BONUS: BYD Tech Day – The Impossible Dream

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Welcome back to EVI News Daily. Welcome to a special bonus edition of the podcast and a show that I've called BYD Tech Day, The Impossible Dream.

And you'll understand why when you hear the details. On the 5th of March, BYD held a landmark tech event unveiling their second generation blade battery.

A 1,500 kilowatts megawatt flash charging network, 11 new or updated vehicle models that can now take advantage of this charging.

Next generation LiDAR from Robocense and their upgraded Godz i5 ADAS. Let's get into it.

This is a hugely important moment for the move to electrification. This is for now China only, but they were expanding overseas in 2026 and the technology.

The technology is alien, but it's not the aliens have landed and it's just becoming every day and it will be just normal.

And that's frightening because it's so good. Let's get into the show. Thank you for listening to the podcast.

These podcasts, which we do occasionally these bonus shows when something really significant happens, a new car launch, new tech launch like this.

And we always put them in the podcast feed seven days in advance for Patreon supporters as a little bonus.

A thank you for putting your hand in your pocket and allowing me to do this podcast, which is all I do for a living these days.

And if you listen to the free feed with the ads supporting it, thank you as well. Let's get into it.

BYD's first attempt at megawatt class charging came not even a year ago.

In March 2025 with the Super E platform, you have to get only two vehicles would support it the Han L.

That's a sedan and the Tang L. That was an SUV.

What is an SUV? The system used a 1000 volt architecture, which is already far and above anything that we can buy outside of China.

A 10 C flash charging battery and a peak charging power of 1000 kilowatts, but it required two connectors.

Now in China, they have the plug that's called GBT, not CCS, not Nax or J3400.

And it required two GPT plugs simultaneously into the same car like an old Jaguar with two fuel flaps because of the fuel tanks.

OK, I'm showing my age now, but either way, it was less optimal.

It was a single plug, not safely handling 1000 amps.

It was functional, but it was inelegant, occupying two charge bays and adding complexity for the driver.

The central promise of the event yesterday was to eliminate that compromise entirely.

Welcome to Blade Battery 2.0 and the chemistry shift inside it.

The original Blade Battery launched in 2020, used lithium iron phosphate LFP.

And that was the chemistry inside it in a distinctive form factor.

A long, thin prismatic cell format stacked directly into the pack with no traditional modules,

as only five or six years ago was common and is still common in some EVs now, in a cell to pack design.

Blade 2.0 shifts the cathode material.

They move it to lithium manganese iron phosphate LMFP, which adds manganese to the LFP lattice.

At the molecular level, if you like, this is not a battery podcast,

manganese raises the working voltage of each cell, allowing more energy to be stored per unit of weight

without switching to the more expensive, less stable nickel cobalt chemistries used by competitors to achieve greater results.

For the vehicles unveiled yesterday, BYD quoted an overall energy density of 200 watt-hours per kilogram

for something like the Yang Wang, that's the U7 premium vehicle, 150 kilowatt-hour pack.

That's up 35% on the first-gen Blade Battery.

The company's official claim was a more conservative 5% improvement in energy density.

That's likely referring to the pack level, not cell level, by the time you've installed it into a car,

after accounting for the hardware to do thermal management and all that kind of stuff.

The headline charging claims were the headline and the mind-blowing bit.

At ambient temperatures, 10 to 70 in five minutes.

Now, regular listeners to the podcast know that we always like a 10 to 80,

because 80% is where the battery tends to taper in a normal chemistry, the ones that we've got available here,

and so that's when you should move on, unless you are having a meal or something.

But if you really want to ride that wave on a road trip of stopping several times

and stopping for the least amount of time possible, that's when batteries tend to slow down.

And so we tend to give 10 to 80.

But we'll give BYD this one, I think partly because it hits a nice five-minute number,

but there could be other reasons.

10 to 70 in five minutes.

Let me check the clock.

I've been speaking for over five minutes, five minutes, 16 seconds already.

So that's in the time you've been listening to the start of this podcast, your car charged.

It's ridiculous.

If you want to go to 97%, it's nine minutes.

It's a nine-minute charge to 97%.

Now, why didn't they go to 100%?

Well, I imagine that there is a taper in this case where it does slow right down

because you can't carry on putting maximum juice into a battery

when it's almost full.

There's another reason I'll give you that in a moment.

But we'll give them 97% because it's effectively a full battery.

You're done.

Nine minutes.

By the way, I'll let you know when we get to nine minutes.

They also gave the temperatures when they go down.

After leaving the battery to cold soak at minus 20 degrees Celsius,

a 20 to 97 is 12 minutes.

And again, they're fudging it a bit because they're starting at 20%, but either way, 12 minutes.

And after 24 hours cold soaking at minus 30 degrees Celsius,

which is a very small proportion of EV buyers driving their cars at that,

a 20 to 97 is also 12 minutes.

That is mind-blowingly good.

The cold weather figures represent a three-minute penalty versus ambient.

Crazy.

BYD's original blade battery had a peak charge rate of about 2C.

The short format blade 2.0 pushed it to 8C charge rate

enabled by lower internal resistance of going to the LMFP chemistry,

which allows the cell to accept the charge faster with less internal heat generation

on a public charger that's standard.

So not one of the fancy pants BYD ones going in the ground.

BYD says the second generation packs still charge up to 50% faster than conventional batteries.

So this cold weather robustness is important.

Low temperature discharge capacity holds above 80% at minus 30 degrees Celsius.

That is compared to 70% or less on the outgoing cell.

Cold weather until now with existing battery technology has been a challenge.

It tackles the longstanding weakness of LFP chemistry, lithium ion phosphate in northern climates

and is vital for BYD's export ambitions to Scandinavian countries, Canada, northern China.

Now none of these are massive car markets.

The improvement comes from the higher cell voltage and a redesigned vehicle thermal management architecture,

which is described as making the traditionally unbalanced triangle closer to an equilateral one.

The improvement comes from LMFP's higher cell voltage and a redesigned vehicle thermal management architecture.

All right, let's talk about safety and durability.

Not any important because you want it to be safe.

Well, because China has some rules and regulations coming in to be written in the books about safety.

Well, BYD performed a nail penetration test on a Blade 2.0 cell after 500 consecutive flash charging cycles.

They reported no smoke nor fire, a deliberate effort to show that ultra fast charging doesn't compromise the safety advantage.

Cycle life is between 3,000 and 3,500 charges.

It's equivalent to 10 years of use.

That's 300,000 kilometers or 186,000 miles of use.

BYD's CEO Wang Xiaofu explained that the 97% charge ceiling for the numbers they gave.

Oh, I'll just stop you.

We're at nine minutes.

We're nine minutes in.

You just fully charged your EV.

That's it.

You didn't get halfway and get to the break.

I told you, this is crazy stuff.

And so the BYD chief executive explained that 97% was the number they chose because that's intentional.

It's because they want to leave 3% remaining reserved for regen braking energy recapture,

preventing energy waste on the road because otherwise you have to start using the friction brakes

when the batteries got nothing else to go into it.

Okay, I'll take your word on that.

Now, let's talk a little bit about megawatt flash charging infrastructure.

Here's the hardware that's going to be going in the ground now.

It is in the ground.

The first few sites are going in in China.

The second generation flash charging station is a distinctive T shaped column design with a very compact charging gun,

waterproof protection and an upper sliding rail system for easier reach.

So a central column and in a T shape.

So the two charging cables actually hang down.

Now, the cables are not unduly thick.

The connectors are pretty standard.

So with faster charging, when you start cooling the cables and you get a lot of weight in the cables,

even with what we have, which is 350 or 400 kilowatt charges outside of China,

then it can be really heavy to use.

Well, the weight of these cables is supported because they hang down from the gantry above.

And so that's a great design anyway.

It reduces cable drag on the floor.

It's for easier reach.

Each gun, as the Chinese call them, guns deliver the maximum 1500 kilowatts at a thousand volts.

That's a 50% power increase over the original thousand kilowatt units that launched with the Han El and the Tang El.

The charger cabinet is fully liquid cooled, supporting two liquid cooled charging guns with smart distribution,

plus some extra battery storage and some a super capacitor to increase the output.

So it will work with what BYD are calling station within a station.

Let me take a break.

Take a slurp of this coffee.

I'll be back in a moment.

Welcome back to the podcast and welcome to a bonus edition of the show as we dive into BYD's tech day,

achieving the impossible dream.

So what's a station within a station?

Well, it's BYD's way of using their incredibly vertically integrated company.

And it's not just the fact they make the charges and the batteries that go in the car and the batteries that go at the charges

and everything else, all of the power, control, electronics, BYD does so much more than many people even give them credit for.

The most strategically bold aspect of the flash charging rollout is BYD's approach to the grid and frankly the grid problem.

Delivering 1500 kilowatts per gun would normally require an enormous grid connection.

Well, can you imagine each charger has 1500 kilowatts and we're going to put four in the ground over there.

Oh, great.

I'll just rustle up a 6000 kilowatt grid connection from nowhere.

Right.

So depending on where you are, this is not only impossible in some places, but very expensive.

And if there is not the will and desire from the local officials and perhaps in China, these things can get nudged through as things can do there.

If there is the will, there is then the way in China.

But outside of that, if the administrators get involved, grid connections, I'm not joking, can be 10 years to go in in some cases.

And so here's how it works.

What BYD have realized is that this technology has to get in the ground now so they will put battery storage at all the stations.

So each flash charging pile, as they call them charges, the Chinese term is the piles and the guns include up to 300 kilowatt hours of on-site battery storage with Gen 2 design pairing to 200 kilowatt hour units for a total of 400 kilowatt hours.

The piles are embedded inside an existing third party public charging station.

So they'll find partner sites which operate already.

They'll find places where 120 kilowatt charges have been in the ground for a long time and are starting to reach their end of life or where they can find sites where there's already lower powered charges in the ground, rip them out and put these in.

The host networks existing charges have maybe 120 kilowatt worth of grid connection.

That's fine because that can constantly and slowly refill the on-site storage during idle periods.

Then when a BYD vehicle plugs in, it will flash discharge into the car at 1.5 megawatt speeds.

The entire system can operate on a 200 kVA transformer that dramatically reduces the infrastructure required for the host station.

BYD will apply an idle fee at the flash charging stations to get you to move on and compatible vehicles will carry a dedicated tail badge that says flash charging so that you know what it is.

Let's talk about the new vehicles then because this is really important because many of these are coming out of China to external markets.

BYD unveiled or updated 11 models ready to go at the event.

Each carrying BladeBattery 2.0 and 1.5 megawatt flash charging.

All of them use the RoboSense LiDAR as the exclusive supplier.

And we'll start at the top because if they only said at this event, it's going to come on the Yung Wang U7, the Halo car.

It's a luxury sedan and it's going to be the first one with BladeBattery 2.0.

150 kWh LMFP pack.

625 miles of range on the China Cycle.

A quad motor EV with more than a thousand kilometers of CLTC range.

Alright then.

The super quad motor system produces 960 kW.

That's 1300 horsepower and the U7 serves as a technology halo.

But very quickly it worked its way down through the brands.

Denzer is also a very premium brand for BYD.

It's not the very top but the Denzer Z9 GT is perhaps one of the more interesting cars.

A very long range BEV.

It's a refreshed version of the Z9.

It's the shooting brake.

644 miles.

More than the 625 I just mentioned.

That's 1036 kilometers.

Pure electric range.

The longest range battery electric vehicle on sale anywhere in the world according to the marketing materials.

Okay.

There are some very long range Lucids and cars in the US.

Big trucks and things that will do more than 400 miles.

And when you think about it on the CLTC cycle that is 25 to 35% more optimistic than real world.

So if it's not the most long distance BEV in the world.

We've got the new BMW YX3 coming out.

That's 500 miles.

Mercedes-Benz CLA.

Slightly less the Volvo EX60's more than 500 miles WLTP.

Either way this goes a very long way.

This is a plug-in hybrid version of the Denzer Z9 GT with 249 miles of pure electric range.

And the top end spec is in a triple motor version that does 0 to 62 miles now in 2.7 seconds.

Then there's the big SUV.

If you weren't going to buy a Range Rover in China, you might buy the Great Tang, the Datang.

That's the Dynasty flagship SUV.

Full size, 7 seat crossover.

It's SUV.

It's over 5.3 meters long.

That's 17 and a half feet.

And it's over 3.1 meters on the wheelbase.

The rear wheel drive version with a 300 kilowatt motor or 402 horsepower will do 590 miles of range.

The all-wheel drive variant drops to 528 miles and does the dash in 3.9 seconds.

It's got the air suspension, rear wheel steering and huge three center console screens folding second row tables.

And one of those fancy ceiling mounted displays that comes down when you want to put all the blinds up and turn the rear into a cinema.

Oh, and of course the built-in refrigerators and a 27-speak audio system.

Very high end.

Let's go to the mass market.

The Song Ultra EV crossover.

800 volt platform and it's 21,000 US dollars equivalent.

Hold up!

So you're saying that the car that costs 155,000 RMB, 21,000 US,

offers a single motor of 270 kilowatts, a 76 kilowatt hour battery pack for 400 miles of range

and a bigger battery pack as well of 83 kilowatt hours if you need more.

And that will charge to 70% in five minutes peaking at 1500 kilowatts and I can get it for 21 grand.

Yeah, that's where they're bringing this into the mass market.

There's also the volume models from the Ocean line like the Seal 07 EV and the Sealion 06.

They are 23 to 26,000 US dollars equivalent.

There's the Seal 08.

That's the flagship in the Ocean series, a mid to large fastback coupé and again a bit more premium.

But this 800 volt platform blade 2.0 technology, 621 miles on the China cycle, pure Bev range

and adding 250 miles, which is frankly enough to drive before you need to stop

in five minutes of flash charging.

It's absolutely incredible.

They've also got some off-roaders.

There's the Fang Cheng Bows.

They are off-road vehicles again coming to blade 2.0 with a 75 kilowatt hour pack

and again big, big ranges on all of these plus we have the Denzer N9.

That's their flagship SUV plug-in hybrid already updated last September.

Now updated with blade battery 2.0 and it has a total range of 800 miles.

But that's a hybrid, like I say.

So the vehicle is also ready.

It's not a chicken and egg situation.

It's like, well, it's all have it all have the whole thing because the charges are in the ground.

The batteries are ready and the cars now on the road, which is just brilliant.

So you might be wondering, that's nice for the Chinese.

When can we get one?

Well, European and global flash charging rollout happens this year at the IAA show last year.

They promised 1000 kilowatt flash charging in Europe with up to 300 stations planned by Q2.

Well, a couple of weeks away from Q2 starting.

Not seen any in the ground yet.

But they've now raised the ambition to 3000 stations by the end of the year.

Group BYD general manager Li Yunfei confirming that the full flash charging 1.5 megawatt, 1500 kilowatt stuff

we've just been talking about comes to Europe in 2026.

They've got markets where they make have manufacturing facilities for this.

So Thailand, Brazil and Hungary here in the UK, by the way, they have confirmed 300 flash charges in the ground.

And that's important because they are about to launch the Denzer brand.

Now, they could quite easily launch the Denzer brand with the IONITY charges that we've got at 350,

some of the 400 kilowatt DC fast charges, and it would do very, very well.

But the fact they're launching the Denzer brand, which is new and they need something to make people pay attention,

1500 kilowatt charging isn't just a little bit better than we have in this country.

It's three times better. It's a five minute stop.

I don't think you can fill up with fuel in five minutes, especially if you're not paying at the pump.

Especially if you've got to fill up your tank and it's not a high flow petrol or diesel nozzle,

then you're at least filling for five minutes.

Then you're walking in and queuing up, maybe grabbing a snack or something like that.

A petrol stop is way more than five minutes.

And that's the technology not one day in the future, like the solid state batteries that we talk a lot about.

It's here and now.

And so they're launching a Denzer first with the Z9 GT.

It'll come with CCS2 and it will have Blade 2.0 to access the full speeds.

BYD is in discussions with Chargepoint operators, dealerships, and even supermarket change for site locations.

That's going to be, well, they know it's more difficult outside of China than when you go overseas

and finding the land, finding the hosts, and it's a little more complicated.

Airports, train stations, existing retail sites with grid connections.

That would all be good.

Single cable CCS2 in Europe is obviously a big thing because you can deliver a thousand kilowatts technically

through the CCS2 specifications.

The actual connector from Phoenix Contact will do a boost mode to a thousand kilowatts.

It's rated at 800 kilowatts continuous, but after five minutes, I mean, how much heat are you generating?

So the elimination of the two-gun workaround is a major thing when they bring that technology overseas.

Current top tier public charging is 400 kilowatts, networks like Ioniti, Fastnet, and even Tesla's V4s.

BYD's charges, even if they start them off at a thousand kilowatts, megawatt charging.

It's a three-fold increase on anything else that we've got.

Even on a 280kVA transformer, you can put those in the ground.

So let's finish off. The March events demonstrated the breadth of in-house operations, the cell chemistry,

the pack design, the vehicle platforms, now running at a thousand volts, the megawatt charging,

the on-site energy storage, even LiDAR and ADAS.

BYD's station within a station model, where they have battery storage on site, is the most strategically important announcement, I believe,

because they can go to existing charging sites where they have chargers in the ground, maybe with a smaller grid connection,

and build a standalone station that's ready to plug and play.

If the 97% in nine minutes claim holds true under real world, no reason to think they'd be lying,

BYD will have a benchmark that no other car maker has done until now.

Tesla, Volkswagen Group, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, BMW, anyone with great technology, no major OEM, can currently match it.

Tesla's V4 superchargers can peak at 500kW, Ionites can do 350 in most cases, and yes, there are rivals.

So Zika from Geely, they have 1500kW technology as well, but it's not getting the headlines like this.

BYD's nail penetration test after 500 flash charging cycles is encouraging, but independent long-term testing needs to be done.

I'm going to need to look at the degradation data of it as well.

The 3,500 cycle life claim needs validation under the repeated 8C fast charging, not just standard cycling.

Battery experts have noted that while LMFP chemistry reduces DEG pathways compared to normal LFP,

thermal management loads, losses can all throttle real world fast charging performance over time,

and that hasn't been measured because we haven't had a chance to.

But whether BYD can commission 20,000 stations within China and thousands overseas by the end of the year is an open question.

We have to hope they can do it.

With station within a station accelerating deployment, it still requires a will, like I said earlier,

compatible sites and sufficient inventory of batteries.

In Europe, there'll be regulatory approvals because, oh, we do like a good rule here, and things can take a long time.

Just ask Elon Musk how long it's taking FSD to get through the regulatory system here.

Now, this is obviously entirely different, but things can slow down when you go to Europe.

Grid operator cooperation and logistics of 3,000 charging stations in multiple countries in a year?

That's significant, and there's many hurdles.

BYD's ambitions are not modest.

Whether they're achievable is another matter entirely, but I can't wait to find out.

Thanks for listening. See you on the next one.

BONUS: BYD Tech Day – The Impossible Dream

About this episode

BYD

blade battery

megawatt flash charging network

Robocense

ADAS

LiDAR

Super E platform

BYD Tang L

1000 volt architecture

10 C flash charging battery

CCS

GBT plug

lithium iron phosphate (LFP)

prismatic cell format

cell to pack design

lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP)

nickel cobalt chemistries

energy density

thermal management

10 to 80 charging

nail penetration test

gantry

super capacitor

liquid cooled charging guns

station within a station

vertical integration

grid connection

BEV

WLTP

0 to 62 miles time

rear wheel steering

air suspension

800 volt platform

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