Blitz Bureau
Shenzhen-based BYD Co. has unveiled a new battery-charging system for electric cars that the Chinese automaker says will allow some of its cars to charge almost as fast as it takes a regular car to refuel at a fuel pump.
BYD’s new battery and charging system, which it calls the Super e-Platform, could provide 470 km of range in 5 minutes in tests on its new Han L sedan, the company’s Chairman and founder Wang Chuanfu has said. The manufacturer will start selling vehicles with the new technology from April.
While BYD did not give more details about its new EV platform, its founder Wang said at an event at the carmaker’s headquarters in Shenzhen that the first models to get the ultra-fast charging will be the Han L and the Tang L sports utility vehicle. The new tech will allow these cars to reach a speed of 100 km per hour in 2 seconds, Wang said.
This means that BYD is clearly ahead in the EV game, and is increasing the gap between itself and competitors, especially Tesla Inc. The promise of the 470 km range with a 5-minute charge places it comfortably ahead of Tesla’s Superchargers, which can add up to 275 km of range in 15 minutes.
Others too are making progress, with Mercedes-Benz Group’s new entry-level CLA electric sedan unveiled recently featuring an 85 kWh battery pack that delivers almost 800 km of claimed range, and with the German carmaker claiming that with its new 800-volt electric architecture, the CLA takes just 10 minutes to recharge and provide a range of 325 km.
BYD’s Chinese competitor Li Auto, too claims that it can achieve 500 kilometer of range in 12 minutes with its latest battery sourced from Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. or CATL, the world’s biggest battery maker and the main competitor to BYD’s battery business.
EV leader
The new battery-charging platform could provide yet another boost for BYD, which has come from behind to outrun Tesla as the world’s top EV seller. The platform requires new charging infrastructure that the Chinese company has said it will progressively set up, with plans to build more than 4,000 charging stations in China and elsewhere, designed to accommodate the new technology superchargers. Tesla, though, has a much larger network of more than 60,000 Superchargers worldwide.
Even as Tesla’s stock has been tanking, BYD reported sales of over 318,000 passenger vehicles in February, up over 150 per cent from a year earlier and the Chinese company’s Hong Kong-listed shares, which are already up nearly 50 per cent this year, surged on Tuesday.
BYD’s Super e-Platform could also pose a competitive threat to its biggest competitor in the battery manufacturing space — CATL, currently the world’s largest manufacturer of EV batteries. BYD, though, is far more integrated in its approach, starting from manufacturing its own batteries all the way up to making EVs.
