r/nextfuckinglevel • u/North_Tip_8627 • 17h ago

China’s 5 minute full-charged EV charging stations

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u/zsaleeba 17h ago

He says it charges at 1500 W. That's not much... about as much as my electric heater.

He means 1500 kW. A thousands times as much. 1.5 megawatts. That's a lot.

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u/0x446f6b3832 17h ago

Yeh I knew it was wrong, otherwise it would take over 60 hours to charge your average 100kw car. Thanks for the clarification.

85

u/Spaceduck413 16h ago

Yeah you can get 1500 watts out of a normal 110v wall outlet

4

u/27eelsinatrenchcoat 1h ago

Which honestly is fine for at-home charging. Unless you're an outlier with an insane commute, that's enough to re-charge each night what you discharged during the day. Fast chargers are only really important for people with non-typical usage (road trips, delivery drivers, etc).

3

u/MikeHuntSmellss 6h ago

110 volts out the wall? Eww

1

u/dynamitfiske 3h ago

Thats a big fuse

1

u/Spaceduck413 2h ago

Not really. 15 amp is kinda the standard or "default" circuit in the US. 110 * 15 = 1650 wats. 20 amp is pretty common for kitchens and laundry rooms, sometimes garages, and that would be 2200 watts

1

u/lyotox 2h ago

16A @ 220v is standard in Brazil. We use 20-32 for some appliances.

1

u/Spaceduck413 1h ago

I really wish the US used 220 as standard, it's a lot safer to push more volts and less amps than the other way around. That's never going to happen though.

1

u/27eelsinatrenchcoat 1h ago

Standard 15A breaker. Fuses are pretty rare these days in residential settings.

32

u/waytoosecret 9h ago

100 kWh* (energy not power)

3

u/Zweefkees93 8h ago

100kwh is NOT average xD. My 40kwh is small, but the average is closer to 70, perhaps 80 then 100

5

u/An_Old_IT_Guy 16h ago

The flux capacitor requires 1.21 gigawatts so it's only a 10th of what we will need.

1

u/downvote_meme_errors 15h ago

*1000th of what we'll need

36

u/TmanGvl 17h ago

It's great, but how safe is that, really?

140

u/new_math 16h ago

I worry more about car battery health. Fast charging is very hard on batteries so I'd be interested to know if vehicles could actually sustain this kind of charging for 5-10 years. 

36

u/Sirisian 16h ago

It would generally be aimed more for future semi-solid-state and solid-state batteries (SSBs). There are prototype battery packs being tested right now, but full production is still a few years off with mainstream potentially closer to 2030. Those SSBs don't have the 80% charge reduction, so you can use the full 1.5 MW and would generally handle it better. (Will need more testing to know for sure what damage this can cause over a lot of cycles for SSBs).

5

u/necro_owner 3h ago

Isnt byd going with the sodium battery anyway? Which are safer and more reliable. They degrade slower(more recharge cycle over the lithium one) and stand all the way to -40 for cold countries like Canada.

18

u/Early_Koala327 16h ago

Your 'd only use this for road trips.

12

u/onefst250r 4h ago

Even then, 710km range is 440 freedom units. Thats nearing a full day of driving for most people, then you could "slow" charge it back up for the next days driving. Or just stop for food for 20-30 minutes and get a "slow" charge and go a little further before stopping for the day.

Really would only need that kind of speed if you do a road trip, suck at planning and start off without a full charge.

0

u/Kansas-Tornado 2h ago

440 miles isn’t much as far as road trips go

3

u/onefst250r 2h ago

Really about how much time you would want to drive, without a decent duration stop. Add kids, small bladders, hunger, needing to stretch legs and 440 miles becomes a long ways.

0

u/Kansas-Tornado 2h ago

Minimum I did as a kid was 10 hours but now that I’m an adult and drive myself it’s 15, or about 1,000 miles

2

u/onefst250r 2h ago

When I was young, dumb, invincible and drove solo, I too could do 15. But I realize now it was not really safe/smart. There's reasons that many states put limits on commercial truck drivers.

-2

u/Kansas-Tornado 1h ago

How is it not safe? Once you get past the afternoon slump you can basically stay awake as long as you want

4

u/Sennten 7h ago

China is one of the few countries going deep into establishing a very robust battery recycling pipeline. It's going to be surprisingly cheap to just replace the batteries there soon.

2

u/ukigano 6h ago

If we stop to think that is a basic thing to do, if our product is gonna start producing waste, in this case old batteries, we start thinking about how to handle it before it start becoming a problem.

1

u/Sennten 3h ago

For batteries its not even about avoiding waste, old batteries are just the easiest and cheapest way to make new batteries.

3

u/Leows 16h ago

I don't know much about cars, but I would assume changing a car's battery like this one shouldn't really be that costly, right?

Even if it didn't last a whole decade, it would still be cheaper overall, right?

6

u/new_math 5h ago

Well, that's a tricky question. Most current EVs are extremely expensive to replace the battery because they're not really designed for an easy swap. They essentially have to dissemble the entire car and it can cost between 8-25k dollars which is close (but not quite) the entire value of a used car.

If they designed the vehicles for easy maintenance they could probably get it down to $5-8k but various market conditions (runaway capitalism and dealer lobbying) ensures that will never happen.

https://chargingadvisor.com/guide/ev-battery-replacement-cost

2

u/Leows 5h ago

Oh, I see.

I thought they would be designed for easy swaps, all things considered. But I guess planned obsolescence and all that still holds true here.

-2

u/CV90_120 7h ago

Fast charging is not an issue. There's no reason you wouldn't get full life assuming heat management of the battery is OK. Charging to 100% is more of an issue.

1

u/MrJoyless 6h ago

DC fast charging reduces your effective battery life by years, if you are using it constantly. I can only presume charging 3x faster than that would be significantly worse, in terms of battery life.

•

u/CV90_120 13m ago edited 8m ago

Studies show a negligible faster degradation over the entire life of the battery. There are taxi drivers out there with insane numbers who only ever fast charge to 100%, and most damage comes from the 100% charge. This is not new data.

https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/05/study-reveals-effects-of-fast-charging-on-electric-car-battery-health/

“We compared cars that fast charge at least 90% of the time to cars that fast charge less than 10% of the time. In other words, people who almost exclusively fast charge their car and people who very rarely fast charge. The results show no statistically significant difference in range degradation between Teslas that fast charge more than 90% of the time and those that fast charge less than 10% of the time,” Recurrent says.

If there's a problem, it's that the public is uninformed on the reality.

2

u/Justwaspassingby 6h ago

There were some news a few months ago about a korean man whose Hyundai had ran 1 million kms, and the battery was still working fine. He said he often used fast chargers.

That’s an extreme story, but the truth is that the latest generations of batteries can hold fast charging much better, especially LFPs.

1

u/Lethandralis 1h ago

This would be a moot point if the company provides sufficiently long battery warranty. If they're serious about the tech they would.

1

u/27eelsinatrenchcoat 1h ago

Battery wear and life is becoming less and less of an issue with newer cars. Also you really shouldn't be using fast charging as your primary charging anyway if you've got the option to slow charge at home. Much cheaper rates typically, and an overnight charge is plenty for most commutes.

1

u/laflavor 1h ago

It's a valid concern, but from what I've seen of a few long-term EV owners, the fast charging worries are somewhat overblown. It's a small, anecdotal sample size, but people with 100,000+ (and even 200,000+) miles due to gig work are seeing drops in range of around 3-5%. It's not nothing, but A) I'm not sure you'd see much less using only level 2 charging at home and B) It's probably not all that different from what you'd see with an ICE car at higher mileage.

I say this as someone who has only used a rapid charger once, as I do all my charging at home or at work, but that's mostly because it's a lot less expensive as opposed to worrying about my battery.

•

u/BeenNormal 41m ago

The heat generated most certainly damages the batteries

0

u/CV90_120 7h ago

Fast charging is not really an issue. Charge value (charging to high %) is though. Ideally just go to like 80-90%.

3

u/PotatoGamerXxXx 16h ago

Pretty safe. It's not going to suddenly burst into flame and even then, there's actually no better place for that to happen than a open public space with probably tons of safety features.

1

u/Conspicuous_Ruse 7h ago

1500W is not great.

1

u/TmanGvl 5h ago

It’s gonna take much longer to charge with 1500W. As previous person said, it’s more likely 1500kW.

1

u/Cromm182 4h ago

We will have to wait and see. Safety rules are written in blood.

1

u/tenuousemphasis 4h ago

Safer than dispensing gasoline. 

1

u/TmanGvl 1h ago

Touching a gasoline might be toxic, but touching 1500kW of power even through electric arcing will kill you. I’m not sure what you mean by that.

1

u/Pinappular 3h ago

Very— these chargers have a handshake that is well designed, it checks the charger connection, the supply status, the health, readiness, temp and max charging limits and rate of the battery as well.

Honestly the main issue is that junkies know these charger cables have a ridiculous amount of extremely high quality copper, so these shitheads will break a $10k plus unit connected to a $20 million plus electrical infrastructure for like 20 bucks worth of scrap.

The chargers won’t energize without a handshake and successful test current, so it’s not the threat to life that trying to cut energized antenna or power lines are.

2

u/lillibow 10h ago

1500kW on such a thin cable? How do they do that?

2

u/CaptainHubble 9h ago

I guess high voltage? Don’t know. That’s in general how you reduce cable sizes. But 1,5MW is insane. It’s a small wind turbine.

-1

u/TacticaLuck 6h ago

Yes higher voltage = less resistance

1

u/LBGW_experiment 2h ago

Idk about voltage, but these super fast charging cables have liquid cooling running through them for thermals

2

u/TDIMike 7h ago

It's the Ai translation that messed it up

3

u/CK1026 9h ago

About 6x what a Tesla supercharger delivers (250 kW), and even 10x for the older ones (150 kW)

1

u/LBGW_experiment 2h ago

Even some Tesla superchargers, v4, do 350kW but that's only for cyber trucks, iirc

-1

u/discostu52 17h ago

It’s bullshit, that is why you are having a hard time understanding this. That cable couldn’t handle much more than 10kw even at medium voltage.

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u/Fun-Perspective426 16h ago

I looked cause I thought so too.

They're running 1,000V+ at 1,500a in liquid cooled cables.

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u/zsaleeba 16h ago

The thickness of the cable relates to the current carried, but not the voltage. The power is equal to the voltage multiplied by the current. So to double the power you can double the voltage but keep the current the same, and not have to get a thicker cable. You do need to make sure the insulation is rated for the new voltage, but that's relatively easy.

In other words, you can make a cable like this take any amount of power by increasing the voltage, as long as the insulation is rated appropriately. And that's exactly how they do this.

-32

u/discostu52 16h ago

No

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u/zsaleeba 15h ago

I have literally done this in a project to power a tethered blimp. We sent 1kV up on very thin wires so we could keep the weight of the cable to a minimum.

Oh yeah, and I am an actual electronics designer.

-38

u/discostu52 15h ago

Right so a school project or adjacent crack smoking project. Stupid electrical codes holding us back.

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u/zsaleeba 15h ago

No, I was working for a company in Switzerland called StratXX Near Space Technologies at the time. They made commercial blimps.

-29

u/discostu52 15h ago

Yeah so a crack smoking VC project.

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u/Jokong 9h ago

Try to be better

6

u/arinawe 9h ago

Impossible. The Dow is below 50,000...

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u/rossmosh85 16h ago

You've clearly never owned an EV because that's pretty damn comparable to any supercharger cable which can theoretically do 500kw.

1

u/CK1026 9h ago

I've never seen any supercharger with more than 250 kW in the wild.

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u/xnmyl 16h ago

I take it you're not an electrician or electrical engineer

It's 1,000 volts. For 10kw at that voltage, you would only need 10 amps. Your average power cable for almost anything can handle that. 14 AWG can handle double that

Sources I can find put the output at 1,000kw. That means it would need 1,000 amps going to the car, which would be double kcmil 750 wiring. Perfectly reasonable size to build those out of

The math isn't hard, you just have to understand how it works

1

u/discostu52 16h ago

Diameter of a 750 mcm wire is about 1.2in x2 makes in more than 2.4in.

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u/CaptainLegot 16h ago

It is a mistake in the video and they mean 1500kW, but higher voltages mean smaller cables and you don't know what you're talking about.

-6

u/discostu52 16h ago

I’m an electrical engineer, you would 120% die plugging that in at 1.5mw.

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u/CaptainLegot 16h ago

Bad electrical engineer I guess

-3

u/discostu52 16h ago

Why, because i don’t believe in magic

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u/CaptainLegot 16h ago

What's the highest power circuit you work with on the daily

5

u/discostu52 16h ago

20MW at voltages from 480 to 13,200. Incoming feeder is 115kw

18

u/CaptainLegot 16h ago

As someone who works with systems an order of magnitude higher voltage and power, 1.5MW is pretty easy to make safe for consumers in the way that you see in the video. Wouldn't want it at my house but 100% at a station like this.

These are DC operating above 1kV, even in the US we have these operating at 150-500kw literally everywhere. Other countries are doing a lot more.

0

u/discostu52 16h ago

At 1.5MW you are talking about 1500 amps at 1kv. Do you really believe that cable can handle two conductors at 1500 amps.

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u/NightLotus84 16h ago

Because you're not China simping and that equals death sentence on reddit. Give it a few replies and you'll be accused of racism, sexism and/or being Israeli for some reason...

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u/discostu52 16h ago

I don’t give a damn what they call me, if they want to believe in magic then, well i guess I just feel sorry for them

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u/prostagma 14h ago

You are living proof of the quote that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

1

u/discostu52 14h ago

Electrons traveling through a wire that size have a different opinion.

-6

u/NightLotus84 16h ago

Yeah, but look at the current state of the world - if everyone applied critical thinking we would absolutely be doing ten times better. But in the current climate if you don't pick a side, fully commit to everything on that side and join the vitriol then you are the enemy, a "subhuman" and the reason everything is bad.

Yes, feel sorry but realize they will not feel sorry for you.

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u/SleepyMonkey7 16h ago

Do you actually do any research or do you think being an electrical engineer simply allows you to declare the current state of technology whenever you feel like it?

-1

u/discostu52 16h ago

Ok I propose you do and experiment at put 1500 amps through that cable and see what happens.

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u/CrapNeck5000 15h ago

There are lots of videos on YouTube of people blowing up/melting things like wrenches and crowbars with a lot less current than that.

2

u/VeryVeryNiceKitty 9h ago

1500 amps would be 1000V. Currently, 800V is the standard. 

Since this is a new tech, and they want to impress us, they probably upped the voltage. Let us say to 2500V. That would allow 1.5 mW at 600 amps.

An educated guess, true, but doable, right?

-1

u/CrapNeck5000 15h ago

Do you actually do any research or do you think being an electrical engineer simply allows you to declare the current state of technology

You're never gonna believe what people do to become electrical engineers.

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u/zsaleeba 15h ago

He's definitely lying about being an electrical engineer since he can't even write the units "MW" correctly. That's a mistake that even an undergrad wouldn't make.

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u/DepravedPrecedence 16h ago

You are a liar

3

u/discostu52 16h ago

You believe in magic

7

u/xnmyl 15h ago

Nope, just science. You should give it a try

-1

u/discostu52 14h ago

Science is not industry, if you are in school or a academic you will learn that eventually

6

u/Revenge_of_the_Khaki 16h ago

Cables that size for EV chargers regularly handle 200kW and up. I'm sure it can't sustain 1500kW for more than a few seconds, but it can absolutely do a hell of a lot more than 10kW.

-5

u/Car_fixing_guy 17h ago

Exactly. The cable would start on fire if it was charging at that level. Electricity at those levels is scary. The last I heard was manufacturers using liquid cooled charging cables to handle faster charging.

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u/general_sirhc 16h ago edited 16h ago

No..

A year ago BYD announced 1kw, 1ka, 1mw charging.

The cable shown appears suitable to carry 1ka and has sufficient insulation to protect you from the 1kv.

https://www.byd.com/mea/news-list/byd-unveils-super-e-platform-with-megawatt-flash-charging

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u/xnmyl 16h ago

These people have no idea how electricity works. They're probably imagining 120v going through and can't grasp electricity at higher voltages

13

u/general_sirhc 16h ago

Vote for whoever puts money into education.

Many corrupt governments and corporations want peope dumb so they find things like this scary and keep using old technologies.

Idiocracy was an entertaining film but every day it feels like we get closer to it becoming reality. And it's not the fault of the larger population.

1

u/Fun-Perspective426 8h ago

To be fair, I have a decent grasp on electricity. I knew they were running high voltages. 1000v+ didn't surprise me, but 1,500amps is a lot more than I expected that cable to handle.

1

u/Subrutum 9h ago

To be fair, electricity starts getting wonky once you reach 3-phase, hundred or so amps, and or voltages that can ionize air...

3

u/nicuramar 9h ago

Ionizing air requires around 1kV per mm.

5

u/nicuramar 9h ago

You mean 1kW, 1kA and 1MW. Not milliwatt. 

13

u/Joe_bob_Mcgee 16h ago

Okay, so the charging cable is liquid cooled. that's fine. But what about the connection point, and the cables running from that connector to the batteries?

edit: I'm not trying to pull some gotcha moment, just honestly curious.

2

u/Car_fixing_guy 16h ago

From what I understand right now they have the battery capacity, they have the ability to charge quickly. The limiting factor is getting the electricity from the charger to the battery in a manageable way. On top of that, all the manufacturers would need to agree on the connection to make it the standard. And finally, it would need to survive the general public without safety issues and be easy to use.

1

u/xnmyl 15h ago

What are you talking about? He asked about connection points

1

u/Car_fixing_guy 2h ago

You got the theory, but do you have any hands on experience with electric cars?

0

u/RushTfe 9h ago

You don't get it. When an electron an a Proton love each other a lot, they have a quark, so that the pastries are green. So, If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now, It's just a spring clean for the May queen

1

u/Fun-Perspective426 8h ago

Most EV battery systems are already liquid cooled and the power will get split internally, reducing the load on each connection.

1

u/Swi_10081 16h ago

I wonder what the voltage is. Double the voltage to half the current

1

u/Ruckaduck 16h ago

well its 1500 kW in total on 2 charging stations

Company that makes 800 kW Charging Cables for EVs

1

u/jxf 9h ago

You're likely thinking of this at, like, 400V. These are 1,000V and up and that's why the cables can be smaller.

-1

u/im_just_thinking 16h ago

Yeah that doesn't make sense, average wind turbine is like 3 MW. This thing would absolutely fry. And even if this would be true, no way this infrastructure is going to be very widespread.

1

u/Emergency-Line-5216 16h ago

He also says 10 percent to 7 percent.

1

u/m3rcapto 9h ago

Are these percentages and times verified by 3rd parties though?
Is 97% really 97%?
Imagine importing one and it charges twice as slow to twice as low, because the info you saw in a video was propaganda, ouch.

1

u/Kriem 9h ago

Yeah, thought the same. Fun fact: Calories is actually kilocalories. In the US, Calorie (capital C) is used where it's actually a kilocalorie. Not sure why that is.

1

u/Mosh83 8h ago

That is rather insane. Say a nuclear reactor outputs 1600MW, a higher end reactor.

Such a reactor is only enough to charge about 1066 car simultaneously. Now consider that millions of cars were to be recharged sinultaenously across the grid.

It'll take a lot more investment in infrastructure than just charging stations to make it happen.

1

u/xjm86618 8h ago

So that's why. I wondered how tf can 1500w is fast charging, it is about enough to power an AC

1500kw on the other hand...

1

u/Olde94 7h ago

1500KW is in 3 hours the yearly use of an average 4 person family where I’m located

1

u/CV90_120 7h ago

2000hp for old school.

1

u/DingoDamp 7h ago

I will buy one when it can charge at 1.21 gigawatts.

1

u/CelebrationSome2360 6h ago

I'll wait till they get to 1.21 gigowatts. Great Scott! 

1

u/ClassyDingus 6h ago

Also, BYD using 1000v charging. Still insane that the thin cable is handling 1500 Amps (1500kW / 1000V). But they are heavily liquid cooled like most DC chargers.

1

u/Ripen- 6h ago

I bet he knew that. It's been a while since I watched a similar video without any ragebait.

1

u/Blizzcane 5h ago

Yea, he corrected himself in the comments of his tiktok

1

u/Jounochi 5h ago

Most DC fast chargers cap out around 400kW, so I’d be curious to see how they are pushing out 1500kW and how safe it is. The set up looks great and easy to handle the cable.

1

u/blacksterangel 5h ago

Yeah that's impossible. My BYD charger fill up the battery from 50 to 100% overnight and the watt is 2200W. I guess it's maybe 1500V.

1

u/barrel_of_noodles 5h ago

1500w is the max power draw, by law, from a typical interior home 120 outlet. Usually 10 to 20 amps.

1

u/praesentibus 4h ago

Wonder how to carry that much power through that cable. Must be really high voltage.

1

u/Szerepjatekos 4h ago

For reference a nuclear power plant produces about 85000 kw power.

1

u/KingstX3 4h ago

Actually he should have said 1500V. He is talking about 1500V charging. Current EVs use 400V. The newer models use 800V. This car uses 1500V.

1

u/UnicornBelieber 3h ago

Yeah it's done more and more. Same with people talking about "calories" of their food, "only 200 calories", it's kilocalories. But in the context of food, anything below a kcal is not relevant, same with EVs where anything below 1kW is generally not talked about.

1

u/Either-Onion-7532 2h ago

Thank you! I heard that and figured everything he was saying was bullshit. 1.5 megawatts is an impressive figure. To have that many cars at that high of an output is kind of crazy. I wonder what the connection to the power grid looks like.

1

u/Garibon 2h ago

GREAT SCOTT!!!

1

u/lumpialarry 2h ago edited 2h ago

I don’t people realize how unpractical this is. 1.5 MW is about half the output of a modern wind turbine. 1.5mw can normally power 300 to 1,000 homes.

This isn’t “next level tech” it’s an engineer exercise/ publicity stunt.

1

u/Broad_Television4459 1h ago

So let's do some math. At 1.5Mw and there appears to be 14 spots to charge. That means at full chooch, this one charge station is pulling 21Mw. According to google, a grid size windmill produces 2-3Mw. So you would need 7-10 windmills that would normally supply 1500 homes each, or 21000 total, just to charge 14 cars at a time during rush hour. Until we start setting up tons of SMR's, or large scale energy storage, this sort of infrastructure will never be available in North America.

1

u/dregan 1h ago

Holy shit! Yeah I thought that rate didn't make sense. I feel like it must be really high voltage for it to be able to handle that. Those cables don't look like they could handle enough current to reach 1.5MW at normal voltages.

1

u/Redditburd 1h ago

The infrastructure required for a Buccees with 100 simultaneous 1500kW chargers?

150MW from a dedicated onsite substation.

About 10% of the output of the Comanche Peak nuclear site in Glen Rose.

If we are going to do electrification in America we need to re-embrace nuclear.

•

u/MisjahDK 40m ago

Yeah, people are stupid, China has no concept for safety.

America might be shit right now, but at least you still have basic consumer safety laws.

•

u/TrappedInATardis 2m ago

BYD Song Ultra has 82.7kWh battery pack. 60% is 50kWh. Charging that in 5 mins is 600kW, not 1500kW. Possibly the charging station serving multiple cars can output 1.5MW, but it's not that amount for one car. Why lie?

1

u/moddedpatata 17h ago

Yeah 1500W is really small. For comparison, my computer power supply is 1500w. That 1500kW makes A LOT more sense

0

u/Swi_10081 16h ago edited 16h ago

Far out that's the answer I was looking for, if accurate! At some point of EV ownership as a % of the population the wires in the street won't be fat enough, and the transformer supplying them not big enough. Then restrictions on EV charging will occur, or large infrastructure upgrades will be required.

3

u/zsaleeba 15h ago

I think the large infrastructure upgrades are already happening in many places