Hundreds of 1,500 kW EV chargers are coming to the UK – taking electric car charging to a whole new level

BYD is about to take the UK’s electric car charging game to a whole new level, with the roll-out of its own charge network.

Using a technology the Chinese carmaker calls flash charging – and carrying the ‘Flash’ branding – the charge stations will be capable of delivering electricity at 1,500 kW. This is a significant improvement over today’s most powerful EV chargers, which generally don’t exceed 350 or 400 kW.

BYD says it plans to install 300 such chargers in the UK over the next 12 months, as part of a global roll-out that will see 6,000 charge stations constructed. For the UK, those 1500 kW chargers will be joined by another 300 from BYD, operating at a lesser maximum performance.

The news comes as BYD announces the European and UK launch of its Denza sub-brand, and that company’s first car, the Z9 GT. This will be the first EV to work with the new flash chargers, and BYD claims it can fill its 123 kW battery from 10 to 70% in just five minutes – a huge improvement over today’s fastest-charging EVs, which tend to perform such a fill in around 15 to 20 minutes.

Denza also claims the Z9 GT can fill its battery from almost empty to 97% in nine minutes – and that when full, it’ll be good for over 640 miles of range.

Autocar reports how early UK customers of the new Z9 GT will receive 18 months of free charging at BYD’s stations, through a service called Flash Pass. BYD also clarified this week how the charge network will not be exclusive to BYD cars (or those of its brands, like Denza), and nor will it be built entirely by the Chinese company itself. Instead, BYD is in talks with partners to install its super-fast chargers at locations where EV chargers already exist.

Diego Pareschi, director of charging at BYD, told Autocar: “We are coming into a mature market. It doesn’t make sense to create your own [charge station network]. People want a seamless experience and with this they will get that.”

BYD’s chargers will use the commonplace CCS2 charger standard – the same plug we’re all familiar with in the UK and Europe – and they’ll work with every EV that accepts that socket. They’ll be called Flash, but those located at a Denza dealership will be branded to match. BYD claims that, despite their enormous power, the chargers can be powdered from an on-site battery that is topped up by nearby solar panels.

Initially, only the Denza Z9 GT will be capable of extracting maximum power from these chargers. But it likely won’t be long until more BYD vehicles arrive in the UK and Europe to charge at similarly impressive rates.

It's also worth saying that your EV can only charge at its maximum rate, and using a more powerful charger won't change that. So if your car can charge at 50 kW, 150 kW to 350 kW, it'll only hit those figures, even when hooked up to a 1,500 Flash charger. But the prospect of filling a Denza battery as quickly as a tank of petrol? Now that's something to get excited about.