this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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Great article, but when comparing to BYD 5 min charging, the CATL system is incomplete.
The new CATL battery can handle faster charging, but they haven't made chargers that can handle or deliver the needed power, to charge that fast.
BYD has built the the entire infrastructure from charger to battery, the charging system in the car can handle the 1MW charging power required. (1000 volt at 1000 amp). A battery that can handle it from 10-60% And finally they are setting up charging stations that can supply that level of power.
The CATL battery is great because it shows we can go even further, but BYD has their system available NOW!
What may be the biggest benefit IMO though, is that the new CATL battery will allow cars to charge very fast even with smaller batteries. Which may introduce a completely new type of cheap EV with medium range that can charge super fast, so they can still be used reasonably well for occasional longer trips too. This is also helped by the more than twice as high durability of the new battery. Smaller batteries need to be charged more often, and these batteries can handle that too.
Charging this fast is always battery to battery, right? Any idea how many cars can the BYD charger charge before going back to a normal speed (i.e. getting power from the grid)?
It's DC but I think it's from grid through inverters. And those inverters are quite expensive. My guess is they can go on indefinitely.
Interesting, I've found this quote:
"Unlike regular EV chargers, these new high-powered units can't simply be installed anywhere, as they demand substantial electrical capacity to operate at full capacity. They may require more direct access to high-voltage mains, limiting their deployment to locations with robust grid infrastructure."
I thought getting a 1MW connection to the grid is pretty much impossible for a charger. I wander if we're going to see this in Europe.
300 kW chargers are pretty common here (Denmark), I did a search, and the fastest I can find is 400kW. But they are rare, and I don't think many cars can utilize that yet.
I have no doubt that when cars that can handle 1MW become common, we will also get the chargers for them. But it will probably also be expensive to use.
China doesn't have 1MW yet either, BYD has just begun building them. The fastest Tesla supercharger here is 250 kW.
Ionity has 300kW chargers in Spain but there are pretty rare. 50kW-100kW is most common here. Rolling out 1MW network will be very slow due to all the infrastructure it requires and judging by the prices of 150kW chargers, charging at 1MW speeds will probably be more expensive than gasoline. But in the end that's the only way to actually replace gasoline cars so they will have to build it eventually. My guess would be 10-15 years before you can reliably (as in network big enough that you can easily find working chargers) charge at those speeds.
There are multiple development projects for megawatt chargers with MCS plugs active in the EU, so I guess there will be some. There are already locations with multiple 300kW chargers, so replacing a few of them with a single megawatt charger should be possible.
Why would it be impossible? A typical distribution power line is something in the range of 3MW, and that's just the regular power lines running along the side of the road in your typical city. Larger power lines (i.e. long distance lines) have orders of magnitude higher voltage and, I assume, total power delivery.
So something official like a large recharge station (i.e. converted gas station) could pretty reasonably support 1-2MW if needed, though they'd probably end up w/ local storage so they don't spike power demand like crazy, and then recharge that storage w/ solar in the day and base load at night.