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BYD installed 10,000 hyper-fast 1,500kW chargers in just 5 months (electrek.co)
submitted 2 days ago by [M] to c/electricvehicles@slrpnk.net
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[–] 19 points 2 days ago* (2 children)

China is really pushing the limits with fast charging compared to the rest of the world. I have an VW ID.4 that can do about 135 kW charging.
10-80% in 25 minutes.
These new Chinese cars have peaks that are 10 times higher, and that is insanely impressive, even if the average is "only" 5 times higher.
But peak isn't everything, the ID.4 actually charges faster 10-80% than a Tesla model Y with 250 Kw peak charge rate. Because the Tesla has an awful charge curve, that declines steeply resulting in a low average charge rate.

Here the most powerful chargers are 400 kW, which are plentiful so you can easily find them if you have a car that can utilize that.
One thing that is nice when charging compared to filling up gas, is that you just connect the plug, and than you can go to your car, and sit comfortably while the car is charging, or you can go have a snack or something. You are not tied to standing idly with the hose. So the extra time it takes to charge is not as much as a problem as I thought it would be when we bought an EV.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    One thing that is nice when charging compared to filling up gas, is that you just connect the plug, and than you can go to your car, and sit comfortably while the car is charging, or you can go have a snack or something. You are not tied to standing idly with the hose. So the extra time it takes to charge is not as much as a problem as I thought it would be when we bought an EV.

    This is the thing so many ICE drivers get hung up on. They always talk about how quickly they can fill up and leave. But they ignore that you don't need to even go to a public charger like that most of the time if you charge at home. If you can't charge at home that's a different issue.

    I only need to think of charging when traveling, and even then the car will automatically fill in charging stops asking the route at optimal points for the fastest charging. For healthy driving habits you should be getting out of the car regularly both for a mental break and to get up and get blood moving. Stopping to charge while you use the restroom and grab some food often takes more time than people think. I've come back to the car and only had to wait like 5 minutes most of the time, sometimes it's even already got enough charge when I get back.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 days ago

    But they ignore that you don’t need to even go to a public charger like that most of the time if you charge at home.

    Absolutely, in the 10 months we've had the car we've literally only charged away from home less than 10 times. Because almost all of our trips can be done on 1 charge.
    And charging at home is both super convenient and super cheap.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    Even if you can't charge at home, you could charge it when you are buying all these sofas and fridges people keep telling me I need to buy a car or SUV to transport.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    I hardly ever see EV charging stations where I live. You claim people can charge when they're out doing things but that 100% is not the case. It heavily depends on where you live.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Every time someone mentions something like that, I just ask them if they use their truck to haul something more than once a month. You can rent a pickup truck from Uhaul for a day for $20. Some Home Depot and Lowe's locations also offer truck rentals. Unless you're using that truck to haul something at least weekly, it doesn't really make sense to drive that gas guzzler all the time compared to basically anything else.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago

    We need utes to come back as small electric vehicles. The slate truck is a move in the right direction, but I also want a lower profile version like an el camino layout which could get better mileage at speed with a very low and accessible bed. Heck, something slightly larger than a BRAT would be neat for doing the small scale stuff where washing out a bed is preferable to having stinky stuff in a hatchback.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 day ago* (2 children)

    You are not tied to standing idly with the hose.

    That... applies for fuel too? If it's not super busy, I'll go inside and grab a snack while getting fuel. A minute later when I'm out, the tank is full.

    But personally I'm not too sure about these 1500 kW charging EV batteries. That's got to cause more problems than it solves. 1.5 megawatts is just under 1/1000 of the peak power consumption ever for my country of ~1.3 million people (1.7 gigawatts this winter during a bad cold streak). If just 1000 people across the country decide to charge their cars at that rate at the same time, they'll double the national grid's load for a moment. Going to be a ton of fun.

    Less powerful EVs aren't anywhere near as bad because at 500 kW you need 3x more people for the same load and that's probably way more than 3x less likely to happen.

    Plus going from 10 minutes of charging time to 4 isn't anywhere near as impressive as 25 to 10. 10 minutes is a piss break and hot food from the service station, it takes no effort to fill 10 minutes of time.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

    That… applies for fuel too? If it’s not super busy, I’ll go inside and grab a snack while getting fuel.

    That's illegal here, the hose is not allowed to be able to lock.

    That’s got to cause more problems than it solves.

    Just because you don't see how it can work, doesn't mean it doesn't. ( argument from ignorance ) First of all the grid of Estonia isn't isolated, it is connected to a much larger European grid of about 700 million people.
    I know this is pretty recent, before it was connected to Russia. But these connections are strategic and are constantly expanded throughout Europe.

    These 1.5 MW chargers are generally connected in groups, if the grid isn't powerful enough to handle them, they will not be established.
    But my guess is they use batteries to store power for fast discharge, that are charged a steady but lower rate.
    Remember when a car charges at that rate it only draws power for 5 minutes. So one charger can handle maybe 12 cars per hour.

    Here in Denmark we have Charging stations where multiple brands are represented, with each their "island" of chargers. And I've seen some that have more than 20 stations with 400 kW charging available. The reason they aren't bigger, is that there isn't a market for it yet. But if they are run all of them simultaneously that would be 8 MW.
    But if 2 on the same station are used at the same time they only provide half the power. So the max is really only 4 MW.
    This is in Denmark where we are about 6 million people, and our peak AFAIK is only 5,3 GW, But the country is split into 2 energy zones, East and West, so for one zone the number is probably closer to 2,7 GW. Mostly half the country is on 1 island, and the rest is mostly a peninsula and an island.
    So closer to 3 million, and for some reason with way lower peak power per capita than Estonia. But the electric grid is connected to Norway, Sweden, Germany, and even UK and Poland.

    IDK how they do it, but it works, and I've never experienced a problem.

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