After BYD, Geely is joining the race to superfast charging. The company claims it is running test cars in China filling up in five minutes at 1.800 kW superchargers. Europe is also on the radar.
Tesla once built an empire by selling electric cars accompanied by the charging stations that power them and that could keep downtime to a reasonable minimum from the very start. No other Western brand managed to copy that trick properly. But the Chinese EV makers have deciced they want to trump it by a wide margin by betting on megawatt charging.
For 300 kW more
In China, they have been doing this for some time now, but the peak output keeps rising. BYD inflated the trend with its so-called Flash Charging network (1.500 kW). The brand crossed already 10,000 of these high power stations last month, and is racing toward 20,000 by year-end. As for Europe the carmaker envisions an initial target of 3,000 units, but currently only a few pilots in the UK and Germany are active.
The goal, however, remains definitely intact. Confirming the rise of megawatt charging for passenger cars is nowGeely. The brand, which has just recently debuted in Europe with the E2, is running high power stations in China at 1,800 kW, or 300 kW more than BYD. Charging times are more or less comparable: 60% of the battery pack can be refilled in five minutes.
Similar set-ups
Of course, you need a car that can match these extreme hight outputs. But the Chinese do. The Denza 7GT, also available in Belgium, can reach that 1.5 MW. As part of a record attempt a Lynk & Co 10 from the Geely group hit 10 to 70 percent in 4 minutes and 22 seconds using the company’s Golden Brick Battery running on a 900 volt network. For the curious: at 97 percent, that battery was still above 300 kW.
The numbers from Lynk& Co were recorded on a megawatt charging pile from ZeekR Power, Geely’s energy branch. It features liquid-cooled cables and a 1,300 kW output. But the company has already topped that peak with the 1.800 kW poles.
The stations of BYD and Geely use a similar set-up. The grid cannot deliver such high outputs raw to every car, so each location stores energy in on-site packs and dumps it into the vehicle at peak speed. Buffer batteries store the demanded energy and compensate for fluctuations. It is the same principle European MCS truck pilots use, except BYD and Geely are doing it for passenger cars. And as for China: in real life.
Malle in the lead
The closest any Belgian driver comes to megawatt speed is at Electra’s 1,000 kW station in Malle, which pushed an Xpeng G9 to 80 percent in 12.5 minutes. That is impressive by European standards, though it is also roughly three times slower than what Geely’s Golden Brick achieves in China.
Will Geely offer the tech in Europe, just like competitor BYD? The British CEO of Geely, Michael Yang, told Autocar: “We are ambitious, but we also have to have a more pragmatic approach (…) than China, because it’s very different. First, we’re aiming to give as many people access to charging as we can, with a wall charger at home. And then we will work to introduce cars capable of ultra-fast charging, which will require us to bring ultra-high-kilowatt chargers here.”
Steep price premium?
So, Geely wants to bring megawatt charging to Europe, but will bide its time. Keeping its lead, it is unclear at what pace BYD will be able to roll out its network on the continent. Here, the technology hits a wall of planning permission and infrastructure constraints. It’s easier to win the charging race where the grid is state-controlled and permits move fast, like China.
Lastly, the business case might not add up to the extra comfort. Will customers be willing to pay a steep price premium at rates possibly four times higher than current high power chargers to cut ten minutes from their downtime? This race might be more about prestige than practical advantages.
