Electric Vehicle (EV) maker BYD has unveiled a 1-megawatt ‘flash charging’ system capable of delivering 400 kilometers of range in just five minutes – or about the same time it takes to fill up a petrol tank – according to multiple media reports.
On Monday, the Shenzhen-headquartered company’s founder, Wang Chuanfu, announced that the first models equipped with the new system would be the Han L saloon and the Tang L SUV.
“To completely solve users’ anxiety over charging, our pursuit is to make the charging time for EVs as short as the refuelling time for fuel vehicles,” Chuanfu said in a statement.
[See more: BYD has acquired lithium mining rights in Brazil]
Hong Kong-listed BYD’s shares climbed by 4 percent in response to the announcement, with the company’s share value now increasing by 85 percent over the past 12 months, according to the Financial Times. The news also saw US EV-maker Tesla’s shares take a nosedive.
With a charging power of 1 megawatt, BYD’s new system offers twice the power of Tesla’s current 500 kilowatt superchargers, enabling significantly faster charging. BYD has said it would build 4,000 flash-charging stations across China to support the system, though did not specify a timeframe.
BYD appears to have also knocked Telsa off its perch as the world’s largest EV producer. The Chinese company churned out 1,777,965 EVs compared to its main competitor’s 1,774,442 last year. BYD also sells hundreds of thousands of plug-in hybrids, which Tesla does not make.
