A house has like 10kW peak sustained power consumption (an apt even less), which it rarely reaches, so a park of these fast chargers need the same infrastructure as a small town.

These loads are so huge

Cities like Beijing have strong industry and in general have the infrastructure to it, so it's relatively straightforward to install chargers like these. If you go out into the countryside, this infrastructure disappears, and won't see these fast chargers.

Most European cities barely have enough capacity to cover urban expansion, never mind to support this.

These articles suggest, its just a matter of putting down these stations, and that would solve the charger problem, but in truth, there's often a prerequisite of huge grid upgrades somebody has to build and pay for, which come with the unpleasant sight of these high voltage lines intruding into neighborhoods.

I wished articles lambasting the lack of fast chargers also mentioned this as well.

I have had two EVs in the last three years - a Kona and an IONIQ 5. I have greatly enjoyed them both. But one thing was a downside that I just had to accept: poor charging.

Granted, I live in the Canadian Prairies full of small towns a fair distance apart. And it's not exactly progressive - I'm actually being taxed for owning an EV. The charging infrastructure is sparse with 50-100kW charges every 100km. On long distance trips I spend 1 hour charging for every 2 hours driving. To say that faster charging wouldn't make a meaningful difference is simply wrong. Sure, it doesn't have to be 5 minutes - even 10-15 would be enough - but current chargers don't get anywhere close to that, even with 350kW, which rarely if ever reach those charging speeds.

For driving around the city I never bat an eye. I have a level 2 charger in my garage and there's one at work that is decently priced should I ever need it. I never use a fast charger for local travel. But long distance travel is what people are worried about and having much faster charging would most certainly make a difference for me and for them.

Diesel pumps for trucks typically pump much faster too. And diesel is nearer 40kWh/gal. We have a ways to go!

(The energy density of oil is amazing: a fully loaded A380 with 84,500 us gallons of jet fuel at 37.5 kWh per, that’s over 3TWh. Which is about twice the capacity of all the li-ion batteries made in 2025. We have a ways to go!)

[0] https://www.techradar.com/vehicle-tech/hybrid-electric-vehic...

The grid doesn't necessarily mean "pipes" or power lines. You don't build a pipeline to every gas station. Mobile charging robots work pretty well in China.

Case in point:

2026 BMW i3 - 900km WLTP from a 108kWh battery.

2026 Denza Z9 GT - 800km WLTP from a 122kWh pack.

The former charges at a maximum of 400kW, while the latter at over twice that which saves... about 10 minutes at the charger after 450km of driving(12 vs 22 minutes approx).

Many such examples with Chinese manufacturers putting 700kg battery packs into the vehicles just to be able to say it's this and that kWh.

I don't know about anyone here but after 400km or so I'm done and want to at least stretch my legs.

The rest of the infra is fine if that can be done. Array of batteries and/or capacitors at the supply point and draw continuously from the grid.

Most entertainingly run a diesel generator on site if that doesn't work out. Lines up well with basing them at the existing fuel stations, got the diesel supply already sorted out.

Put a bunch of solar near it when you can. Maybe sell back to grid, nice to have the extra capacity available.

All comes down to capital deployment at that point. Do the calculations on how much to charge for slow car charge vs fast charge, fallback to slow with an apology/discount when the infra is struggling etc.

Huge news. Iff the cars don't catch fire when plugged in.

My old gas guzzler had a 180-250 miles of range, and I did not have range anxiety (I did have gas cost anxiety tho)

The issue always was speed of charging and abundance of chargers. Today things are a bit better as you can find 200kW chargers on the big highways. But still they are not abundant, you need to plan.

On the other hand, 5 minutes is already a huge improvement over 15-30 minutes, and it’s fast enough to remove much of the friction of recharging an EV.

Really wish this kind of tech would come to North America…

What I'm wondering w.r.t. this article is: wouldn't such fast charging shorten the battery lifespan?

I have experience with ebike batteries. Bosch in particular, with very decent 29E samsung cells, that after 70k km or so, basically halved their capacity. I imagine this effect is severily reduced with a car battery because there are a lot more than 10p, so all the wear is distributed more evenly, and 29E are very old technology.

"Western carmakers' retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance"

"How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps"

I imagine with Iran etc that could push over £1 soon!