BYD's new megawatt charger can add 400 km in five minutes

If there's one more hurdle electric vehicles (EVs) need to contend with aside from range anxiety, it's recharge time. Yes, there are fast DC chargers that can quickly replenish an EV's battery from 30% to 80% between 30 – 45 minutes, but that's still a long wait time especially if you're on a road trip.

Meanwhile, Tesla's 250 kW Supercharger can easily recharge a battery to have up to 280 km of range in 15 minutes. Impressive, but filling up on fuel will only take several minutes and you're good to go. Automakers clearly need a faster way of recharging EVs and BYD may have come up with the fastest charging system yet.

BYD Han L EV

Recently, BYD revealed its new Megawatt Flash Charger and from its namesake, it's rated to recharge EVs at 1,000 kW or 1 megawatt. With it, BYD's new charging system supports 1000V and 1000 A (amperes) which allows for faster recharging of EVs. Thanks to the 10C charge rate, BYD's new megawatt charger can easily charge 400 km in just five minutes.

This was demonstrated when BYD recharged the new Han L EV and Tang L EV from 7% to 50% in just 4 ½ minutes. Both the Han L and Tang L EVs come with a 1000V high-voltage platform and a lithium-iron phosphate battery pack with a 1500V silicon-carbide power module that allows the battery to discharge.

BYD Tang L EV

With BYD effectively closing the gap between refueling and recharging times, the next-generation EVs from the company may only need to recharge in just a couple of minutes. Perhaps the only question now is will other brands be able to follow suit with what BYD has come up with?

BYD via CarnewsChina