- ChargePoint plans to roll out 600-kW chargers starting next year.
- There are no EVs currently available or even planned for release in the U.S. that need that much charging power.
- The most powerful EV chargers currently operational in America top out at 400 kW.
By now, it’s no secret that China is way ahead in the electric-vehicle race, and the rest of the world has little potential of catching up. That includes EV charging infrastructure. The Chinese market now has several cars for sale that charge at 1 megawatt—1,000 kilowatts—and public charging stations are ready to provide that power.
In practical terms, that means EV recharging can be done in about five minutes or so. That’s being billed as a game-changer in China because it puts EV charging on par with the time it takes to fill up a gas car.
Right behind China is Europe, which has lots of EVs and an expansive network of chargers. But no cars here charge quicker than 400 kW, and there are only a handful that can hit that number.
But even more powerful chargers are coming to the U.S. next year, according to USA Today. ChargePoint will begin rolling out 600 kW chargers in the country, promising they will top up an EV in 10 minutes.
Now, that would be true if there were any EVs that can take that kind of charging power, but there aren’t—and none are on the horizon, either in the U.S. or in Europe.
Europe’s most powerful chargers generally top out at 420 kW, although these are pretty rare. Some 600 kW units are coming this year and next. In the U.S., Gravity offers the most powerful chargers around, which provide up to 500 kW of power. But only EV is currently on sale that charges at more than 350 kW. The Lucid Gravity can take 400 kW, and it will be joined next year by the BMW iX3 and Porsche Cayenne EV, which will match it.
These 600 kW stalls will be present in ChargePoint Express charging stations with help from electronics giant Eaton. The charging giant notes that these new chargers will require a 30% lower investment than before, have a 30% smaller footprint and bring a 30% reduction in operating costs.
The company didn’t say exactly how many of these it plans to roll out or where they will be installed, but it is future-proofing these chargers while waiting for EVs with more charging power to appear on the U.S. market.
When will we see EVs capable of taking 600 kW of power in the States? Well, there are no plans by American or European manufacturers to make any with those kinds of numbers, so unless the sky-high import tariffs on Chinese electric cars disappear overnight and the market gets flooded by fast-charging models from the People’s Republic (which may happen in neighboring Canada), it doesn’t look like it will be anytime soon.
You can’t really charge a 400-volt EV much higher than 250 kW. Teslas and the Volvo EX90 are examples of EVs that run on 400-volt architectures and can achieve that peak charging rate. But to go higher than that, you need to go to 800 volts or more, because otherwise you would need such a high amperage that no public charger could provide. Cars like the Porsche Macan EV and the upcoming BMW iX have a voltage close to that. And the Lucid Gravity actually runs at over 900 volts (up to 926 volts, to be precise), similar numbers to China’s EVs capable of megawatt charging rates.
So Lucid could, in the future, update the Gravity (and the Air sedan, which currently tops out at 300 kW) to charge even quicker because they have the voltage to do it. But otherwise, there’s not much use for 600 kW chargers in the United States with the current outlook for EVs. Hyundai and Kia recommend a 350 kW charger for their E-GMP-based EVs to be able to achieve their full charging potential, although they don’t charge at more than 240 kW currently, even with their 800-volt architecture.
This is because only a 350 kW charger can sustain the 800 volts and 300 amps that these cars need to reach the peak advertised charging power. You can still charge them from a 250 kW charger, and they will still have excellent charging performance, but they won’t reach the advertised peak. So there is a point to having chargers that provide more than a vehicle’s maximum claimed charging power, but there are currently no cars that require 600 kW.
We actually tried China’s five-minute chargers with peak speeds of over 1 megawatt, and once you see one in action and how quickly it actually replenishes a battery, the Lucid Gravity, with its 10%-80% charging time of around 23 minutes, isn’t as impressive. BMW says the iX3 can do the 10%-80% charging dash in 21 minutes, but nobody has tested one to see how well it actually does.
