Electric Vehicles (EVs) are in no doubt the future of the automotive world. However, one feature that plagues this future is the ironic waste of time associated with recharging EVs. Whereas, with an Internal Combustion Engine (ICE)-powered vehicle, you can simply pull into a fuel station to refuel and be out in mere minutes. The long waits for charging EVs used to be a major setback to its widespread use, but not anymore?
Car company, BYD, has come up with an extremely fast charging system capable of recharging an EV battery to around 250 miles of range in only five minutes. That would be 50 miles for every 1 minute of charge, truly mind boggling! To put things into perspective, the popular Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is estimated to be about 120 kilometers (75 miles). Now, 250 into 75 places gives us about 3. This means that in just5 minutes of charge, you have more than enough battery juice for 3 trips between Lagos and Ibadan. Someone should wake me up!!!
What is the Catch?
BYD’s super fast charger falls under the ‘e Platform’ which can hit a peak power delivery of 1,000kW via ‘a new generation of automotive-grade silicon carbide power chips’. The super fast charger delivers twice the power of the latest generation of Tesla Superchargers, which are pretty quick in their own right. But, you can’t connect just any EV to these fast chargers, at least for now. BYD playfully commented, ‘you’d melt your cable, for starters.’ A vehicle will need a 1000V architecture with batteries, motors, and heat management capable of supporting such a charging rate.
Conversely, there is a drawback to the technology due to the massive amount of energy extracted from the Grid in such a short period of time. And in a country like Nigeria where the National Grid collapses every other week, we have a long way to go in order to harness such technology.
Overall, BYD’s flash charging system is going to be a game changer for EVs. It takes more than 5 minutes to fill up the gas tank of almost every ICE-powered vehicle. Even after filling up the fuel tank, it can probably only manage two trips between Lagos and Ibadan. But an EV that can charge in less time and cover more distance? I may finally be buying the idea of owning an EV in Nigeria. What are your thoughts on BYD’s super fast charger?
