Though car nuts may prefer the rumble of a gasoline engine and the satisfaction of changing gears, these aren’t the main reasons consumers primarily stick to gas. Besides price, the biggest has been charging speed. You might think the issue is range anxiety, but that’s a myth; range anxiety is a symptom of slow charging speeds. And, in a roundabout way, those have also made electric cars far more expensive.
Electric cars are mechanically simpler than gas-powered cars, with far fewer parts, which should reduce manufacturing and parts costs, and therefore costs. But then batteries come into the mix. Because of this fear of running out of charge and how long it would take to fill up again, manufacturers began a range arms race, fighting to pass 500 miles of range on a charge. But, as batteries are both the most expensive and heavy part of an electric car, this has spiraled their costs out of control.
The irony is that the average electric car can now go far further on a charge than its gas equivalent on a full tank; both far exceed the average daily mileage of an American commuter. The standard Tesla Model 3 has a range of about 272 miles on a full charge, but according to the Department of Transportation, the average American only drives fewer than 40 miles a day, and 95.1 percent of personal trips are less than 31 miles.
Battery capacity isn’t the issue; it’s the charging. Filling a gas car takes a few minutes, but it takes 20 to 30 minutes to charge a Model 3 to 80 percent full, and that’s if you’re using a Tesla Supercharger. And, though Tesla has the best charging network in the country, charging stations are still infamously unreliable, and if they are working, there’s usually a line to use them. A Level 2 home charger takes roughly 8 to 10 hours to charge, and you’ll be waiting more than a day to recharge with your standard household plug.
The issue isn’t battery life; it’s the charging speed. And, with their new 1000-volt “Super-E” platform, the Communist Chinese automaker BYD has solved the issue. At a compatible charging station, their new cars can add 249 miles of range in 5 minutes, adding a mile on the road for every second it’s plugged in; in other words, refueling as fast as a gas car. This charging speed will be possible at 4,000 megawatt charging stations that BYD will build throughout China, which also tend to be far more reliable than America’s chargers.
This infrastructure costs a lot more money to build than standard electric charging stations, even with aggressive funding from the Chinese Communist Party, but the benefits of this are profound. With enough of these stations, the battery size of electric cars could be cut by half or more, dramatically reducing cost and weight, and the first cars to use this platform aren’t that expensive anyway, despite large batteries. BYD’s Han sedan and Tang SUV will be available to Chinese consumers for under $40,000.
There are questions here. Battery longevity is already a big concern on more conventional wattage electric cars, and their range may implode after five or so years of use. Similarly, though BYD’s founder and CEO Wang Chuanfu announced the construction of 4,000 compatible charging stations, he didn’t announce the timeline for them; and these won’t charge any faster than another electric car at a regular charging station.
But both issues are solvable, and the fundamental innovation — the roll-out of a super-high-wattage electric car platform — is a seismic shift for the industry. Communist Chinese electric cars have been superior to their Western competitors because they offer an equivalent product at often less than half the price; and, because of this, they now make up 74 percent of global electric car sales, despite not being available in the US. But they weren’t fundamentally different products. That’s changed now. With this new platform, BYD has the best electric car platform on the market, regardless of price.
