BYD showcasing 1000kw charging in their new sedan Han L EV

[whitex]

yeah it's interesting - really really fast charging is only part of the picture - you have to have enough delivery power to then provide ### kWh's in "mm" minutes…

Macan is 100 kWh battery - 95 kWh usable
10% -80% is 70% charge - 70% of 95 is 66 kWh + 10% charing loss overhead is 73 kWh

73 kW charge rate = 1 hour to charge from 10% to 80%
146 kW charge rate = 1/2 hour
292 kW charge rate = 1/4 hour
876 kW charge rate = 5 minutes

now let's scale that to 10 stations at a commerical charging site

you need 8,760 kW power feed to charge 10 EV's in 5 minutes - 10 megawatts…to charge in 5 minutes for a 10 station stall - some entire power plants are only 40 megawatts…so 1/4 of a power plant to charge in 5 minutes if you want to scale to 10 EV's at once…

as your shrink the charging time you seriously increase the power input requirements because we're compressing time - and that's expensive.

Good first order calculation, however I would look at it from a different point of view. I think we can assume that total amount of energy (kWh) to be delivered to the EVs would be the same, i.e. all EVs that wanted a charge, got what they wanted. So now the issue simplifies to flattening the utility power delivery curve, or time shifting the power delivery. This can be accomplished by having on-site energy storage (batteries, super caps, other means like mechanical energy storage) at the DC charging stations to smooth out the load. How many batteries would be needed of course will depend on how many cars per day do you need to service, how much energy they need at what speeds, and their distribution throughout the day. I suspect a decent size station with all load balanced stalls and shared battery bank would not require that much battery storage - some cars will be charging slower than others, and the surplus energy will be stored for the next car which requires a high power burst. Worst case scenario during a busy holiday, charging gets a little slower, but then again during busy times lines form at gas stations too.

 

[Oglehog]

The Lights will be dimming all over China

 

[CaliPorsche]

Great thread …… not adding much here but some of my thoughts……

Ultimately - we are still limited to the problem to the simple physics of electricity - squeezing energy into a cell at rapid rates - to meet the energy out demand minus losses (not just charger losses but transmission and step up step down losses)…… at convenient locations…… note that last point ……

So to meet this kind of demand, at this kind of power rating ……. either;-
1 - To supply the kind of power demand imagined here for a commercial 1000kw multi charger station - a huge amount of new copper transmission needs to be in place (I worked most of last year with one of north Americas largest power generator and distributors an this problem - for that power utility this is not as much a power generation issue ………. but a transmission issue ….. and it is simply not as straight forward as one might think).
2- materially less consumption at the car for the same distance/power achieved …… nothing visible to achieve this yet
3- another method of local peak to low demand arbitrage - current batteries will not cut it economically but some other technology used as an energy sink may … capacitance, etc.
4- a local high output power unit, nuclear fission or fusion ……. Not happening any time soon.
5- a swappable energy solution - maybe a revisit of the Harris Ranch experiment.

I have mentioned before ……… I worked on a team building an industrial EV not too long ago, gross power unit of 4500 HP, or 3200kw. We worked on a swappable battery unit in one scenario because the time to charge versus consumption ratio meant the asset was only working 8% of its time ….. and that was in an unconstrained power supply scenario. Ended up in a Hydrogen scenario at the time but EV is still in the works…

Charging infrastructure was also the issue with Nikola - $100s of millions spent trying to get to economic EV trucking charging (I drove the EV truck on a test circuit and it was phenomenal) …. Only to pivot to hydrogen then ultimately fail in bankruptcy …….Not a truck issue … or a battery issue but a charging infrastructure issue ….IMHO.

I do wonder if we will see someone shift their focus to a swappable approach at some stage. Though I know from first hand experience that is also an infrastructure issue in the end …..

 

[chun]

Great thread …… not adding much here but some of my thoughts……

Ultimately - we are still limited to the problem to the simple physics of electricity - squeezing energy into a cell at rapid rates - to meet the energy out demand minus losses (not just charger losses but transmission and step up step down losses)…… at convenient locations…… note that last point ……

So to meet this kind of demand, at this kind of power rating ……. either;-
1 - To supply the kind of power demand imagined here for a commercial 1000kw multi charger station - a huge amount of new copper transmission needs to be in place (I worked most of last year with one of north Americas largest power generator and distributors an this problem - for that power utility this is not as much a power generation issue ………. but a transmission issue ….. and it is simply not as straight forward as one might think).
2- materially less consumption at the car for the same distance/power achieved …… nothing visible to achieve this yet
3- another method of local peak to low demand arbitrage - current batteries will not cut it economically but some other technology used as an energy sink may … capacitance, etc.
4- a local high output power unit, nuclear fission or fusion ……. Not happening any time soon.
5- a swappable energy solution - maybe a revisit of the Harris Ranch experiment.

I have mentioned before ……… I worked on a team building an industrial EV not too long ago, gross power unit of 4500 HP, or 3200kw. We worked on a swappable battery unit in one scenario because the time to charge versus consumption ratio meant the asset was only working 8% of its time ….. and that was in an unconstrained power supply scenario. Ended up in a Hydrogen scenario at the time but EV is still in the works…

Charging infrastructure was also the issue with Nikola - $100s of millions spent trying to get to economic EV trucking charging (I drove the EV truck on a test circuit and it was phenomenal) …. Only to pivot to hydrogen then ultimately fail in bankruptcy …….Not a truck issue … or a battery issue but a charging infrastructure issue ….IMHO.

I do wonder if we will see someone shift their focus to a swappable approach at some stage. Though I know from first hand experience that is also an infrastructure issue in the end …..

Swap-able batteries are a thing in China. NIO supports it for all of their EVs, and most big charging locations also have a swaping station. It takes 3 minutes to perform a battery swap, and offers cross compatiblity - old to new chemistry, small to big size, and the reverse of that.

NIO is one of, if not the only chinese EV manufacturer that offers solid data for everything they do. On average they are swapping 100.000 batteries every day via the swaping stations across china.
https://www.nio.com/nio-power
All time peak was on Feb 3 2025, 136,720 single-day battery swap services.

The electric vehicle (EV) maker provided 2,738,400 battery swaps from February 1-28, a daily average of 97,800, according to a Nio Power monthly operations report it released today.

It's already existing and well implemented. Just not in the western world, which is stuck 5-6 years behind china in terms of EV technology so far.
As of today, Nio has 3,145 battery swap stations in China, of which 970 are located along highways. There is no location with more than 1 swap station as far as I could find, so that makes it 3.145 distinct locations.

 

[Freeewilly]

It's already existing and well implemented. Just not in the western world, which is stuck 5-6 years behind china in terms of EV technology so far.

It's sad the western car companies are slowing down on EV technology and redirect R&D back to ICE and hybrid vehicles, Chinese car companies are pushing forward.

 

[chun]

https://carnewschina.com/2025/03/26...harging-stations-in-april-4000-set-for-china/

500/4000 1000kw stations getting deployed in april in Chin

article also confirms the stations use local storage to reach that speed

the charging station max output is 1360kw, but there is no battery capable of in-taking more than 1000

 

[Tooney]

The myth of Megawatt charging – and why Porsche doesn't think it's the answer to smoother EV journeys