Dang. 0 to 60% charged in 5 minutes. This just broke every argument for gas stations, and it’s likely only going to get better.
Exactly, this is game changing stuff. I imagine this will have huge applications outside cars too. I can see this being really useful for stuff like buses, autonomous vehicles, or even robots.
But how many of these cycles can the battery withstand until it goes up in flames or loses capacity?
The video touches on this, shockingly the engineers considered this obvious question.
People tend to imagine owning an electric vehicle and doing exactly the same things with it that they do with a gas car, so a 5 minute charge on the way to work every week or two. But that’s not what you actually do.
You can tell people about home charging and that you haven’t been to a charging station in six months, but they won’t really get it until they drive an EV themselves. You only fast charge on long trips, and by the time your car needs charged you need a break and a coffee. My car charges pretty slowly and it’s still ready to go before I am.
Even electric trucks do okay on 350 kW charging - driving time rules mean that if you plug in when you take a break, the truck won’t run out of miles before the driver runs out of hours.
The big charging number gets the attention, but installing more chargers in more places is really what’s needed. And 50 kW chargers for charging trucks overnight.
I didn’t know these batteries could absorb energy at this rate, and I wonder if this would ding their longevity. I’d assumed that you’d need supercapacitors to pull this off.
Not sure what the magic sauce is there, but yeah it’s a tricky problem.
Not sure about this specific model, but I read elsewhere that BYD is developing long-lasting fast charging batteries by combining lots of small cells and liquid cooling.
