Revolutionary BYD charging tech has a chicken vs egg conundrum

BYD is still committed to bringing its megawatt Flash Charging technology to at least one of its vehicles this year, but owners won’t be able to make full use of the revolutionary tech unless current charging infrastructure more than doubles in speed.

With fuel price pressures pushing an increasing number of Aussies toward electric vehicle (EV) ownership, so too looms the problem of charging infrastructure’s capacity to cater to a growing national EV fleet.

Anyone who’s rocked up to a busy charging station will be familiar with the problem. Even if every bay is in working condition, a dearth of DC fast chargers (50-100kW) and rapid/ultra chargers (100kW+) means most cars need to be connected for extended periods of time to get enough juice, which can lead to long wait times for charging bays to free up.

BYD thinks it has the answer and wants to introduce its megawatt ‘Flash Charging’ tech into the Australian market this year, which can jam upwards of 1000kW of energy into an EV’s charge port to achieve charging times that are competitive with filling a combustion car with liquid fuel.

How fast? Six minutes for a 10-70 per cent top-up.

However, while the company already has cars and chargers capable of megawatt-level energy transfer in China, the scope and shape of introducing that tech to Australia has yet to be hammered out.

“We’re still working through what that’s going to look like, and the timing and a whole host of things,” BYD Australia chief operations officer Stephen Collins told carsales.

“But what we really commit to internally, is making sure that where we can, as quickly as we can, we bring in the latest and greatest tech that's available.

“So what models, what timing and what that looks like – and the business case for megawatt charging – we’re just in the process of working through. We’ll have more to say about that in the next few months.”

As carsales previously reported, BYD intends to roll out its own independent charging network utilising its megawatt chargers, principally as part of its nascent Denza dealer network.

Building a broader charger footprint in the style of Tesla’s Supercharger network would be the ideal, however, according to Plugshare, just 41 DC ultra-rapid chargers are operational in Australia, and only a handful offer more than 360kW.

A gap in the market for a new charging provider appears to exist, but BYD appears reluctant to enter it until it has both vehicles and chargers ready to go.

“It’s a horse leading the cart, cart leading the horse situation,” local chief product officer Sajid Hasan said.

“You want the horse leading the cart. Unless we suddenly saw a rapid expansion of megawatt chargers in Australia at this point in time, it wouldn’t make sense to introduce the megawatt charging cars.

“But we see a huge opportunity to bring in BYD’s in-house megawatt charging piles.

“It’s not a matter of ‘if’, it’s just a matter of ‘when’. That charging infrastructure is coming to Australia, whether it be us or the government or other charging infrastructure operators – it’s coming.

“We’re in a fortunate position to already have cars with the technology capable of accepting those charge rates.”

Not including Denza product, BYD still has four more cars due to launch in Australia, one of which could well be the all-electric partner to the Sealion 8 plug-in hybrid, known as the Tang L in Chona.

It’s one of the first vehicles in BYD’s stable to be built on the advanced Super-E platform and offer a megawatt charging capability.

The BYD Han L (sedan) and BYD Song (Model Y rival), also utilise the platform and high-speed charging hardware, but haven’t been confirmed for Australia (yet).

However, BYD’s luxury offshoot Denza has put its hand firmly up for the Z9 GT, which uses the same tech, indicating it wants at least one version of it for its Aussie showrooms.

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