Huawei to unveil 1.5 MW supercharger on April 22, chargers at 20 kWh/minute
Huawei will unveil its megawatt-level supercharger on April 22, joining BYD, Didi and Zeekr. It will have a peak output of 1.5 MW and a maximum charging current of 2,400 A.
Hou Jinlong, Huawei’s president of Digital Energy, announced the new charger at the China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum. The supercharger can charge 20 kWh per minute and fully charge the vehicle in 15 minutes, Jinlong said.
Unlike Zeekr’s and BYD’s superchargers, which are aimed at passenger cars, Huawei’s 1.5 MW charger will be aimed at heavy-duty trucks. “For heavy-duty trucks to be fully electrified, the charging time must be under 30 minutes,” Jinlong said.
On the same day that Huawei announced its 1.5 MW supercharger, Zeekr’s Vice President announced that the company will launch its 1.2 MG supercharger in the second quarter. Zeekr updated its charging stations from 360 kW to 800 kW over the past three years. The company currently operates 826 charging stations in China.
Earlier this month, BYD unveiled its 1,000 kW fast charger capable of adding 2 km per second or 400 km in 5 minutes. BYD will equip the charging stations with energy storage systems, allowing them to deliver 1,000 kW of charging power even in areas where the local grid cannot supply enough electricity.
The Shenzhen-based automaker announced it would install 4000 units of 1 MW fast chargers, with the first 500 to be deployed in April. For comparison, that is double the Tesla V4 Cabinet power and far from other competitors:
- Tesla V4: 500 kW.
- Li Auto 5C: 520 kW.
- NIO Power: 640 kW.
- Xpeng S5: 800 kW
On January 15, Huwei teased a video of an unmanned EV charging robotic arm mounted on its charger. The new system can charge an electric vehicle without a driver needing to leave the car and manually connect the charging cable.
In the video, Huawei demonstrated the unmanned charging on the Maextro S800 sedan, which autonomously parks next to the charger equipped with the robotic arm and gets automatically plugged in.
The EV arm was attached to Huawei’s 600 kW charger, but can be mounted on any charging station.
