'As Short as Refueling Time'... Electric Car with Ultra-Fast Battery Charging 400km in 5 Minutes Released

BYD Chairman Announces Launch of Ultra-Fast Battery and Charging Station:
"400 km Range with a 5-Minute Charge"
Introducing the 'Super e-Platform'
as Fast as Refueling Internal Combustion Vehicles

China's BYD, the world's number one electric vehicle seller, is launching a battery and charging facility that can charge electric vehicles as quickly as refueling internal combustion engine vehicles.

BYD vehicle. Photo by Reuters and Yonhap News

On this day, BYD posted a video on Weibo, China's social networking service, showing Chairman Wang Chuanfu unveiling the new platform 'Super e-Platform' at a press conference held at the Shenzhen headquarters in China the previous day.

The Super e-Platform is a new system that allows driving 400 km with a 5-minute charge. BYD stated that the new electric vehicle battery and charging system is the world's first to provide 1000V high voltage and 1000 kW charging power to mass-produced passenger cars.

This is faster than Tesla's Supercharger, which secures a driving range of 275 km with a 15-minute charge, and also surpasses the Mercedes-Benz CLA electric sedan, unveiled last week, which can drive 325 km with a 10-minute charge.

Wang Chuanfu, Chairman of China's BYD, unveiled the new platform 'Super e-Platform' at a press conference held at the company's headquarters in Shenzhen, China, on the 17th (local time). Video source=BYD Weibo

Chairman Wang Chuanfu said, "BYD's goal is to shorten the charging time of electric vehicles to be as close as possible to the refueling time of internal combustion engine vehicles," adding, "In terms of charging speed, we aim to achieve 'the same speed for oil and electricity.'"

BYD plans to start selling vehicles equipped with the Super e-Platform from next month and announced plans to install more than 4,000 ultra-fast charging stations across China. Chairman Wang also emphasized that the zero to 100 km/h acceleration time (zero to sixty) is just 2 seconds.

BYD has started pre-sales for the first models applying this platform: the 'Han L' sedan and the 'Tang L' sport utility vehicle (SUV), priced at a minimum of 270,000 yuan (approximately 54 million KRW) and 280,000 yuan (approximately 55 million KRW), respectively.

According to the U.S. media Axios, Matt Teske, founder of electric vehicle charging startup Chargeway, stated that with BYD's new platform launch, Tesla has fallen from the leader to a follower in the field of electric vehicle battery and charging technology.

However, Axios reported that detailed information such as the type of battery BYD used and the battery size has not yet been disclosed.