Wish I could fast forward 50 years and see what the world will look like.
[1] https://eletric-vehicles.com/catl/catl-calls-nio-an-irreplac...
But over time, you'd get upgraded on average without having to pay for a new battery, as long as Nio kept updating to keep its batteries competitive.
It only works in a leasing scenario, and everyone hates those.
When it comes to as-fast-as-possible charging, I think you can divide that number by at least 10. Slow charging while parked overnight or during the day should still be the most common case by far for most users. Very fast charging is important for road trips, but it is not the usual case.
This kind of fast-as-possible charging rather than overnight or "while parked at the mall for hours" slow charging should be the exception rather than the rule, i.e. it is useful when road-tripping long-distance, but is not not the daily case. Battery lifespan should not be based on assuming that it's the only thing that you ever do.
I can't really judge whether 1000 charges is a reasonable target for a car, though i think that 1000 fast charges is reasonable. It should probably be able to push to 5000 slow charges and 500 fast charges, which should fit a lot of use-cases.
Admitting that I have the luxury of an urban, low-driving lifestyle: I'm 50. That battery would literally last the rest of my driving life and have room to spare.
But the battery also degrades over time, the hotter it is the more, the higher the SOC the more. So you have to add on that calendar degradation, to that 10% loss from just charging.
Total degradation in practice will vary a lot, based on users charging and storage practices. Most of the time in practice it seems some fault will brick a battery before it degrades too much in total capacity.
I mean, if "charges" is "full charge" and the battery pack does even 200 miles of range then that'd be 200,000 miles right? And more like 250-300+ miles seems like a spreading target as energy density ticks upwards.
Honestly that's more than I've ever put on any single individual car or truck I've owned, and well into the point where I'd be expecting to put real money into engine and other work for an ICE. Sure more is better but if a battery pack can go 200k-300k miles keeping 90% range that doesn't feel unreasonable at all for non-commercial usage. Taxis and so on with much higher utilization may find value in alternative options of course.
Even the gravimetric density is fairly close, CATL's claim is 350 Wh/kg, compared to Donut's 400 Wh/kg.
The safety and durability (plus no lithium) prospects of Donut's V1 battery are still big though (if the thing is actually real).
I haven't really followed that closely myself, but I've noticed the people who I saw defending Donut before have gone really quiet about it lately.
It’s clear they have something very interesting.
We’re mainly missing low temp and energy density test. If they have something real, obviously they’re saving density for last (near the time real customers get their hand on the bike), since it will give them huge amount of attention. Can’t fault them for milking what they’ve got (if they got it) for all the marketing hype it’s worth.
We’re also missing cycle life test but the claims can’t really be fully tested in a reasonable time. So even if their tests show projections that indicate high cycle life, people will doubt it, or shift the focus to ageing effects. So personally I don’t care much, we just have to see how it works out in real life.
The lawsuit incidentally reveal their connection to partners which does reveal that there’s something real there. Another criticism was that the couldn’t have developed all the tech from scratch themselves in such a short time, and now it’s clear they didn’t, they’re using tech licensed by other companies with real competence in the field.
If it’s as good as they say with zero caveats and can be manufactured at scale is another matter
The US added basically 0% extra transmission capacity last year.
... Now your local charging station will require a nuclear plant to keep up with ~1MW per car.
The fast chargers that achieve charging in a few minutes, and which are indeed able to provide up to 1 MW of charging power, have their own internal batteries, so they take from the electrical grid a power averaged over a long time, not the peak power that they provide to the charged vehicle.
Why? Where do those extra cars come from? In reality the change you're going to see is from spending 30 minutes to charge 1 car followed by 30 minutes of sitting idle to spending 5 minutes to charge 1 car followed by 55 minutes of sitting idle.
Or, alternatively, go from 6 stations each spending 30 minutes / car to charge 12 cars per hour to 1 station spending 5 minutes / car to charge 12 cars per hour.
The electricity demand only depends on the number of miles driven. Same with ICE cars: the speed through which fuel comes out of the gas station's nozzle doesn't impact how much fuel you consume during your commute, or how often the gas station needs to be resupplied.
The reality of the situation is that most people who buy an EV will use fast charging only a few times a year. The majority will be charging overnight to recuperate their daily use, which amounts to drawing <1% of a MW. The grid, in it's current form, is totally capable of this.
What would be a strain though is large ultra fast charging stations along major travel corridors. But I'd still wager that those will be overkill for most.
Charging was what stopped me from getting an EV when I was a renter. In a world where I can recharge in 7 to 10 minutes, it becomes a lot more feasible for a renter to get an EV without at home charging capabilities. A renter can just pull up to a recharging station. Wait 7 to 10 minutes or (maybe 5 if they don't mind a half charge) and be off.
Assuming that your car is parked for 18 hours of the day or more (and if it is not, you're a courier, taxi driver or similar) the question is not "do I own or rent the place where I live?" it is "How do I get electricity to where the car is normally parked?"
If you solve that with a L2 charger - at night or during the day, you're good. Then recharge time becomes irrelevant as you don't stand there waiting for it, and it happens as part of daily routine. You don't have to regularly pay attention to "When do I have to go get fuel?", it's just done daily.
Electricity is found nearly everywhere, you do not have to treat it as something found only at a special fuelling station. EVS are unlike gas cars in that respect.
Which sucks, but the majority of people (2/3) don't rent.
I think this is unavoidable for any sort of decent charging station from now on, anyway but does require significant investment in infrastructure.
BYD was the first company demonstrating such batteries and chargers, but CATL followed after a short time. While the times reported by CATL are slightly longer than for BYD at room temperature, these CATL batteries have faster charging at low temperatures.
It is nice to see healthy competition between the major Chinese battery producers. Unfortunately, there is much less competition for them from other countries.
The electrical grid infrastructure that is needed does not depend on the charging speed, but it is determined by the number of cars that are charged per day at a given location (and their average battery capacity).
Scaling that to something the size of an EV pack will require one massive cable/connector. Call it 5kw/h in 1/60 hours, thats 3000kw, at 700v thats still roughly 4000 amps. (Please correct my head math.) Charging one car could suck up more power than an entire neighbourhood. Say four or five chargers operating at once ... every roadside charging station will need its own electrical substation.
(
) - Assuming you provision for the highest-traffic-volume day. Ignoring potential induced demand of making it a little easier to drive, which I suspect is pretty bounded - people need pee and stretch breaks anyway.5 kWh * 60 = 300 kW
at 800V (typical charging voltage) that is 375A
(still huge, but an order of magnitude less)
Does anyone know? Assuming it's not just the current high-end spec of 800v? It matters because higher current requires heavier equipment to generate it and heavier cables too.
Which is very much in contrast with this article not mentioning these numbers at all. It's odd.
Are you saying that you know that this CATL charger has the same specs despite this? That was my question, really.
1) "BYD Unveils ... Megawatt Flash Charging " https://www.byd.com/en/news-list/BYD-Unveils-Super-e-Platfor...
"BYD's 1st 1,000-kW ultrafast" https://cnevpost.com/2025/03/26/byd-1st-1000-kw-charging-sta...
2) Subhead: "BYD unveils platform with charging power of 1,000 kW" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/18/byd-ev-fa...
I assume that the chargers are more or less compatible with the older chargers, but they must be able to negotiate a higher charging voltage and higher maximum charging currents.
When either the vehicle or the charger does not support the higher voltages and currents, they should fall back to an older and slower charging mode.
