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Comment by cromulent | Hacker News Reader

BYD are about to launch an EV that charges from 10 to 70% in 5 minutes. As much as I recoil at a brand called "Build Your Dreams", that is quite compelling.

https://www.byd.com/us/news-list/DENZA-Z9GT-to-start-Europes...

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See those big T-shaped things in the picture? Those are the charging stations that BYD (or someone) is going to need to build to see those charging speeds. I'm not saying it can't be done, but as one with an 800V Hyundai that has theoretical charging speed of 350kW, don't expect to just plug in at Electrify America and be done in 5 minutes. (Because the highest I've seen on the Hyundai was 243kW, and I've seen that once, and over 200kW only twice.)

But BYD is pushing forward, and though there's some infrastructure to build it'll get there eventually.

I imagine in China they will be able to build out a network of those much much faster than would be possible here in the USA.

I was thinking more of EU, since BYD won't be selling cars in the US anytime soon, but you make an excellent point that maybe BYD wasn't thinking outside of China for at least the short term.

On the other hand, 5-minute charging is definitely a luxury thing: most charging is going to be at home, a decent bunch will be destination charging, people doing long trips generally don't mind having the car charge for 30 minutes while they eat dinner in a roadside restaurant, and only a handful of people are insane enough to drive well over 10 hours at a time with only a single 5-minute break.

In practice I bet 5-minute charging will mainly be used to show off for your golf buddies. Co-locate it with the megawatt-scale chargers we'll be building for trucks next to major highways anyways, and it can be offered as a very profitable luxury product without too much extra effort.

There are times when I wished our Ioniq 5 charged more slowly, like when I want to grab a bite. On a good day, back to 80% in 15 minutes, with a 10 minute grace period before the per-minute charges kick in, and there's barely time to sit and eat the meal.

But one thing 5 minute charging would improve is throughput. We're in the middle of a house remodel, and no room in the garage at the moment for the car to get near the charger. So we've been charging at public chargers a lot, and in the three or four times I've hit a public charger recently, I've had to wait on another car to unplug about half the time. Granted, this is the Seattle area where you can't swing a golf club without hitting an EV, but I've had the same problem on road trips, too.

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