The second-generation Blade battery can charge from 10-70% in just about five minutes and from 10-97% in under 10 minutes. More impressively, the company showcased the battery charging flawlessly from 20-97% at -22°F (-30°C) in just about 12 minutes, only around three minutes slower than it charges in normal temperatures.
…
The EV was plugged in at 9% state of charge with 93 kilometers of range (57 miles). In 9 minutes and 51 seconds, it charged up to 97% with the range prediction in their gauge cluster displaying 1,008 kilometers (626 miles). This is likely calibrated for the China Light-Duty Test Cycle (CLTC), which tends to be more optimistic than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) test cycle in the U.S.
Still, these charging speeds are way faster than the 20-40 minute charging stops on the latest EVs in the U.S. The new BYD EVs can basically recharge in nearly the same time it takes to refill a gas car. Even the new 1,500 kilowatt (1.5 megawatt) Flash charging stations are arranged like a traditional gas station for cars to quickly drive in and drive out.
There is no incentive for US companies to improve their products when they are protected from market forces by import restrictions.
What US companies? Only three remain (GM, Ford, Tesla) and they make up a fraction of sales here in the US. The Chinese government is dumping truckloads of money into subsidies and development, control nearly all rare earth minerals, and don’t shy away from environmental disasters and human rights abuses which is why they’re the only nation on the planet that’s able to develop this rapidly and sell their vehicles for way less than anyone else on the planet. Once they control everything you can kiss those low prices and rapid development goodbye, but you’ll still buy from them because nobody else will be left standing.
If all that is true, then the US should subsidize US ev’s to the point where they are price competitive and open the market to competition where US manufacturers can market against the environmental and human right issues with their Chinese competitors. That would put competitive pressure on Chinese manufacturers to clean up their supply chains and consumers worldwide would benefit.
Who’s going to build them though? GM and Ford have almost completely eliminated producing vehicles that aren’t SUVs and trucks because nobody was buying them and Tesla is floundering with a Nazi leading the company. Most people are buying German, Japanese, or South Korean cars and they aren’t able to compete against China either for all the aforementioned reasons.
The fact that nobody else in the entire world can match what they’re doing despite hundreds and hundreds of collective years building and selling cars should clue you in to what’s happening. It’s like saying a city should subsidize their local general store to compete against Walmart and wondering why nobody is doing just that.
At that point you’re having tax payers subsidize failing businesses that only try to collect profits over innovation. Giving more money from the poor to the rich.
Not to mention how hard you’d have to subsidize. Aside from the huge amount of money in constructing plants capable of building like China, you’d be subsidizing pay differences to a huge degree. Automakers in the US average around $30 US an hour. Chinese average $3.75 US an hour. Our two economies can’t really play together that well because the differences are so massive.
Tax the fuck out of the rich on anything over like $1.5 million a year, and close all the loopholes and the problems fix themselves. The rich and the corrupt government our the problem.
A loss of overall competitiveness of the local companies is actually a well known and studied problem with using tariffs and import restrictions to protects said local companies.
So any competent government which desires for their local companies to survive and prosper will seek different ways to strengthen then which don’t suffer from that problem. The Chinese government is doing just that, the US government is not.
By all indications, US politicians are spectacularly incompetent and/or are following a strategy of burning the future of US companies for a short term boost in the money they yield for current CxOs and investors.
But what about the majority of cars sold in the US which belong to foreign manufacturers, and what’s your answer for why none of those nations are able to compete with what China is doing either?
Apparently no other government in the entire world is “competent” by your standards, or perhaps it’s about one nation leveraging their position and influence in order to build a monopoly and not about competency at all.
I can tell you that, at least for Europe, they’re doing pretty much the same thing as the US, only it’s higher tariffs rather than blocking the Chinese products.
The effect of special protectionist tariffs on the competitiveness of local companies might not be as strong as for outright blocking of the competing foreign products, but it’s in the same direction, which is why recently even Tesla (which are shit at the actual building cars part of the business) were wiping the floor on EVs with massive European car making businesses which had enormous expertise in actually making cars and decades to evolve EV tech and failed to do so.
Only three remain (GM, Ford, Tesla) and they make up a fraction of sales here in the US.
Maybe stop selling garbage?
Don’t forget Dodge, speaking of garbage…
They did stop selling garbage which is precisely why they’ve almost completely left the passengar car market in favor of trucks and SUVs, which sell like hot cakes.
Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep is owned by Stellantis which is based in the Netherlands. They haven’t been an American company for quite some time now.
They’re fully in thrall to market forces. Those forces simply dictate that they lobby for protected markets. It’s far cheaper to buy off a lobbyist than to build a cutting edge battery factory
“Burning the future of the company for extra personal upsides in the short term” is pretty much MBA-Age management strategy summarized in one sentence.
China has also implemented the world’s most stringent standards for battery safety. They require automakers to ensure that batteries don’t catch fire or explode for at least two hours after a single cell enters thermal runaway. If it does go ablaze, Chinese automakers are experimenting with some unusual ways of protecting the car and occupants from the battery fire.
I like it way more than charging speeds. But also - I’m interested in how many recharge cycles they supposedly can live through, and that’s not in the article.
Is it really even a road trip if there is no chance of the vehicle catching fire or exploding? Sounds boring TBH.
I bet they actually have incentives to create better technology.
chinese companies are often run by engineers not management consultants, lawyers and accountants.
They also pour money into many hands. Usually their industries are pretty competitive internally. they have more EV car makers than I can remember
Charge time sounds great, but what about the number of charge cycles (I.e. longevity), the article did not mention that.
They don’t mention it, but I highly suspect its actually not significant.
I used to think fast charging did the same thing, but it turns out that even the heaviest wattage implementations have negligible effects on cycles and health.
As long as your driver is smart enough to control or manipulate the voltage at certain capacities (<15% and >85%), the higher power won’t affect the cell quality.
so after 1.5 yrs you’re at 80% and they’re at 93%?
Energy density or GTFO.
I’m tired of articles that purposefully skip the actually important data
wtf is that headline. Its a nice improvement but I wouldnt go that far. Its 5-10mins afters and has a better operating temp(allegedly) and ~10-20% extra range. Its nice but the gap isnt that huge.
Makes me think about the third-rate makers whose EV batteries consist of nothing but hundreds or thousands of LiPo cells soldered together then packed in a plastic container.
Isn’t that just a modern Tesla at this point?
I saw one of those videos, with batteries from vapes, but it wasn’t about saying “look at this cool battery I made”, but rather about saying “look at the waste of throwing away vapes with rechargeable batteries”.
Yeah, I oppose the sale of disposable vapes on the grounds of it being a fucking batshit use of resources. I miss when vapes were usually those repairable and upgradable things that you poured juice into. I didn’t vape then or now, but it just seems better for everyone for it to be that way.
15 years ago it was a revolutionary idea
So is being claimed
Let’s just say that China (or hell, companies in general) has a habit of great claims. I’ll believe it when I see it
Well, you can’t see it, because the US won’t let you buy one
Which is quite telling, to me.
Not everyone lives in the US, though
And it won’t matter, I wouldn’t buy one because the Chinese government, like the US government, is evil as fuck and wants to control every fucking move of every fucking person
But having said all that: I still don’t believe this crap either because big claims require big evidence, to put it very simple
Copium
Those are some impressive numbers but I’m skeptical of anything China claims about their own tech. I don’t doubt their battery tech is great but I’ve seen so many AI/CGI videos of their humanoid robots doing crazy shit and people online are eating it up.
I hear you but it’s not like western tech does not outright lie about their specs and/or make up awards to seem better than it is
Totally fair, you’re not wrong
Who spends 12 minutes putting petrol in their car?
Given the responses and the downvotes i can only assume that people have misunderstood the post. I’m not saying “electric bad because long change time“. I’m responding to the claim in the article that it takes the same amount of time as refuelling a combustion engine. This is not true
I don’t have a gas station on my garage wall.
I’ll spend 12 minutes waiting so I’m not dependant on gas prices and to reduce emissions.
5 minutes to get it to 70% capacity, with a battery that drives several hundred miles on a charge.
But if you’re at the mall and there’s a charging station, you can plug it in and refill it while you do your shopping.
Who spends 12 minutes putting petrol in their car?
A lot of people plug in the gas hose, then waddle into the station for delicious sushi, case of beer, rotary hot dog. Lot longer than 12 minutes before they waddle back out again.
Don’t worry about down votes, this isn’t reddit. That said, useful context from the article is always helpful to prompt meaningful discussion.
Oh, i don’t care. It was just a cute that maybe i should have quoted the sentence i was referencing
The only Fast Charging most EV owners do is on road trips. The rest is more like plugging your cell phone in while you sleep. So the relevant comparison is: how long do you usually stop for a bio-break & snack+checkout. I wish I could get the family in and out a convenience store as fast as the EV6 charges (though it’s much slower than Blade2’s high-speed charge).
Of course, most petrol users fuel-up weekly in the USA, so the petrol car is starting each road trip at a disadvantage. If you fuel-up with petrol for 4 minutes, 4x/month, and road-trip 1x/month, then the petrol car starts each road trip 16 minutes behind.
