- Zeekr and Huawei announce EV chargers capable of delivering over 1,000 kilowatts of power.
- They promise to supply up to 1,200 kW and 1,500 kW, respectively.
- Typical family EVs don’t really need this much charging power, so this may be a case of Chinese carmakers battling it out for bragging rights.
There is an electric vehicle charger power war happening right now in China as the country’s biggest automotive names battle it out for supremacy. Last year, we were impressed by the news that China had produced chargers capable of supplying over 500 kilowatts. More recently, BYD announced that it had doubled that number with a system that can charge an EV in about as much time as it takes to fill up a gas tank.
Now, Zeekr has unveiled an even more powerful charger than BYD’s, making us wonder how much more powerful these chargers will get. The Geely-owned carmaker says its ultra-fast chargers can deliver up to 1,200 kW (1.2 megawatts) of power, which is several times more than any American or European EV can take today.
Photo by: Zeekr
Zeekr—a cousin of Volvo and Polestar—has already deployed some of the world’s most powerful EV chargers, capable of taking a 7X SUV from 10 to 80% state of charge in just over 10 minutes, almost twice as quick as a Kia EV6, which needs 18 minutes. When the 7X was independently charged from flat, it was already pulling 300 kW at 3%, soon reaching a peak of 460 kW; it was still drawing 300 kW at 70%, making for a pretty remarkable charging curve.
However, Zeekr won’t remain the EV charging power leader in China once Huawei releases its charger, which promises to deliver 1.44 MW of power (which it rounds out to 1.5 MW). This charger, which will be revealed on April 22, promises to add 20 kWh per minute and take a passenger EV battery from zero all the way to 100% in 15 minutes.
Huawei says this charger is aimed at trucks and other heavy-duty applications with much larger batteries. These vehicles’ productivity and commercial viability would depend on having as little charging downtime as possible. However, chargers that can deliver this much power may not be needed for passenger EVs if it increases their cost and also the complexity of the charger itself, which will require a liquid-cooled cable to not melt from the heat generated by so much passing electricity.
It could be a case of diminishing returns. And while we’re sure we will see 1 MW public EV chargers pop up in China soon, that’s probably as high as they’ll ever need to go. BYD said that its 1 MW charger can add 249 miles of range in 5 minutes, comparable to gaining range by filling up a combustion car.
Whether we really need a five-minute charger is up for debate. But it’s pretty clear that the fastest-charging EVs will be in and come from China. Western carmakers seem content with delivering sub-300-kW-charging EVs that take between 20 and 30 minutes to get to 80%, with a complete flat-to-full charge often requiring over an hour in most cases.
Other Chinese companies are not far behind. Li Auto showed off a 520-kW charger, Nio has one that can push 640 kW and Xpeng’s goes up to 800 kW. The most powerful charger coming out of the western hemisphere is Tesla’s 500-kW V4 Supercharger, which is supposed to be rolled out sometime in 2025, initially in Europe (where the only vehicle that could use it to its full capacity, the 800-volt Cybertruck, isn’t sold). Tesla also has plans to introduce 1.2-MW chargers to replenish its Semi trucks.
China is clearly ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to EV charging power, but at one point, you wonder if it’s really worth pursuing 1 MW charging for regular passenger cars. We may just be witnessing internal competition among Chinese automakers for bragging rights more than anything else.
