Technology

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

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.

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)

More like charging availability imo. Not everyone has a garage to conveniently charge in after a day's work. If you make charging speeds fast enough like with gas, you can negate that though.

If you're going on a long road trip, yes.

Only by perception, but it practicality mattered, we wouldn't be ligging around two tons of steel per person everywhere we went.

So, the 1,000 MW nuclear reactor can't provide 1MW?

There's some parts inbetween. You would need an extra line just for the charging stations.

Though, a capacitor bank (maybe where the fuel tank was) would be viable.

Modern large commercial buildings already suck down this amount and more.

And how mamy cars in said building? How many will be allowed to charge at the same time? Should we expect same grid for large commercial buildings and rural charging stations?

...

biden basically did that already. ever noticed there are no byds on the road in the us?

i seem to recall it wasn't an outright ban, but unreasonable tariffs on chinese evs specifically. a soft ban, but enough to be as effective.

That's the beauty of it. Just get a new one every two years like every other electronic device and you won't need to worry about that. Subscription plans will be available.

I have a Chinese flashlight and the battery trademark is so unfortunate (soonfire) like WTF. Lol.

I’m sure it’s similar to how they trained DeepSeek for $5M when it was really over a $1B…

They make all kinds of false claims.

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.

Agreed.

would require a nuclear reactor sitting out back to supply the required 1.2 Megawatts of power!

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.

15 MW power needed, while a single reactor gives 500 to 1000 MW. The usual nuclear plant and power lines seem more likely.

I studied this a bit in my MS and the answer is... probably not. "The grid will collapse" has been an anti-technology or pro fossil fuel talking point for a very long time, whether* its arguing against renewables or against personal computers or against AC units. The most recent was solar. Grid operators were adamant that solar would crash the grid if it accounted for more than 10%, then 20%, then 30% and so on and it never happened. Now it's onto EVs being the grid destroyer.

The reality is that production and use is not all that hard to predict. Ultrafast charging will eat some power, but that isn't going to be the norm for wide EV adoption. Public charging will cost more money and be less convenient than charging at home or work over a longer duration. Home chargers are capping around 30-35 amps, generally overnight when grid demand is low. Couple this with the combined low cost for residential solar to change at even lower rates depending on your state/nation's hostility to solar.

Now, if every car was replaced with an EV tomorrow, the grid would struggle. But that's not going to happen. Adoption will be a long slow process and energy producers will increase output on pace as demand forecasts increase. A good parallel to this is Air Conditioning adoption. That's another high demand appliance that went from rare to common. The grid has its challenges, but now the AC usage is forcastable and rarely challenges the grid.

Is it a challenge, especially with higher renewable mixtures, yes. Can utilities fumble? Of course. Will it be a widespread brownout every day during commute hours? Not likely.