Chinese car maker BYD is taking a leaf out of Tesla’s book by building its own charging network around the world, with its ultra-fast Flash Chargers set to arrive in the UK later this year.
However, BYD’s Flash Chargers promise megawatt charging with chargers capable of dishing out electricity at speeds of up to 1,500kW (or 1.5MW), around three times more than the current quickest rapid chargers. With faster charging meaning less time spent plugged in and, therefore, more public charging capacity, BYD says its Flash Chargers will help put an end to range anxiety – still one of the biggest barriers to EV adoption.
With Flash Chargers likely to be rolled out across the UK from later this year, I visited BYD’s Pingshan Flagship Flash Charging station not far from the company’s HQ in Shenzhen, China, to see how easy and how quick Flash Charging really is.
This particular Flash Charging station has a drive-through layout – just like a petrol station – with seven charging units each with two Flash Chargers attached, one at either side. The charging units are T-shaped, with the charging guns and cables dropping from a suspended sliding-rail cable system in the arms of the T bars.
The charging guns themselves are much lighter than existing rapid charging guns, with thinner cables, too, making it easier to manoeuvre and plug in for charging. The system also ensures that cables and guns never actually touch the floor.
So actually plugging in – as I found – was easier than I’ve ever experienced before, while I was promised that payment is easy with a digital handshake between the car and the charger.
Once plugged in, and after a few clicks and whirrs, power started to arrive within seconds and was up to full speed pretty quickly.
I’ve said before that charging speeds are the new battleground amongst EVs, with the highest I’ve experienced so far in the UK being 330kW with a BMW iX3. Yet that pails into insignificance next to the speed of charge I saw our BYD Yuan Plus (a newer version of the Atto 3 currently on sale in the UK and Europe) manage at Pingshan.
The car’s display showed what looked like one per cent of charge being added every few seconds, or around a mile of range added every second. And true to BYD’s claims, the car was pretty much topped up in under ten minutes.
The official claims are that Flash Charging will take a compatible car from 10 to 70 per cent charge in just five minutes, or from 10 to 97 per cent in only nine minutes. And, as we also saw in a test lab at BYD’s HQ, cold weather doesn’t seem to change charging speeds too much, with just three minutes added to the overall charging time in minus 30 degree cold.
If you’ve got time, there’s a coffee shop and convenience store on site, but other users were mostly sitting in their cars for a few minutes before easily unplugging and driving off silently.
Of course, the phrase ‘compatible cars’ does come into play here and not every BYD can be Flash Charged. The premium Denza Z9 GT is set to be the first Flash Charger compatible model arriving in the UK, with many more set to follow, including BYD plug-in hybrid cars.
However, unlike parts of Tesla’s Supercharger network, where some station are still exclusive to Tesla owners, BYD plans to make its Flash Chargers available to all EVs – but we’ve no word yet on what the cost per kW will be.
So, what are the plans for a UK roll-out of Flash Chargers? BYD’s Alfredo Altavilla, who works with the company as a special adviser for the European market, told me: “The idea is to get the first 120 Flash Charging stations in the UK by end of this year. They will be branded BYD, although they will be open to any other brand for recharging, of course.
“We have marked the country to make sure that we start installing Flash Chargers where currently EVs are mostly sold, but gradually we will cover the whole country.”
That plan includes the motorway network, while BYD will be using its array of technologies to ensure there’s no problem with the UK’s electricity grid not being able to supply enough power for the Flash Chargers.
“The beauty of our Flash Charging station is the battery storage that comes together with it, which is again a BYD product,” said Altavilla, adding: “Our Flash Charging stations will have both, with our most advanced battery storage within the charging station. And that is the solution to the problem of storing energy and being able to recharge at that speed even though we are just sourcing under 50 gigawatt from the grid.”
Altavilla continued: “We know that range anxiety is one of the key reasons why people don't buy EVs. Our answer to that is Flash Charging. We have decided to, on one end, keep on increasing our range for EVs thanks to our Blade Batteries but now we are also answering the question: are you running out of a battery? You can recharge in five minutes. So, fundamentally, there is no excuse not to buy an EV.”
Where BYD lead, others follow and another Chinese car maker Chery has also confirmed that it’s working on megawatt (1,000 kW) charging – although whether, like BYD, they fund the charging stations remains to be seen.
Either way, a public charging revolution that will change the way we live with our electric cars is under way. Now if the government saw fit to charge the same five per cent VAT on public charging as it does on the electricity you charge your car with at home, then the perfect public solution to EV charging might not be far away.
