EV Advocacy Publications Praise New Chinese Charger Capabilities, Calling Them “As Quick As Filling a Gas Car” - In Fact, They Are More Than 7 Times Slower

Chinese automaker BYD has just launched a new EV charging system that, in some very specific vehicles, can charge a battery-electric vehicle (BEV) faster than the current state of the art. This new technology sounds great. Everyone wants battery-electric vehicles to charge quicker in public despite the fact that it can be the most expensive way to power any type of automobile. In our area of Metro Boston, the usual price for DC charging in public is around $0.58/kWh. Gas is $2.75/gallon. Do the math, and you will find that gas cars are cheaper to power at that crazy DC charger electricity rate. 

Inside EVs, Electrek and others are claiming that this new technology puts charging a battery-only vehicle “on par” with the time it takes to add range to other types of vehicles that use liquid fuels. Gas-powered cars, hybrid-electric vehicles, and the like. We see things differently. Let’s first look at how fast it takes to fill a vehicle's tank with liquid fuel.

Time To Add 500+ Miles of Range To a Toyota Hybrid-Electric Vehicle
Let’s be honest for a moment. Battery-electric vehicles are not always competing with old-school gassers. Rather, shoppers today are savvy enough to know there are other green vehicles available without the public charging hassles associated with owning a battery-electric vehicle. Toyota leads in the rapidly expanding hybrid-electric vehicle powertrain segment, so let’s use a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid or Venza Hybrid as an example. This vehicle type has a usable fuel tank of about 14 gallons. Let’s call it 13.5 gallons, to be fair to the BEVs. From the time the dashboard’s “you need fuel” light illuminates, you still have 30 or more miles of driving range left. Fill up at that point, and you will add roughly 540 miles of driving range. 

Related Story: Busting a Myth - Hybrid-Electric Vehicles Don’t “Just Run on Fossil Fuels”

To see how long that takes, we timed it at a number of fuel stations in New England. Some are super quick, some just quick. None were slow. Using a stopwatch, we averaged about 87 seconds to input the 13.5 gallons needed to add 540 miles of range over numerous fillups. 

To summarize, the time to add 540 miles of range to a liquid-fuel vehicle is 87 seconds. That equates to about 360 miles of range for one minute of fueling. This is the factual benchmark for green vehicles that are fueled with liquids. Gas and Ethanol are the liquid fuels in nearly every location in America today. In New England, it’s a 90-10 mixture by law. 

Let’s examine the claims made by the battery-only vehicle advocacy publications and advocates. Inside EVs says that the BYD technology could add 249 miles of range in five minutes. Remember, this is under ideal circumstances and only with special vehicles. This would never happen in a Chevy Bolt. Heck, a Nissan Leaf can’t even use the same handle. This is future tech. Inside EVs says that 249 miles in five minutes is:

... almost as quick as putting fuel in a combustion vehicle, eliminating one of the biggest EV drawbacks, the need to wait around often for dozens of minutes for them to make meaningful range gains while plugged in. 

Breaking down the claim, this publication says that 49.8 miles of range per minute is “almost as quick” as 360 miles of range per minute. In fact, it is more than seven times slower. Is seven times slower “almost as quick,” in your opinion? You can decide. To us, something 7 times more is not “almost the same” when it comes to time. 

Electrek mirrored the Inside EVs sentiment. In its coverage, Electrek says,

BYD has developed and delivered platform architecture that is the best in the world on paper and has proven that it is possible to deliver charging speeds that are on par with a trip to the gas station.

Is seven times longer “on par?” Par is Latin, and it means “One that is equal.” The average to deliver 540 miles of range in a popular hybrid-electric vehicle is under 1.5 minutes. To be on par, the battery-only technology from BYD would have to equal this. Not be seven times slower - in ideal circumstances.

You see us repeat “ideal circumstances” quite a bit here. That is because there is an endless list of reasons why public charging a BEV will be MUCH slower than the automaker and EV charging companies boast about. For example, in winter, charging times slow down to a fraction of the rate of fair-weather charging. Above the vehicle’s 80% state of charge point, charging times drop dramatically. We had a Volvo BEV last week that told us it would take over an hour to add the last 10% of range it was capable of at a DC charger. If the charging station distributes power to more than one connection, times can also drop by as much as half. Importantly, the vehicle must be able to put to use this new technology. No mainstream EV on the road in America today can. Finally, if the EV’s battery does not arrive at the station preconditioned, forget fast charging. Some EVs won’t allow preconditioning below a certain percentage of its state of charge. As you can see, unlike adding liquid fuels, adding range to a DC charger has an endless list of qualifications for things to go as planned. 

We love EVs at Torque News. Read our reviews. We sing their praises with regard to low noise levels, smooth acceleration, performance, and other attributes. However, they are a real pain in the neck to add range to in public by comparison to a vehicle that uses liquid fuel. Setting aside that the top 20% of the BEV’s battery range is eliminated when DC charging, the rate that range is added is still very slow by comparison to other green vehicle alternatives. When this reality changes, look for us to be the first to report it. 
 

Image of BYD trade show display courtesy of BYD media support. 

John Goreham is a credentialed New England Motor Press Association member and expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. He is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE int). In addition to his eleven years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can connect with John on Linkedin and follow his work on his personal X channel or on our X channel. Please note that stories carrying John's by-line are never AI-generated, but he does employ grammar and punctuation software when proofreading and he also uses image generation tools.