What Range Anxiety? These Chinese Electric Cars Charge in Just Five Minutes

A major barrier to widespread adoption of electric vehicles is the time it takes to recharge them. This week, Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD unveiled a charger almost as fast as filling up at the gas pump.

The distance electric vehicles can travel on a single charge has climbed dramatically in recent years, but on average, they still only manage about half of what’s possible on a full tank of gas. This limited range is made worse by the fact that public chargers are far less ubiquitous than gas stations and take much longer to charge up a vehicle.

These issues explain why “range anxiety” is one of the most frequently cited barriers to the technology’s adoption. Though companies have developed fast chargers that can deliver 200 miles worth of juice in about 15 minutes, range is still a significant sticking point for many consumers.

Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD may have gone a long way toward easing those concerns with a newly unveiled ultra-fast charger that can deliver 249 miles worth of electricity in 5 minutes. The company also announced plans to install more than 4,000 of these chargers across China.

“In order to completely solve our users’ charging anxiety, we have been pursuing a goal to make the charging time of electric vehicles as short as the refueling time of petrol vehicles,” BYD founder Wang Chuanfu said at a launch event in Shenzhen, according to The Verge.

The breakthrough wasn’t down to a new charger alone. BYD’s so called “Super e-Platform” combines batteries that can charge at 10 times their capacity per hour with internally developed high-volt silicon carbide power chips that enable the chargers to deliver 1,000 kilowatts of power, according to Reuters.

A number of Chinese automakers can provide similar range on a 10-minute charge, but BYD is the first to offer timescales comparable to filling up at the gas pump. By comparison, Tesla’s existing superchargers only manage 250 kilowatts, and a new version due to be launched later this year will top out at 500 kilowatts.

“Tesla has definitely moved from leader to laggard in EV battery and charging technology at this point,” Matt Teske, founder and CEO of electric vehicle charging startup Chargeway, told Axios.

The new charger’s performance is thanks in part to its ability to handle up to 1,000 volts, while Tesla’s chargers only manage 400 volts. But these ultra-high voltages could pose problems for grid capacity if widely rolled out, analysts told Reuters.

It’s also worth noting that the range measurements are based on Chinese standards, which are more generous than those used by the US Environmental Protection Agency, according to Ars Technica.

Either way, US drivers won’t likely experience such lightning fast charging any time soon. The new charger will only be available for owners of two new BYD vehicles—the Han L sedan and Tang L SUV—and Chinese-made electric vehicles are essentially banned in the US, following new rules introduced by the Biden administration earlier this year.

So, while range anxiety will likely remain a sticking point for many car buyers in the near future, BYD has thrown down the gauntlet to others in the industry. It probably won’t be long before recharging your electric car is as quick and convenient as filling up at the pump.