BYD says new fast-charging system could be as quick as filling up a tank

Man, that's fascinating, full study here [1].

I wonder how the Lithium is entering the food chain? Given they've tested drinking water, food, and air.

Dust from processing? occupational exposure? unscrupulous recycling operations? but Lithium isn't a heavy metal so exposure would have to be ongoing.

Definitely need to test some additional cities and try and understand what's going on here. While concerning these blood levels are at 3% of the doses typically studied in psychiatric conditions. There's some potential public health benefits to low level lithium exposure actually [2] but at the same time you don't want to be unintentionally exposing pregnant folks.

1. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.4c12959

2. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2020.128

I entirely fail to see how a government related pollution problem is related to a potential EV charging breakthrough by a private company.

Where’s the evidence that the cause is “clean energy”?

I’m admittedly really out of the loop on battery tech developments but I was hopeful the industry was slowly steering towards iron/sodium batteries to replace lithium for reasons of cost and pollution. Did that hit a roadblock or is it just still very early stage?

China supposedly made a breakthrough in battery technology, what does that have to do with lithium pollution in China? You sound bitter about China’s progress.

Maybe, but that only really works if you have a battery leasing concept - like e.g. Renault Zoe. Otherwise, you're swapping something you "own" with something that may be of inferior quality.

Would you really feel happy having bought a brand new car to find the most expensive component had been replaced with an 8 year old battery just from "filling it up"? What if the previous "owner" had just grounded the car and smashed the battery back into a speed bump or a large stone?

Imagine a damaged battery pack caused a fire and destroyed your car... Who would be liable? You? The garage that you last swapped the battery at (and would you even remember where that was)? The previous renter who may had damaged it? The renter who damaged it 2 weeks ago leading to its failure now? The manufacturer for designing in the risk? Are we going to need to pay to staff 24/7 at every battery swap location to inspect the incoming batteries?

Then there are the safety risks of having a high voltage connector that has to undergo potentially 10,000 cycles during its lifetime. Any slight misalignment will start to cause arcing and contact degradation, increased resistance and higher risk of fires. I realise that this same argument can be made to high speed charging ports as well, but the connector on the car would have to withstand significantly more vibration.

Additionally, the battery is one of the heaviest parts of an EV, so there's a challenge of making something that's easy to remove whilst remaining firmly secure the rest of the time. Such a thing is best supported from underneath, but having top or side loaded batteries would likely cause significant issues with weight distribution. Finally, modern EVs also have contoured batteries to fill the available space in the car, whereas swappable batteries are likely to need to be designed to be interchangeable between models and manufacturers.

To me, I'd see it as having too many downsides. High current charging can be done safely if systems are designed well, as well as still retaining the ability to fall back to slow trickle overnight charging which will probably remain the preferred option for most. We already have a standardised plug that can support this, the increased current can be negotiated over the control lines just as is currently done.

I think Taiwan is like this, but with ev scooters. There are big battery walls, and you take and swap. I think it's fantastic for a town.

Isn't that very common with NIO cars etc? They are also very popular with many other brands, especially for rideshare cars.

https://cnevpost.com/2025/03/04/nio-97800-daily-battery-swap...

This concept makes even more sense for trucks than it does for cars. The batteries are larger, destinations are likely to have appropriate infrastructure, routes are more uniform.

https://www.januselectric.com.au/

Sure I'd like to swap out a critical part of my car that is also like 60% of it's value to some random part I get in exchange at a highway station!

Its already a thing with Nio. Whats more they also allow you to upgrade your battery to higher capacity for long trip ie your normal car battery is 60Kwh but you swap with a 105Kwh for a long trip.

>The old battery is charged slowly, cheaply and safely..

May be you can be sure of that. But can you be sure of the new battery that you just got, will discharge safely..?

Google claims "On average, EV batteries weigh around 454 kg" ... pretty heavy stuff to carry around.

Never. The government wants you to drive "an iPhone with wheels" because it comes with a convenient spying device. Means they don't need to put up a network of cameras to track you (some do anyway). It probably also bundles a remote kill switch just in case you offend some bureaucrat or just if you expend all your future energy ration. The suggestion to remove the antenna will probably make it fail a government "safety" inspection.

This is is not just problem for the owners but anyone else. All those cameras are privacy problem in general (sometimes used also with parked cars - like in case of Tesla).

Buy a cheap EV. Remove the antenna, privacy problem solved. Use your phone for satnav and streaming audio via bluetooth. Same as with a TV, you get it cheaper because they're expecting you to subscribe, so you don't and profit.

the triangle truck supports 500 kw charging

People love to hate on the Cybertruck for political reasons but it's literally one of the most innovative vehicles of our time.

The triangle shaped truck was used as a testbed for several innovations: 4 wheel drive (not just for parking gimmicks), size increase of gigapressed parts, first deployment of the 4680 dry process batteries, 48V for the non-traction electrical systems, Ethernet based networking for systems interconnect.

It’s literally a concept car in production…

This will have very little impact on the grid. If you can charge twice as fast you need half as many chargers for the same capacity, resulting in the same load at 100% utilization.

The batteries are the same size that they were previously, so the kWh pulled from the grid doesn't change.

Well, the chargers won't be pulling 1MW continuously, so you can smooth this out by installing batteries with the chargers. The grid demand becomes a more constant trickle into the batteries co-located with the charger

If this works, you can use the same tech for distributed grid ballancing batteries.

It’s a nice car but it’s nowhere near as nice as Rolls Royce. You’re not doing your argument any favors by exaggerating this much.

However, I agree that Chinese EVs are a serious competition to other EVs.

When I was in China last summer, every taxi I used was an electric car. By far, the worst of these was a Tesla Model 3. You can buy serious luxury vehicles for really very little money compared to western manufacturers. Not electric car specific, but for me, the most impressive thing is that the mapping apps are all synchronised with the traffic light systems.

There are zero buttons on the center console. That car would never be considered as an option for me.

And will probably look like trash in 5 years due to the headliner drooping, fabric fraying, electronics crapping out, etc.

Also good luck getting any replacement parts down the road wherever you live.

Fortescue has 6MW fast charging for their mining trucks...

Ok Edison, we get it!

It's designed for China by China, the western EU limitations are not applicable. As to who will deliver this in the next decades at scale? I can only speculate: China.

According to chargefinder there are hundreds, if not thousands of chargers all over Western EU with 350kW charing at least!

My guess is that charging stations will buffer the power in high discharge capacity battery banks rather than pulling it directly from the grid in real time.

Don’t many Tesla supercharger sites already do that?

On batteries, my understanding is that we’ve been able to charge at these rates for quite a while now, but doing so results in a lot of heat which reduces cycle life.

Have BYD solved that limiting issue?

I think you jumped to the wrong conclusion. Another news source suggests proper groundbreaking 10C charging:for a standard EV

> the BYD’s pile supports the 10C charging. It can charge 400 km in 5 minutes. It is two kilometers in one second! During the live test, this station reached the 1 MW level of power in 10 seconds (while charging Han L EV and Tang L EV). The car’s charging time from 7% to 50% was just 4.5 minutes.

Forget 4C, these have new 10C lithium iron phosphate batteries.