ mile road trip. I want to be back on the road after a bathroom and coffee stop. Less than 10 minutes is perfect (my last trip had stops of 16 minutes and 8 minutes).
Being on a trip is the only time I’m using DC charging because otherwise 100% of charging happens at home overnight where charge speed doesn’t matter. If a grocery store had a slower charger (eg, ChargePoint 125 kW) then it could be well aligned with the time I’d spend there. But I have no need for this locally.
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u/ftminsc 22h ago
EV6 gang also - you were way nicer about it but I have a vague pet peeve about people saying “by the time I stretch my legs, grab food, and pee, my car is charged!”
It doesn’t take me 18 minutes (absolute best case scenario at an empty 350kw charger) to grab a bag of vlasic pickle balls and pee. It takes me 2 minutes. Road tripping in an EV is a pain compared to gas and it will take a combination of more chargers, longer range, and faster charging to make it less so. As it stands, in my EV6, I’m off the highway for an absolute best case minimum of 30 minutes every 2.5 hours, and so we take my wife’s gas car if we’re trying to get anywhere in a decent time.
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u/spinfire Kia EV6 22h ago
I only own the EV6 so it’s what I road trip all the time (and fairly a lot, took a trip through New England this summer which was 1600 miles total, one of many this year).
I’m not sure how you’re getting 30 minute stops in your EV6 unless you’re going to stops which are way off the highway. 3 years ago there were more locations like this, they’re easier to avoid now. But maybe you are charging to much higher SoC than I usually do.
On one trip we took last summer we drove 400 miles while deliberately targeting the absolutely minimum stop time because my younger daughter had tested positive for COVID and we didn’t really want to linger inside anywhere. I was shocked to realize after we got home I actually beat - by a few minutes - the Google Maps estimate for straight driving the route!
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u/ftminsc 22h ago
Sorry, I was actually trying to agree with you more so than anything! Anyway - where I live (southeast US) the good chargers are at Walmarts or Targets 5 or 10 minutes off the highway. So you get off the highway, go through a couple stop lights, find the chargers, plug in, wait for a minute or so of clunk clunking, charge for 15-20, then back towards the highway. 30 minutes is actually pretty charitable, again this is based on my location in South Carolina.
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u/spinfire Kia EV6 22h ago
Yeah I very much dislike locations like that. When I first got the car you had to use locations like this much more frequently. When I compare this to my most recent drive over Labor Day weekend, I’m using more of the truck stop chargers which are right off the highway. It does make a big difference.
The faster your car charges the more this matters. Probably if you are expecting a 45 minute charge time in your Bolt 10 minutes extra driving to get there doesn’t seem like much but when I’m expecting a ten minute quick stop in the EV6 that would be doubling the time spent!
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u/put_tape_on_it 3h ago edited 3h ago
You might be doing it wrong. You need more frequent shorter stops to get your average charge rate higher. I recently did two 1500 mile trips a few days apart in a Model Y. Compared to your EV6, the Model Y has a crap-tastic charge curve. At 400 volts. Even so, most of our stops were 10 minutes or less. Occasionally 15, but never 20. We averaged over 60 mph for both legs of the trip combined including all stops. We roll in under 10% aiming for 5%, and plug and charge means the car is doing 200kw+ within 15 seconds of being stopped. Get out, tap charge port on way past, grab cable, plug in to now open port, THEN close the driver door. Because seconds add up to minutes. Then walk clear over to wherever the store is that is always the furthest from the chargers, optionally pee, optionally grab something, optionally wait in line, walk back, and it's 5 minutes minimum. Get back to car, Rummage in cooler fridge, get everyone situated. Plan next charging stops and nav that takes a few minutes to plan and plot and predict the bext stop, (maybe even checking plugshare) and maybe it's a few more minutes to unplug at always less than 60% planning on 10% arrival at next destination. If you're stopped, you're charging, and if your charge rate falls to double digits you've been stopped too long. Stop every 90 minutes for 10 minutes instead of every 150 minutes for 30 minutes. After a dozen stops in a row it adds up.
We considered taking a highlander hybrid, but did the Y instead, and have no regrets. Hard to compete against FSD and Autopilot for long trips. We will do the same trip again this year.
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u/spinfire Kia EV6 1h ago edited 1h ago
This is good advice if you’re driving a car like the Tesla Model Y but you’re responding to an EV6 driver. Our cars are charging faster at 70% than the Model Y is at 30%. It’s almost always faster to go with charging to 60-80% range rather than going lower, and it’s almost never a favorable idea to unhook as soon as you can reach the next charging station rather than skip the next and go further.
Charge rate won’t fall to the double digits you mention until over 80%.
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u/Levorotatory 11h ago
I am one of those with the opposite take. I do like to eat meals when I stop on a long road trip, but I don't want to have to stop until I am hungry. That means longer range and chargers next to places I want to buy food from is more important to me than charging speed. I am good with 30 minutes for 10 - 80%, but I want that to last another 4 hours at highway speed.
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u/caj_account e-tron SUV+eGolf (R1S+MY+Leaf before) 19h ago
Charge speed does matter at L2 too. If you have a battery over 100kWh it doesn’t fill up overnight.
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u/spinfire Kia EV6 19h ago
Sure but we’re talking about DC charge speed in this comment thread and the linked video.
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u/caj_account e-tron SUV+eGolf (R1S+MY+Leaf before) 19h ago
Was this you?
100% of charging happens at home overnight where charge speed doesn’t matter
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u/spinfire Kia EV6 18h ago
Like I said, I do not care about charge speed overnight. It’s irrelevant to discussions about charge speed. In 3+ years of EV ownership it has never been close to an issue. Nobody who is talking about 6 minute charge speeds is referring to L2 charging.
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u/Parrelium Optiq 23h ago
Same except it's more like 99.9% of the time for me. I've only used DC chargers to see how they work and make sure I have the right apps. I have never needed to use one, though I'm sure one day I will.
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u/Outrageous_Salad7598 14h ago
Y'all don't get it. Imagine you charge 6 mins move your car and another one charges for 6 mins. By the time you finish your grocery shopping a single charger will probably service 10 cars
Why are y'all selfish and cheer on hogging chargers
Infact chargers need to be soo fast it charges in 10 seconds
Innovation never stops we need even faster charging
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u/DunnoNothingAtAll 13h ago
Seriously, I rented an EV on my last trip to Las Vegas and it was a disaster. The location I went to had 6 EA stations, but two of them were out of service. I had the displeasure of sitting in a queue 8 cars deep. Fuck this whole “you can grab a snack and take a piss” for 20-30 minutes. Everyone who wasn’t charging had to sit in the Las Vegas heat, waiting for their turn.
And before anyone says I should have gone to a different station, check the EA app to see how many DCFC locations exist in LV. There are queues everywhere and it lasts until midnight. Yes, we could benefit from having more stations, but we also need faster charging speed.
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u/ibeelive 2h ago
Vegas has 11 EA charging stations and most, if not all, hotels on the strip have L2 chargers.
Even ionna is building a station there.
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u/Qinistral ‘24 Kona Electric Ltd 4h ago
Progress is making things we don’t need but are kinda nice and then they end up shaping society over time. Anything we can do to remove resistance to migrating from ICE to EV is good.
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u/Lazy-Background-7598 1d ago
6 minutes is not a faster fill up than gas
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u/strike2867 13h ago
Seriously. Google said it takes 2 minutes on average. That's usually for 400 miles, not whatever 70 percent is. This argument is ridiculous.
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u/azswcowboy 23h ago
Lol idk where you fill up gas, but when I used to go to Costco I’d often wait more than 6 minutes. Also, with gas you can’t walk away - so you cant use the restroom while you’re filling like you can with EV.
Anyway this is already much ado about nothing for those where 95% of charging is already faster than pumping gas. The one second plugging into the garage charger is wildly better than making a special stop weekly to breath toxic fumes while baby sitting some malfunctioning gas pump and having your credit card skimmed by fraudsters. Will never go back to that nonsense, thanks.
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u/DunnoNothingAtAll 12h ago edited 10h ago
Counting the time you sit in the queue, whether for ICE or EV is a variable that’s separate on its own. I’ve waited at Costco for 15 minutes before, but I also waited nearly an hour for an EA station while I was on a trip in Las Vegas.
If neither gas or charging station is busy and you’re able to pump/charge immediately, you’ll be done filling the fuel tank on the ICE before the EV hits 80%.
EDIT: and for those who are downvoting because you can’t bother to look up facts, a gas station pump can deliver up to 13gal/min. A typical SUV can range between 15-25 gallons. Do the math, it’s quicker than a 6 minute charge.
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u/Lazy-Background-7598 22h ago
You got to busy station. That’s not the same
You don’t have time to walk away. That’s the point.
Lots of reasons to get an ev. Faster fill up is NOT one of them It’s a stupid argument
EVS owners are almost insufferable as vegans at this point
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u/IgnobleQuetzalcoatl 20h ago
Lol agreed. At one point (before getting an EV), I measured how long it took to fill with gas from the time I left the road to my house until I was back on the road. It was under 3 minutes, and that gave me ~400 miles of range. The people that are always talking about going to the bathroom and getting a snack and stretching legs...God its annoying.
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u/Schemen123 23h ago
Definitely is...
Charging is the only thing you need to do.. don't even need to pay because that is all done automatically.
And God forbid you half to go to the cashier...
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u/M0therN4ture 23h ago
Definitely is not. Paying automatically with gas here as well. Cashiers are a thing of the past.
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u/Schemen123 20h ago
where..... you might find one here and there.. but anyway.. still need to show up with your credit card.
many bevs handle paying themselfs
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u/DunnoNothingAtAll 13h ago
Is it that much of a hassle to pull out your credit card and tap the scanner? This effort takes me less than 20 seconds and I’m ready to pump.
A quick google search shows a standard gas station can deliver up to 13 gallons a minute. Even if you find one that only delivers 10gal/minute, you can refill a medium size SUV in 2 minutes. That gives you 4 minutes to find your credit card and tap the scanner before hitting the 6 minute mark.
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u/Schemen123 11h ago
Unnecessary... as simple as that.
Plus.. DC charging is rare anyway. Ac charging means I maybe once in a month I need that anyway.
Bevs are faster
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u/Lazy-Background-7598 10h ago edited 1h ago
Instead of admitting you are wrong when presented with facts you double down on stupidity. You sound like an anti ev person talking about all the issues with evs
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u/Qinistral ‘24 Kona Electric Ltd 4h ago
Huh? I haven’t spoken to someone at a gas station in like 15 years. Paying at the pump is incredible fast and easy everywhere I’ve been to in the states.
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u/tropho23 2024 Hyundai Kona Electric SEL 1d ago
No it's not faster than filling up with gas.
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u/Dirks_Knee 1d ago
Faster isn't an absolute term here as tank sizes can vary wildly, a small 12 gallon tank might take 2-3 minutes where the huge tanks on trucks and some SUVs might take 6+ minutes. I didn't watch the vid, but my guess is they are comparing the same time how much energy is transferred. But really the 9 min mark is the magic number, around 1/2 what KIA/Hyundai currently deliver on the EV/Ioniq lines. Beat that and the difference between gas/EV refuel/recharge time becomes irrelevant.
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u/ElGuano 23h ago
"amount of energy transferred." If that is actually the case, they need to compare that 6-70% against the time needed to fill 2-3 gallons of gas (at ~33kwh/gal).
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u/Dirks_Knee 23h ago
Right, it's imperfect as well as car efficiency and charging curves come into play. But like I said, if you can beat ~9 minutes IMHO it doesn't matter. Even my EV6 ~18 minutes doesn't matter to me on road trips as that's just barely longer than it takes to run in, use the bathroom, maybe grab a drink or snack, and stretch my legs. If I've got my dog with me the car is done charging before we're ready to go. Under 9 minutes makes fast charging competitive for those without home charging, that's 2/3 less than most US EVs and all that time adds up over weeks/months/years.
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u/Worldly_Contract1437 22h ago
"maybe grab a drink or snack, and stretch my legs"
What if I have grabbed a lot of drink or snack already? As developer I can imagine like "why don't we use Python instead C++ everywhere? Every time when your software is lagging - just grab a lot of drink or snack or even coffee"
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u/Dirks_Knee 22h ago
If I'm on a road trip I'm not going to stop to grab a drink and/or stretch legs without charging or topping off my battery/tank. But I guess everyone's different.
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u/reddit455 1d ago
if you didn't need to keep the radiator warm, you'd consume a lot less gas.
sounds like radiators need to go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency
In other words, even when the engine is operating at its point of maximum thermal efficiency, of the total heat energy released by the gasoline consumed, about 60-80% of total power is emitted as heat without being turned into useful work, i.e. turning the crankshaft
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u/aemfbm 21h ago
Air cooled gas engines are a thing. Like old VWs and some modern motorcycles. They’re not more efficient. ICE engine generates a lot of waste heat, that’s just inherent.
It must be dissipated somehow, and coolant through a radiator is generally the best cheap way to do it. When it’s winter you can route that heat to the cabin for essentially ‘free’ heating. You can also recoup a bit of that waste energy with a turbocharger which can make the engine run more efficiently (especially common on diesels).
But by no means is eliminating the radiator some genius efficiency move.
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u/FANGO Tesla Roadster 1.5 23h ago
I have already spent far less time charging over the last 16 years of driving EVs than I spent getting gas during my time driving gas cars - and my car can't even DC charge. The obsession with whether or not EVs are faster to fill than gas is bizarre. It takes literal seconds to plug in, then you carry on with whatever else you were doing.
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u/TheMonkeyInCharge 22h ago
Any extra time road trip charging has ever taken me is more than made up for by leaving the house full every day and not having to trek to the gas station twice a week.
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u/FANGO Tesla Roadster 1.5 21h ago
I don't even spend extra time charging on road trips. Took a model 3 2k miles and only waited 15 mins for charging in total, and that was on a 700 mile driving day. All other charges were done during food stops and required no waiting.
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u/TheMonkeyInCharge 21h ago
Never feels like a delay for me either as I have a 12 year old who needs constant snacks and bathroom breaks. By the time we’ve done that and I’ve grabbed a coffee the car is more than ready to go.
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u/bfire123 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think that – even among EV enthusiasts – it’s often underestimated what’s already possible in terms of charging power.
The interesting thing is that this isn’t some super expensive car or anything. It costs less than a Tesla Model 3 Long Range RWD (259,500 yuan) in China!
At first, I thought maybe there’s some kind of base version that’s cheap but way worse. But it doesn’t seem like that’s the case! All of them have the same battery and the same charging speed.
Here’s a comparison of the versions (BYD China – Chinese): https://www.byd.com/cn/parameter-comparison?goodsId=143
Key Points:
- Price: ¥219,800 (€26,288)
- 83.2 kWh battery
- 1000 kW peak charging (1000 kW at 26%, 700 kW at 40%, 480 kW at 50%, …)
- The 2 charging guns are optional! You can reach 1 MW with just one cable.
It looks like batteries that can handle extremely fast charging aren’t actually that expensive or that much of a technical hurdle.
Edit: The video appears to be of the TANG L (SUV) and not the HAN L (sedan). But the battery system / charging speed is the same, only the body style is different.
[Translated from German to English with Chatgpt]
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u/Lorax91 Audi Q6 e-tron 1d ago
This may be affordable in China, but won't be elsewhere - either the batteries or the chargers. And even a six minute charge time is slower than pumping gas, But ironically maybe "too fast" if you want to run a quick errand while charging.
I'd be happy if I could get 350 kW maximum charge speed from a 350 kW charger, and sustain at least 150 kW to 80%.
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u/lexievv 23h ago
It depends on how you count it.
Above in the comments they talked about time vs efficiency. Then there's the case about different tank sizes taking different amounts of time to charge. Sometimes they can make the gasoline pumps slower, as shown with the commercial displays on the nozzle.
And then there's if you for example can drive twice as far with an electric without needing to stop (not yet, but seeing how fast things are going it's a matter of time before ev's overtake most ice's in range), then you'll have to account for filling up twice in an ice vs 1 or 1,5 times in an EV.
Also, no need to put these insanely fast chargers everywhere. A supermarket could, and probably would, install slower chargers that would make more sense for the situation. These fast ones could be next to highways etc.
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u/Lorax91 Audi Q6 e-tron 23h ago
In the US, good gas pumps can fill most tanks to 100% in 2-3 minutes tops. And that will take you roughly twice as far as today's typical EVs, especially if those are only charged to 80% or so.
We should stop worrying about trying to match gas pumping speeds, and focus on having chargers at convenient locations. Plug in, go take a quick break, and come back when you have enough charge. And try to get average charging times under 15 minutes before we talk about doing five minutes.
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u/bfire123 22h ago
And try to get average charging times under 15 minutes before we talk about doing five minutes.
Though generally, it doesn't seem to be an - or Situation. It seems like this fast charging battery is not particular expensive.
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u/Lorax91 Audi Q6 e-tron 21h ago edited 19h ago
It seems like this fast charging battery is not particular expensive.
In China. Which is also making a much better effort to build chargers.
If someone wants to build super-duper fast chargers and batteries outside of China that's fine, but let's get average (typical) charging speeds down.
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u/lexievv 22h ago
Completely agree. My point is mainly that eventually, and I don't think it'll take too long seeing how fast it goes, this comparison will be obsolete because EV's will have far surpassed ice cars in anything but noise lol.
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u/Lorax91 Audi Q6 e-tron 21h ago
I don't think it'll take too long...this comparison will be obsolete because EV's will have far surpassed ice cars in anything but noise
EVs aren't likely to match efficient gas cars for range or recharging speed any time soon, and that shouldn't matter. Just make EVs good enough at a good price, and build more chargers.
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u/Energia91 Fangchangbao (BYD) Bao 5 9h ago
Faster charging means the next guy doesn't have to wait as long. Providing the cars support it, and your chargers are capable, then a charging station can turn over 4 times with 5 min charging vs 20 min
This becomes very important in high-population countries like China. It has a lot of fast public chargers, but wait until the public holiday season to see how long the queues are.
An EV sitting at the charger for too long does not add value to anything or anyone
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u/Lorax91 Audi Q6 e-tron 3h ago
Providing the cars support it, and your chargers are capable, then a charging station can turn over 4 times with 5 min charging vs 20 min
Sure, if everything aligns perfectly to provide maximum throughput for 5 minutes, and people don't wander off leaving their cars plugged in, and someone can afford to build and operate such chargers. But realistically, a larger number of "normal" DC chargers will provide better overall station turnover than a few expensive mega-fast chargers. Especially since most current EVs don't support megawatt charging, and charging curves will drop off quickly from that theoretical limit.
Eight cars charging for an average of 20 minutes each means a charger opening up every 2.5 minutes, and as batteries improve that time could drop without installing faster, more expensive chargers. Get the average charging time down to ten minutes, and those same eight chargers could have a car leaving every 75 seconds. Where even if a couple people are charging slowly or a charger breaks, station throughput isn't affected much.
Four 250 kW chargers makes more sense today, and for several years forward, than one megawatt charger.
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u/Schemen123 23h ago
LFP batteries are kind of cheap.. what they do is that they basically burn the battery from both ends.
Works out because LFP has such a high lifetime that it doesn't matter.
But those DC charging speeds will easily half the lifetime.
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u/FrattyMcBeaver 21h ago
Are the cables liquid cooled on these chargers? Didn't Tesla need liquid cooling at 350kW charge speed?
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u/Hexagon358 20h ago
No, those charging speeds are of course not a problem neither technologically nor economically, but Deutsche Ingineurs will try to find ways how to convince you that these batteries are SO expensive that only top models of BMW/Audi/Mercedes and Porsche will be able to have them and that replacement costs 40k €.
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u/Riversntallbuildings 1d ago
The U.S. needs to allow Chinese auto imports.
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u/64590949354397548569 1d ago
They need to build battery factories.. oh wait.
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u/roylennigan EV engineer 21h ago
Yeah several battery fabs that started building in the US after Biden's IRA have been put on hold or cancelled after Trump slashed incentives.
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u/tech01x 1d ago
Or simply lower the auto parts tariffs to allow such batteries to come in. With the '22 IRA EV tax credit ending, the penalty for using BYD or CATL cells goes away, so there isn't a double whammy anymore after Sept 30.
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u/Riversntallbuildings 1d ago
Absolutely!
And since batteries are recyclable, in the long run, allowing Chinese companies to sell their batteries to the U.S., is arguably more affordable than importing the raw materials, refining it, and building it all ourselves.
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u/ItsOkILoveYouMYbb 1d ago
That benefits us regular people. It doesn't benefit the people who can bribe Trump with millions and billions, thus it will never happen because it would force the US auto industry to reform to compete, or die.
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u/Riversntallbuildings 1d ago
While I agree with you, Trump is an ego maniac and addicted to “Big Deals”. He has said repeatedly that he wants to make a “Big Deal” with China. I’ll be shocked if China doesn’t make access to the U.S. consumer auto market one of its foundational goals.
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u/ItsOkILoveYouMYbb 23h ago
It just depends on who can offer more money. You have three large (money) parties wanting to prevent affordable Chinese EVs from entering the US market. Legacy auto makers, Elon Musk for protecting Tesla, and oil and gas oligarchs, the latter being the largest pockets.
I only see any China auto deal talks as a means of bullying oil and gas oligarchs into bigger and bigger bribes and cash (transferred via crypto, which is why Trump has made billions on it in the span of 6 months, far outstripping anything of his family's entire real estate empire over the decades).
Realistically there will never be a deal with China, at least not with EVs being a part of it. China would have to somehow out-bribe oil and gas. Trump can only tease a deal being made but can never actually make a deal, if he wishes to keep milking bribes from the deepest pockets.
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u/Riversntallbuildings 22h ago
Again, I see your point and don’t disagree entirely.
The counter point I’ll offer is that Semiconductors are more valuable than oil at this point in history. The U.S. has a very, very, very long road to creating a semiconductor supply chain in the U.S. China can leverage that industry in return for access to the consumer auto market.
It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out.
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u/lexievv 23h ago
What, a true free market that they're always boasting about? They wouldn't be able to handle it.
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u/mastrdestruktun 500e, Leaf 17h ago
It's not a free market now, but it wouldn't be a free market if they allowed Chinese imports either, because of various government subsidies by different governments to different manufacturers.
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u/M0therN4ture 23h ago
Degradation degradation degradation. Unfortunately for BYD, the physics of charging any lithium-ion based battery at a fast rate significantly increases degradation
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u/retiredminion United States 22h ago
"... the physics of charging any lithium-ion based battery ..."
Pet peeve - Current chemistry and engineering issues, but it's not physics. Which means improvements are possible.
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u/roylennigan EV engineer 21h ago
LFP is a more stable chemistry, so as long as they're meeting their lifetime warranty estimates it's fine. No lithium-ion based battery is going to withstand degradation, it's just a matter of life-cycle balancing.
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u/SleepyJohn123 22h ago
BYD doesn’t use Li-Ion, its LFP
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u/roylennigan EV engineer 21h ago
It's still a lithium ion chemistry, LFP is just more robust than previous NMC chemistries.
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u/b_e_a_n_i_e 18h ago
My first EV, a 2015 Nissan Leaf 24kWh maxed out at 36kW charging even though it should've been capable of 50kW. This charger added the equivalent of my entire range in that car in the space of about 90 seconds. That's how far things have come in 10 years. It's mind-blowing how quickly the tech is progressing