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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.

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[-] xenomor@lemmy.world 130 points 5 days ago

There is no incentive for US companies to improve their products when they are protected from market forces by import restrictions.

[-] CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works 45 points 5 days ago

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.

[-] xenomor@lemmy.world 27 points 5 days ago

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.

[-] timwa@lemmy.snowgoons.ro 26 points 5 days ago

The US is battling the environmental and human rights issues that so agitate them about China by promoting 'clean coal' and rounding up brown people in concentration camps without due process.

It's almost as if environmental and human rights issues weren't their real concern 🤔.

[-] YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 8 points 5 days ago

Right there on the top of Mount should. But we've seen the self destructive nature of my country and elected leaders.

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[-] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

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.

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[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 23 points 5 days ago

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

[-] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

"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.

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[-] TronBronson@lemmy.world 34 points 4 days ago

I bet they actually have incentives to create better technology.

[-] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 33 points 4 days ago

chinese companies are often run by engineers not management consultants, lawyers and accountants.

[-] TronBronson@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

They also pour money into many hands. Usually their industries are pretty competitive internally. they have more EV car makers than I can remember

[-] altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 57 points 5 days ago

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.

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[-] Redvenom@retrolemmy.com 43 points 5 days ago

Meanwhile ford wants to charge you a monthly fee for the luxury of opening the trunk n you e-mustang

[-] madkins@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

I can't find any information on this. Can you tell me where you read this so I can get more info? I do see they're charging $495 for the plastic tub in the frunk now.

[-] victorz@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

😆 what a joke

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[-] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 31 points 5 days ago

the new 1,500 kilowatt (1.5 megawatt) Flash charging stations

Must be nice. In Spain the charging infrastructure looks like it's literally designed to torture EV owners.

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[-] BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

Energy density or GTFO.

I'm tired of articles that purposefully skip the actually important data

[-] Bell@lemmy.world 20 points 5 days ago

Charge time sounds great, but what about the number of charge cycles (I.e. longevity), the article did not mention that.

[-] mlg@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago

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.

[-] clone_ix@feddit.org 7 points 4 days ago

You are correct. This is for phones, where it is worse than for EVs, but:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLS5Cg_yNdM

[-] 87Six@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago

As long as your driver is smart enough to control or manipulate the voltage at certain capacities

I feel like this is the important detail here...

When buying a car, you can't have a clue whether that is the case.

I used to believe fast charging is harmless in phones too. It isn't. I charge my phone only to 80%, and not daily. I haven't lost a single % of battery health in almost a year. Meanwhile my friends charge to 100% and very often, always on fast charging. I got a friend to install accubattery to check their health and it was at 93% after only about 1.5 years.

Tl;dr: I suspect the driver will be dogshit and cause batteries to get destroyed in anything but the flagship car models to increase battery service revenue BY A LOT...

[-] 46_and_2@lemmy.world 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Do I understand correctly - you charge to 80%, have zero degradation, but also only use 80% of your battery at most because of that.

Your fast-charging friend, meanwhile, has been using all 100% down to 93% battery for these 1.5 years. Maybe, in a bad scenario his battery will degrade to 80% in 1-2 years and he'll start using only 80% of his like you?

Where's the upside in this, unless you're both planing to use same phone in e.g. 5 years and you might get ahead in battery capacity finally?

[-] 87Six@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

There are many upsides.

One is my phone survives longer and when I sell it second hand to a less fortunate person, they get a phone with a battery in perfect condition.

Another is that my phone holds more value.

Another is that I remove a worry from my head. I'm no longer questioning whether I am destroying my battery.

Though I don't see the upside of charging to 100%. I literally dont need to. An 80% charge lasts me like 3 days so I usually charge every 2 days in case I need my phone.

Where’s the upside in this, unless you’re both planing to use same phone in e.g. 5 years and you might get ahead in battery capacity finally?

Not EVERYTHING is about having something better than someone else, jesus, I'm so tired of this mentality of "I gotta have just a little more than that other guy". Why should I try to get more if I literally don't need it?

Why would I want my phone to charge in 5 minutes if I spend 6-8 hours sleeping myself???

Why would I want to charge to 100% if 80% lasts me 3 damn days? (And that's if I use my phone a decent amount)

If you need 100% charge daily by all means charge to 100% at full fast charging speed but I literally don't need it.

Though I have no idea how anyone would go through 100% of their battery before they go to sleep for any less than 2-3 hours that it takes to "slow" charge a phone... I guess using the phone as a dash cam would do that as an example.

[-] SaraTonin@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

Every time I’ve seen someone test this hypothesis - as in doing a long-term experiment with the specific purpose of testing whether fast charging harms battery health - the result has come back that it doesn’t make much deference at all

It’s also worth pointing out that every battery is different and apps like Accubattery are imprecise. It’s entirely possible that your 100% and your friend’s 93% are actually exactly the same. It’s also possible that their battery would have displayed 93% when brand new

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[-] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 4 points 4 days ago

so after 1.5 yrs you're at 80% and they're at 93%?

[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

can charge from 10-70% in just about five minutes

Why is that always a metric? Yeah, with a tiny battery or a kilowatt line maybe.

More important is the cycle count.

~~Edit: btw, why don't charging stations have a supercapacitor?~~

[-] lama@lemmy.world 12 points 4 days ago

Because the power charging curve is non linear. You have to charge the battery slowly when it's almost depleted or full. So they only post the numbers that make them sound best.

[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago

Got it. Thanks!

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 13 points 4 days ago

Because discharging 100kw of energy quickly would be dangerous.

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[-] turmacar@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago

Cycle count is important for the lifetime estimate on the battery, how long before you have to spend a large portion of the cost of the car on replacing / refurbishing a key component.

"Fill up" time is the most obvious and common 'maintenance' anyone will ever do on their vehicle. One of the biggest objections large swaths of the population have about EVs is/was that could take an hour or more for each stop on a long road trip or if you can't charge at home. (apartment / street parking / etc.) They usually do 10-70%r 80 or whatever because the speed trails off exponentially closer to 100%. (logarithmically? whichever.)

[-] Maestro@fedia.io 26 points 5 days ago

[...] only around three minutes slower than it charges in normal temperatures.

No. The cold tests starts at 20% and the normal test at 10%. My guess is that charging from 10-20% at -30 C takes a lot longer. Still a good battery, but they're fudging the numbers here.

[-] davidagain@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago

True, but I don't need to charge at -30C, and this thing charges FAST.

[-] Nastybutler@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

I do need to charge at those temps. Not all of us live in warm climates.

[-] lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 9 points 5 days ago

Considering the speed of 20%+ charging, what would you predict 10-20% to be?

Even if you add another 10 minutes making the total 22 minutes, at that temperature I'd be impressed

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[-] SaraTonin@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

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

[-] mtoboggan@feddit.org 13 points 4 days ago

Is the average overweight American F150 driver really so much quicker? You need to consider them getting out of the car, pumping gasoline, waddling inside to pay, waddling back, climbing into the truck all without dying of a heart attack or shortness of air.

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[-] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

I don't have a gas station on my garage wall.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

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.

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[-] ramenshaman@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

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.

[-] Jhex@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago

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

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this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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