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Chinese carmaker BYD’s claims of charging their electric cars in five minutes on their new platform may be a gamechanger, but it will not work in India.
On Monday, BYD announced a new charging platform that it claimed will reduce charging times to almost match the refuelling speed of petrol vehicles.
In other words, charge your EV in five minutes -- a step so revolutionary that it can change the future of electrical vehicles which are still to catch on in India in a big way because of the lengthy charging time taken.
In February, EV sales fell 1.9 percent year-on-year and 18.2 percent month-on-month to 139,025 units, according to a report in Business Standard.
Today it takes anywhere between 30 minutes and 8-12 hours to charge an electric car, depending on the capacity of the charging station.
Given this, it was felt that BYD’s five-minute charging will be a game-changer for Indian EV users.
However, there is a catch.
BYD’s new charging system is capable of up to 1000kW charging speeds which may be achievable in China, the carmaker’s home market, but such high charging speed is not available in India.
A typical home EV charging setup in India uses a 7kW system and requires overnight charging to fully charge a battery.
The other option for EV users is to use the public DC fast chargers but this too is not so quick.
India’s public DC fast chargers operate on a 3-phase AC input, and the charging output ranges from 50kW to 120kW.
Even at these speeds, charging an EV takes a minimum of 2-3 hours, and even that is dependent on the car battery.
Some of the Indian cars do not support fast charging of more than 50/70 Kv.
Given this, BYD’s claims of EV charging in five minutes flat will remain a distant dream in India.