How do you spell BYD?
Build Your Dreams?
Beyond Your Deams?
Bet Your Dollars?
Better than You Driving?
比油低 Bi You Di (cheaper than gas)?
Break Your Dreams?
Bring You Down?
All of the above.
And now, add one more: 不用等 Bu Yong Deng (no need to wait).
For charging, that is.
With the launch of its Super e-Platform on March 17, BYD may have just erased “range anxiety” from the EV vocabulary with the “megawatt flash charging as fast as filling up gas” slogan, inflicting more pain and anxiety on competition.
The announcement comes exactly five weeks after the world’s leading NEV manufacturer and China’s largest automaker by sales volume announced a “smart driving for all” offensive putting its God’s Eye C entry-level smart driving solution on 21 of its namesake brand models covering a price range of RMB70,000 to RMB200,000, making highly automated driving features under certain scenarios standard and available to more buyers at no extra cost.
From democratizing and standardizing smart driving to elevating the charging game to a whole new level never seen before, BYD has just thrown down two huge gauntlets in China’s cutthroat smart EV competitive landscape within a matter of weeks.
Check out some of the out of this world specs from the Super e-Platform:
>1,000V architecture
>1,000kW charging power
>1,000A charging current
>10C charging speed (take that, Li Auto!)
>30,000+ RPM e-motor (take that, Xiaomi!)
>580 kW single e-motor power
>16.4 kW/kg single e-motor power density
2 km range addd per one second of charging
>400 km+ range added per 5 min of charging
The Super e Platform will arrive on the BYD Han L and Tang L EVs first, which began pre-sale at price ranges of RMB270,000-RMB350,000 and RMB280,000-RMB360,000, also featuring God’s Eye B smart driving solution with LiDAR, respectively on the same day.
The Super e-Platform culminates five consecutive years of headline making, anxiety inducing and industry changing events that BYD has announced:
2020: Launch blade battery
2021: Launch e-Platform 3.0
2022: End production of vehicles entirely powered by ICE
2023: Price parity between EVs & ICEVs initiative (Champion)
2024: Cheaper than gas initiative (Honor)
2025: “Smart driving for all” offensive (God’s Eye C)
2025: “Megawatt flash charging as fast as filling up gas” initiative (Super e-Platform with 1000V/kW charging)
How low can you go and how high can you go? BYD just gave answers within a matter of a few weeks.
And just when everybody’s focus seems to be turning toward smartification, BYD comes right back and says: no no, we are not done with electrification yet.
It’s heartbreaking, suffocating, traumatic, harrowing, agonizing, excruciating, painful for competition, especially the foreign automakers.
And BYD is just getting started.
The caveat is obviously BYD needs time to build out its “lightning fast charging” network and making it available to more models at more competitive prices.
BYD also needs to solve the issue of grid overload: 1,000 kW charging is equivalent to starting 100 home air conditioners at the same time. Its solution is to set up an energy storage cabinet + photovoltaic network to alleviate grid overload. It also takes time to bring down charger cost and optimize charger compatibility, and it needs to convince customers of battery degradation and charging lifecycle issues caused by such high speeds and power of charging.
So take it with a grain of salt on what BYD announced today.
But nevertheless, there is range anxiety, then there is BYD anxiety.
