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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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The hurdle to this kind of fast charging isn't the tech in the car nor is it the tech in the charger. It's powering the fucking things.
A charging station the size of a small gas station that can handle a dozen cars at once, basically 6 islands with a pump / charger on each side, would require a nuclear reactor sitting out back to supply the required 1.2 Megawatts of power!
So we're either going to have to get comfy with having an SMR sitting next to every charging station or we're going to have to get over this idea of charging an EV pack in 5 minutes.
Agreed.
Eh....
At 5 minutes a car, each charger would be able to accommodate 12 cars per hour. The 12-charger station, fed by that nuclear reactor, would be able to handle 144 per hour.
A typical gas station that size has an 8500 gallon tank, and refills 2-5 times per week. That amount of fuel will serve somewhere between 1000 to 3000 cars per week, or about 6 to 18 cars per hour.
This doesn't call for a nuclear reactor at the station. This calls for a sufficiently large battery pack at each station that can "trickle" charge continuously. I say "trickle" - if I did my math right, it would be about as much power as 15 hot tubs or 60 water heaters. About as much as a grocery store, with all its freezers, refrigerators, lights, HVAC, etc.
Certainly a lot of power, but certainly not outside the realm of possibility. On-site solar installations could offset a significant percentage of that demand.
People just have the wrong idea about EV charging. They think of it like a gas car, wait until you're low, then go somewhere to fill up. But really, it’s more like charging your phone. You plug it in at home, go to bed, wake up, and it’s ready. You’re not constantly thinking about it.
Fast charging is for road trips, not everyday driving. You’re not supposed to be scrambling to find a charger every couple of days. Ideally, you start each morning with 80%, go about your day, come home, plug in, and do it all over again. You’re never really "empty" unless you seriously mess up. And the whole "how long does it take to charge?" thing, isn't really all that relevant. You’re not sitting there watching it, it just happens while you’re doing other things.
People are stuck on the idea of gas stations, but with an EV, your "gas station" is literally your house.
So ideally it wouldn't be handling 12 cars at once it'd be handling one or two.
Unfortunately, the infrastructure for the standard use case you talk about isn't pervasive enough. Most apartments don't have chargers at all, let alone one per apartment. You can drive by a Tesla or DC fast charge station at almost any time of day in a big city and see a line of cars waiting to use the small number of chargers. People are taking naps in their car in a bank parking lot while charging. Kudos to them for embracing the inconvenience of not charging at home to help the environment, but I never would have bought my 2 EVs if I didn't have charging at home.
Thats a great point as well, if you live in an apartment the best you can hope for is if you have a garage with an outlet and your apartment complex hasn't cracked down on you plugging in that way, but that's like 20 miles charge in several hours.
Missed opportunity, right there, because even the operators still think in terms of "gas station". Get a plot of land with a nice view, build a cafe, build a couple of charging stations. Make it a destination people want to go to regardless whether they need a fill-up or not.
Heck, whatever happened to car cinemas.
Yeah this is the idea. Personally I think charging needs more emphasis on at-work and apartment charging because if you don’t live at a house, you essentially rely on public charging which isn’t good for the battery.
Also more hotels should have charging. Having to drive 15 minutes away just to charge is annoying.
The other annoying thing is when you find a L2 charger at a hotel that is actually just an L1 charger in disguise.
I wouldn't buy a car I couldn't take on a road trip though, even if it's only a few times a year.
And everyone tends to go on a road trip at a similar time, too.
15 MW power needed, while a single reactor gives 500 to 1000 MW. The usual nuclear plant and power lines seem more likely.
A large office building will have an incoming main in the hundreds of amps range, some are over a thousand, meaning 500+ KW.
Getting that much power to a site isn't ridiculously hard to do.
That’s actually a great point. The power grid can’t handle that.