BYD showcasing 1000kw charging in their new sedan Han L EV

[chun]

New battery chemistry, new platform

However, even in china there is no infrastructure for these speeds; with a few hundred 5C/5.5C (500+ kwh) chargers deployed around china.

The new stations are produced by BYD only for now, and there will be few of them.

BYD was lagging behind in terms of charging speeds, compared to other smaller chinese EV manufacturers, and with this new platform and battery, they plan to become industry leaders.
Battery is using a 1500V silicon-carbide power module, allowing it fast charging and high discharge capabilities for producing a lot of power output.

More info in article:
https://carnewschina.com/2025/03/17...ding-10c-megawatt-charging-stations-in-china/

TL;DR: peak speed of 1000kw between 10% and 20%; average speed 500kwh. 450-500kwh at 60% to 80%. 400km of range in 5 minutes.

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[Flying ace]

those are some insanely high numbers. Ultimately, these are "lab" numbers, and to consistently be able to deliver at these speeds requires high quality hardware, which I doubt BYD can build at reasonable prices and at scale. The best DC unit on the market IMO is the Alpitronic HYC 400, and those are likely significantly more expensive than units used by EA and EVGo.

This unit may be better suited for long distance commercial vehicles with larger batteries and requirements for short downtime, but ironically most other commercial applications doesn't necessarily need the fastest charging e.g. fleet cargo vans are designed to charge at 120-150 KWs, and depending on your fleet's daily turnover, you may even only need 50 kw chargers.

 

[daveo4EV]

New battery chemistry, new platform

However, even in china there is no infrastructure for these speeds; with a few hundred 5C/5.5C (500+ kwh) chargers deployed around china.

The new stations are produced by BYD only for now, and there will be few of them.

BYD was lagging behind in terms of charging speeds, compared to other smaller chinese EV manufacturers, and with this new platform and battery, they plan to become industry leaders.
Battery is using a 1500V silicon-carbide power module, allowing it fast charging and high discharge capabilities for producing a lot of power output.

More info in article:
https://carnewschina.com/2025/03/17...ding-10c-megawatt-charging-stations-in-china/

TL;DR: peak speed of 1000kwh between 10% and 20%; average speed 500kwh. 450-500kwh at 60% to 80%. 400km of range in 5 minutes.

please fix the headline - it's 1000 kW - not 1000 kWh's - these are very different units of measure.

 

[chun]

those are some insanely high numbers. Ultimately, these are "lab" numbers, and to consistently be able to deliver at these speeds requires high quality hardware, which I doubt BYD can build at reasonable prices and at scale. The best DC unit on the market IMO is the Alpitronic HYC 400, and those are likely significantly more expensive than units used by EA and EVGo.

This unit may be better suited for long distance commercial vehicles with larger batteries and requirements for short downtime, but ironically most other commercial applications doesn't necessarily need the fastest charging e.g. fleet cargo vans are designed to charge at 120-150 KWs, and depending on your fleet's daily turnover, you may even only need 50 kw chargers.

These are not lab result. These are cars going on sell by end of Q1 or early Q2 this year, and 1000kw chargers (10C chargers) are already being deployed.

It is a refresh of the BYD Han released last year.

This car will be sold as a Model S competitor at Model 3 prices - below Denza Z9 ($46k).

Alpitronic HYC 400 is a 4C charger, there are many units available in China. They are not the most performant or the "best on the market", with 4 other chargers being able to deliver more power - now 5:

• Tesla V4: 500 kW. - no tesla can take advantage of it in China however.
• Li Auto 5C: 520 kW. - 5c charger
• NIO Power: 640 kW. - 5.5c charger
• Xpeng S5: 800 kW - also released recently.

There are below 1000 (LI Auto has alone 705 units delivering 520kw (December 2024) - the biggest ultra fast network) of these charges across china, focused mainly in big cities. Not a lot of them, but there are around 20.000 300kw+ chargers.

So in best case, BYD would deploy around 100-300 of those 10c/1000kw chargers, also focused mainly in big cities likely.

BYD's vision is charging EVs as fast as refueling a petrol car.

China's infrastructure initative was to have 780.000 ultra fast chargers (250kw+) by end of 2025. It doesn't look like they will reach it, but they aren't that far off.

 

[Flying ace]

My point is HYC 400 appears to be the best for reliability, consistency and cost. I'm just sceptical these BYD units can optimize across these 3 factors.

 

[chun]

My point is HYC 400 appears to be the best for reliability, consistency and cost. I'm just sceptical these BYD units can optimize across these 3 factors.

It's hard to argue that the HYC 400 is the best for reliability, consistency and cost, when they barely shipped a few hundred of them in europe; while LI auto shipped as many faster chargers (520) in less time. At least, as far as I noticed, most of them are in Italy, with few in switzerland, decent number in germany and france (of course, rebranded).
In Switzerland I managed to find 5 of them, and 2 were limited at 300 anyway - i guess the actual electrical cabinet can't provide the power the station can push.

But if you are arguing for the wider world/western world, outside of China, then yes, HYC 400 is "the future", at least until chinese companies find a way into europe/na.

BYD is the biggest manufacturer in China by a large margin, so they do have the capital to splurge on infrastructure in China, which is also heavily subsidized just as it is in Europe, as governments are rushing to meet self-imposed goals.

 

[Wivenhoe]

The UK is struggling to provide the power for new 300kw chargers. In my ignorance I think that a 1,000kw charger will require the power of 3 x 300kw so here, we’d probably end up with queues a mile long when a charging station only contains 4 chargers.

 

[Fun TC Driving]

Who knows in some about of years, be is three or five (???), that we woule pull off at an EV charger exit ramp, and as we drive down that parallel travel lane and across the charging pad located under the road at 5 or 10 MPH, the car when having traversed the pad’s 50 yard length, would leave at the other end at 80% or more charge. Kind of like people pay their tolls with pre-pass right now.

 

[daveo4EV]

yeah it's interesting - really really fast charging is only part of the picture - you have to have enough delivery power to then provide ### kWh's in "mm" minutes…

Macan is 100 kWh battery - 95 kWh usable
10% -80% is 70% charge - 70% of 95 is 66 kWh + 10% charing loss overhead is 73 kWh

73 kW charge rate = 1 hour to charge from 10% to 80%
146 kW charge rate = 1/2 hour
292 kW charge rate = 1/4 hour
876 kW charge rate = 5 minutes

now let's scale that to 10 stations at a commerical charging site

you need 8,760 kW power feed to charge 10 EV's in 5 minutes - 10 megawatts…to charge in 5 minutes for a 10 station stall - some entire power plants are only 40 megawatts…so 1/4 of a power plant to charge in 5 minutes if you want to scale to 10 EV's at once…

as your shrink the charging time you seriously increase the power input requirements because we're compressing time - and that's expensive.

 

[Midlifecrisis]

The UK is struggling to provide the power for new 300kw chargers. In my ignorance I think that a 1,000kw charger will require the power of 3 x 300kw so here, we’d probably end up with queues a mile long when a charging station only contains 4 chargers.

The problem will be the MG or Zoe driver whose car will only take 50kW who thinks they will get to charge their car up to 100% faster on the 1000kW supply

 

[Midlifecrisis]

yeah it's interesting - really really fast charging is only part of the picture - you have to have enough delivery power to then provide ### kWh's in "mm" minutes…

Macan is 100 kWh battery - 95 kWh usable
10% -80% is 70% charge - 70% of 95 is 66 kWh + 10% charing loss overhead is 73 kWh

73 kW charge rate = 1 hour to charge from 10% to 80%
146 kW charge rate = 1/2 hour
292 kW charge rate = 1/4 hour
876 kW charge rate = 5 minutes

now let's scale that to 10 stations at a commerical charging site

you need 8,760 kW power feed to charge 10 EV's in 5 minutes - 10 megawatts…to charge in 5 minutes for a 10 station stall - some entire power plants are only 40 megawatts…so 1/4 of a power plant to charge in 5 minutes if you want to scale to 10 EV's at once…

as your shrink the charging time you seriously increase the power input requirements because we're compressing time - and that's expensive.

Interesting calculation. But at the 5 minute end it will take longer to connect and disconnect the car than to charge. So you will never have more than 4 actually pulling that power at the same time

 

[chun]

yeah it's interesting - really really fast charging is only part of the picture - you have to have enough delivery power to then provide ### kWh's in "mm" minutes…

Macan is 100 kWh battery - 95 kWh usable
10% -80% is 70% charge - 70% of 95 is 66 kWh + 10% charing loss overhead is 73 kWh

73 kW charge rate = 1 hour to charge from 10% to 80%
146 kW charge rate = 1/2 hour
292 kW charge rate = 1/4 hour
876 kW charge rate = 5 minutes

now let's scale that to 10 stations at a commerical charging site

you need 8,760 kW power feed to charge 10 EV's in 5 minutes - 10 megawatts…to charge in 5 minutes for a 10 station stall - some entire power plants are only 40 megawatts…so 1/4 of a power plant to charge in 5 minutes if you want to scale to 10 EV's at once…

as your shrink the charging time you seriously increase the power input requirements because we're compressing time - and that's expensive.

Most ultra chargers, 400 kw +, have local battery storage, which fills in off-peak hours, to be offloaded during charging/peak times. They rarely pull 400kw from the grid.

Calculations not exactly correct, as there is a charging curve at flexible rate, not a flat rate. But also, if you have enough charging location, you would never have such a huge load at once.

Traveling through germany, where there;s Ionity every 30-40km or an equivalent, i've never seen more than 2 out of 10/20 stalls occupied at once.

So provided you have enough location, most would charge from battery storage, which is "loaded" slowly over night.

Add to that the fact that if people charge so fast, than the amount of people at the same time at a charging location would also drastically go down.

All these factors combined, you would hardly see 2 people using the charging stations at the same time.

China is also investing in nuclear and of course, the pipe dream, fusion. So they are building for/towards the same electric future from all directions

 

[chun]

Also, I wanted to add 1 cool feature that many "premium" EVs in china are coming out with in 2025; 2 high speed charging ports, that you can use at the same time. This car also supports it, and so do most new models of Zeeker, some NIO and some Li cars.

Basically, this allows you to replace 1x 500kw charging stall with 2x 250kw charging stalls, reaching the same effective charging speed as you would with a 1x 500kw stall. - provided the car battery supports 5c charging

 

[Flying ace]

I'm also skeptical the outcome will be impactful. Here in the US, the 800v chargers are occupied half of the time (my unscientific observation) by 400v cars. Every time I check their screens for their charging speeds I've never seen a figure higher than 120 kw, with average being less than 100, regardless of SoC. And two times I've seen Bolt drivers asleep in their car at a 90% SoC pulling in an amazing 3 kws with a line of 3 cars waiting...

The cars aren't ready for faster chargers, at least in America. One way to ensure the benefits are impactful is to tier the pricing for 150 kw+ chargers to higher pricing vs all other slower speeds.

 

[Wivenhoe]

I take the point about far fast charging meaning chargers becoming available much earlier but governments are mandating an ever increasing % of new car sales to be EV’s. The UK market is flooded with used EV’s coming to the end of their very tax efficient leases which has meant residuals have plummeted. All these cars will need to charge but are incapable of anything above 150kw so will tie up ultra speed chargers. The charging companies will still earn the premium rate even although the car may be pulling less than 50% - albeit making the charger unavailable. Good luck to the politician that tries to legislate or sets a pricing policy that means available ultra chargers can only Best Regards used by ultra speed capable cars !

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