Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer BYD is shaking up the industry with its breakthrough battery innovation that claims to deliver 400 km of range in as fast as a five-minute charge time. That’s even faster than your alarm clock’s snooze.
BYD launched the Super e-Platform, which features flash-charging batteries, a 30,000 RPM motor, and new silicon carbide (SiC) power chips. The upgrades on its components would achieve a 1 MW charging power and a peak charging speed of 2 kilometers per second.
BYD Founder and CEO Wang Chuanfu said that the two new flagship EV models are capable of receiving a peak charging power of 1 megawatt (MW), or 1,000 kilowatts (kW), in five minutes. This translates to 400 km of travel distance.
Chuanfu also mentioned that “charging anxiety” remains a major concern with EVs, so “the ultimate solution is to make charging as quick as refueling a gasoline car.”
The Super e-Platform will be the first mass-produced “full-domain 1,000V high-voltage architecture” for passenger vehicles.
BYD also officially launched the “Flash Charging Battery,” built with ultra-fast ion channels that reduce battery internal resistance by 50%, allowing the charging current to reach 1,000A and the charging rate to achieve 10C; both are world records.
If you remember the power formula from your Physics class, you can see that BYD’s “Flash Charging Battery’s” ultra-high voltage1,000V and ultra-high current of 1,000A will achieve the 1,000kW charging power.
BYD is among the largest manufacturers of battery EVs and plug-in hybrid EVs in the world, matching head-to-head with Elon Musk’s Tesla. It also wouldn’t be surprising, given that BYD was initially a battery company in 1995 before transitioning to a car producer in 2003.
For reference, the charging speeds of 1,000 kW (or 1 MW) would be twice as fast as Tesla’s supercharging, offering up to 500 kW. Fast-charging EV technology has always been crucial to increasing EV adoption worldwide.
Currently, the Han L and Tang L models would be the first to feature BYD’s latest Super e-Platform, which is set to first launch in China in April.