usatoday24
Designed for heavy but practical transport for the daily car. And an advance that has raised some controversy in the battle that China-Occident in the battle for the electric car.
It is the 1 MW charger of byd. The same one that, they promise, can load 400 kilometers of autonomy in five minutes and with which, in the words of Stella Li (vice president of the company) equals “the experience of Fill a deposit of gasoline “.
It is definitely one of the advances in the electric car that has raised the most interest in recent months. And in Xataka we have tried it.
Yes, it is very real
In a concessionaire and next to other lesser power chargers. Byd has shown us the operation and recharge of its 1,000 kW or 1 MW charger. An experience that promises to match the times of gasoline but that, they assure from the company, is not primarily thought for cars.
Last March, Byd hit the table showing your most powerful loaders to date. Immediately, domino’s chips fell and we knew that Catl and Huawei also confirmed that had ready their own ultra -grape load suppliers.
The race for the electric car in China advances at a devilish pace that has taken us at the end of this June, just over two months later from the announcement, to see these loaders in operation. The expansion of the more than 4,000 points that the brand aspires to have very soon in its country clashes frontally with the slowness in Spanish facilities.
Be that as it is, the truth is that two byd cars can now recharge in this type of facilities. They are the byd and tang l, two electric mounted on their super e-platform that can assume the power of its megawatt flash charger, a load point known as the 1,000-1,000-1,000: 1,000 kW, 1,000 amps and 1,000 volts.
A BYD TANG L at the 1MW load station
And that’s what we saw. First with a Byd Tang L and, later, with a Byd have l, the company showed us the system load capacity. For this it is necessary to plug the two hoses that leave the supplier. The car, like a Porsche Macan, has two load shots (one on each side) and plug at the same time.
Once the two shots are connected, the load begins from the vehicle. And magic happens. In two minutes, 7% battery capacity has passed to almost 40% of it. One is hypnotized When you see on the central screen the 1,000 kW of load power and the percentage of the battery upload.
The maximum peak does not last too much. But that is not too much problem. After 20%, the power falls to 750 kW and it remains so until 30%. It is not then that it is maintained with sufficiency in 700 kW or slightly below. Thus it will come with hardly any drop to 80%. At that pace, moving from a brief 7% to 80% autonomy leads to, just over five minutes. And that 80%, In a car with 83.2 kWh Battery are about 67 kWh available.
To lower the data to the ground, two questions.
Is it a lot of power? It is a lot of power. It is a barbarity. To get an idea, the most powerful load points that are in Spain Sinde 350 kW and begin to consider loads of 500 kW. Have a car that carries, when the power drops, at 700 kW is to fold the most advanced vehicles at the moment, from the Porsche Taycan and Audi GT e-tron to the KIA EV6 and Hyundai ioniq 5. Just a handful get these figures in Europe.
Really load 400 kilometers in five minutes? Yes and no. We explain ourselves. The 67 kWh that would have available any of these two cars with 80% load equals just under 350 real kilometers with a consumption of 20 kWh/100 kilometers.
If you talk about 400 kilometers in five minutes it is because the Chinese homologation system is much more lax than WLTP. This has led us to receive news from China from cars with 1,000 kilometers of autonomy that would not support an exam in Europe.
Despite this, we must not crucify how to measure in the Asian country. You have to take into account the peculiarities of each market. The homologations are assumed, both the Chinese and the European WLTP try to simulate the use that an average driver would give it.
That in China, where the car is used as a ciudad already low speed (also in the ringms) it is much more likely that the average consumption is lower than for a European driver. It is something that have confirmed different Chinese brands: the car is for urban use, for the long trips bullet trains and airplanes are used.
Is it really practical?
When Byd gave the news, the competitors soon answered. As we have seen, Catl and Huawei came out to point out that they also had similar widths for imminent expansion. From Europe the message was another: That loading power is useless.
That was what they pointed out in Mercedes. An opinion that can be controversial and shared before going to China. Now, I thought things better.
What they maintain in Mercedes is that so much power is not necessary because, generally, when we stop we are standing for more than five minutes. And it doesn’t matter if we are going to have coffee or, simply, fill the car deposit. In the latter we spend more time of five minutes. If we are barely stopped 10 minutes, it recharges it with a car that can fill its batteries at 350 kW of power does not change much with respect to Byd’s proposal.
And, if this power is supported, in just 10 minutes almost 60 kWh capacity will have been filled. That is, 300 kilometers with the previous calculations. In practice, the difference is not much.
A Xiaomi Su7 in the same station as a byd car
What made me change my mind is that the electricity supplier delivers 500 kW of power per hose regardless of the car used. That is, if the car admits this power and the two shots are plugged in, it will load 1,000 kW. But we can also load two cars different than 500 kW each, which remains above the current standards in Europe.
That is a substantial change because space makes it very flexible. It is good for byd because of having a hose to deliver 1,000 kw of maximum powermost likely he was infrautilizing his infrastructure. To be able to fill two vehicles at the same time allows you to attract more customers. Win in any case.
But, in addition, it is huge psychological support for the client. Actually, such a high power to fill the battery is not necessary but those 400 kilometers (or 300 kilometers, the same gives) in five minutes serve to remove fears from the potential buyer of an electric car that does not dare to take the step.
Actually, it is a most interesting formula for company trucks and fleets, such as Uber, Cabify or taxi services, but it is a safety network for the driver of an electric car, aware that it can leave an hurry at any time but, also, the security that if the cargo station is full, a plug will not take long to free itself.
And, although it seems nonsense, oversizing what we really need can be definitive for him to heating a technology. Even if it is only to eliminate psychological barriers.
Photo | Xataka
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