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Chinese EV maker BYD says new fast-charging system could be as quick as filling up a tank
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Maybe with a supercapacitor in the station and a chrging cable with the diameter of a fuel hose.
Not really, just make the vehicle 800v and then use the same Amp limits. That's where everyone is out pacing tesla now. Tesla went for amps, the others went for volts
Energy is amp x volt. Same energy faster is more energy in same time, be it amps or volt. Dunno if your grid can bear it multiple times in each city but still better buffer it. And more volts needs more gum or you get the volts.
I always imagined that portable future wizard (??nuclear??) power would be as simple as unscrewing a 5 gallon cannister from the back of a vehicle and exchanging it at the power/charging station for money. Like the small 20 lb LPG cooking gas tanks. I still think that electric cars are a phase of tech that cannot be sustainable in terms of money and environmental cost and waste for too long and that it is just transitional in our quest. Hydrogen power was always supposed to be the future in my mind.
Hydrogen has extreme structural problems. Hydrogen tanks need constant maintenance, due to how small the molecule is - it's very difficult to contain and prevent corrosion. You then have significant conversion loss between the powerplant-native format of electricity, and the hydrogen. So nothing can be as cheap as pure electricity. Fuelling the car with ammonia that then gets converted to Hydrogen inside the car is the solution to the first problem, but further increases the loss on the second.
What you're describing sounds like a small, high-capacity battery to me! Like a super AA battery. Maybe in 50 years :)
Hydrogen has the same problems tho. Well, except metal/bor hydride, but they have low enery density.
Assuming this is about the same thing as the other BYD charging article I saw a couple days ago, they're using a higher voltage, which would let them charge faster without needing a thicker* cable.
(* The copper need not be thicker, but the insulation might need to be)
Exactly. More energy means either more copper or more rubber in the cable.
Rubber is cheap though, and flexible. If it's the size of a gas pump hose, oh well; gas pump hoses are also rubber. As long as they don't have to make the copper ridiculously thick, it shouldn't matter how thick the cable overall is