EVwire brief: BYD has completed its 2,000th highway flash charging station in China, reaching its full-year highway target about three months ahead of schedule.
The 2,000 highway stations cover nearly one-third of China's highway service areas, with an average spacing of just over 100 kilometers (62 miles). BYD originally announced in March that it would build 2,000 highway flash charging stations as part of a broader plan to have 20,000 flash charging stations in China by the end of 2026.
BYD had already reached 10,000 total flash charging stations by August 28. As of September 24, that figure had risen to 11,586 stations across 341 cities. The remaining 18,000 stations in the 20,000-station plan are intended to be built in partnership with charging network operators. BYD also plans to build 6,000 flash charging stations overseas.
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The latest-generation BYD Flash Charging hardware can deliver up to 1,500 kW per connector. When paired with BYD's second-generation Blade Battery, the company says the system can charge from 10% to 70% in five minutes and from 10% to 97% in nine minutes at normal temperatures. The network is open to EVs from other manufacturers, although charging speeds depend on the vehicle's own capabilities.
BYD said its flash charging network had delivered 210 million kWh of electricity and served more than 1.83 million users as of late August. Drivers of vehicles from other brands accounted for nearly one-third of those users.
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Context:
BYD's highway milestone comes as China's automakers increasingly compete on charging speed as well as vehicle performance. Just one day before BYD announced the completion of its 2,000th highway station, Geely unveiled its Smart Charging system with a peak output of 2.25 MW, exceeding BYD's 1.5 MW maximum per connector. Geely said the Lynk & Co 10 and Zeekr 001 completed a 10% to 70% charge in 4 minutes and 30 seconds in tests, compared with BYD's five-minute claim.
EVwire recently compared the latest charging systems from BYD, Geely and XPeng. Geely currently leads the group on peak power at 2.25 MW, while BYD's advantage is the scale of its deployed network. Our comparison noted that BYD had already built more than 5,000 Flash Charging stations domestically by mid-April and was targeting 20,000 by the end of 2026.
Source: CnEVPost
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