BYD megawatt charging will add a mile a second to rival ICE fuelling times
BYD has launched its new 1,000V Super e-Platform, offering the world’s fastest mass-production EV charging speed of up to one megawatt.
This means that the Chinese market-only BYD Han L and Tang L – the brand’s only vehicles using the Super e-Platform so far – can add 1.2 miles (two kilometres) of range per-second, or 250 miles (400 kilometres) in five minutes. This is around the same time it takes to refuel an ICE car.
The Super e-Platform is powered by a 30,000rpm single motor producing 778bhp and offering a top speed of over 186mph.
BYD’s chairman and president, Wang Chuanfu, said that its 1,000V EV architecture was created to “completely eliminate users’ charging anxiety” and the Chinese manufacturer’s goal is to “make EV charging as fast as refuelling a gasoline car by achieving oil-electric parity in charging speed”. However, it will not be bringing its latest technology to Europe any time soon.
Speaking to UK journalists at the launch of the Sealion 7 SUV, BYD executive vice-president, Stella Li, confirmed to journalists: “Someday we may bring megawatt charging to Europe, but not now.”
She explained that the super-rapid charging only worked with cars using the 1000V Super e-Platform, and added that it would be a number of years before any models based on that system would arrive in Europe. The news is somewhat surprising, given that BYD recently announced that it plans to double its European sales year-on-year from 83,000 cars in 2024, to 186,000 this year. Moreover, the Chinese carmaker is said to be considering opening a factory in Germany as way of getting around EU tariffs imposed on vehicles made in China.
In its domestic market, BYD has plans to build over 4,000 megawatt chargers across China over the coming years, using its industry-first, fully liquid-cooled ‘flash charger’ capable of delivering up to 1,360kW.
In Europe, meanwhile, megawatt chargers are only currently used to recharge e-HGVs.
