Charging as fast as petrol?

Electric car charging used to be a coffee stop. Chinese carmakers are now trying to turn it into a petrol stop, with BYD saying its newest hardware can add hundreds of kilometers in about five minutes and Geely showing a Lynk & Co prototype going from 10% to 97% in 8 minutes 42 seconds. (byd.com) (digitaltrends.com) The trick is power. A charger measured in kilowatts is like a wider fuel hose, and BYD’s Super e-Platform says it can push up to 1 megawatt, or 1,000 kilowatts, into a compatible car. (byd.com) That only works if the car can swallow power that fast without cooking the battery. BYD says its platform combines a flash-charging battery, new silicon carbide power chips, and a 1,000-volt electrical architecture to handle that load. (byd.com) BYD first pitched this in March 2025 on the Han L and Tang L in China, with a claim of 400 kilometers of range added in five minutes. In April 2026, its Denza brand took the same idea to Europe with the Z9GT and a newer battery setup. (byd.com 1) (byd.com 2) Denza says the Z9GT uses Blade Battery 2.0 and FLASH Charging at up to 1,500 kilowatts. The company’s numbers for that car are 10% to 70% in five minutes and 10% to 97% in nine minutes under normal temperatures. (byd.com) Australian outlets reporting the local launch said one upcoming BYD model could add about 600 kilometers in five minutes, while CarExpert said the 2026 Denza Z9 GT for Australia will ship with Blade Battery 2.0 and Flash charging. Those are media reports rather than a global spec sheet, but they show how aggressively BYD is marketing charging speed as a selling point. (drive.com.au) (carexpert.com.au) Geely is pushing the same race from the other side. Digital Trends reported official test data for the Lynk & Co 10 showing 10% to 70% in 4 minutes 22 seconds and 10% to 97% in 8 minutes 42 seconds, which is slightly quicker than BYD’s published Denza figures. (digitaltrends.com) The catch is that charger speed on paper is not the same as charger speed on the road. These times usually depend on a warm battery, a very high state-of-the-art charger, and a charging curve that slows down as the pack gets closer to full. (byd.com) (digitaltrends.com) So the fight is no longer just battery chemistry. It is battery chemistry plus the car’s voltage system plus the cooling hardware plus the charging network, which is why BYD said in April 2026 that it plans 6,000 overseas flash-charging stations by the end of 2026, including 3,000 in Europe. (cnevpost.com) If these numbers hold up outside launch events, the old electric-car question changes. It stops being “How long does charging take?” and becomes “Can you find the right charger?”, because five-minute charging is only useful when the cable and the grid can actually deliver megawatt-class power. (byd.com) (cnevpost.com)