Faster than filling up with fuel: New 481kW chargers will have your EV back on the road in 5 mins

Chinese company GAC might have just changed the electric-vehicle game, promising that its new 481kW chargers will have your EV back on the road in 5 mins. That’s double the fastest chargers available in Australia today.

It’s an impressive claim, and one made at the company’s Technology Day event on July 27, with the Chinese company claiming its new super-fast chargers will have you on the road just as quickly as if you were filling up with petrol.

How fast? Very. The company’s new 3C high-rate chargers will take a vehicle completely empty to 80 percent charges in just 16 minutes, and will take you from 30 to 80 percent charged in just 10 minutes.

But that’s just the beginning, because the company also unveiled its 6C chargers, which seriously undercut even those impressive numbers. According to GAC, the 6C infrastructure will take just eight minutes to go from zero-to-80 percent charged, and an incredible five minutes to go from 30 to 80 percent charged.

That’s right, the 481kW chargers will have your EV back on the road in 5 mins. It means you could pull up, plug in, and be back on the road while the person in the ICE vehicles is still in the queue to pay for their lollies and Gatorade.

This is more than just talk, too. The company put the technology to the test, charging up an EV with 35.1kWh in just four minutes, with the chargers delivering 481kW at their peak. That’s the entire battery capacity of the Mazda MX-30 EV, in less than five minutes.

GAC says the fast-charging won’t degrade batteries either, suggesting a one-million-kilometre battery life is possible in a vehicle used year-round. But there is a sizeable catch, with GAC debuting new graphene battery technology that most think is someway off hitting the mainstream.

GAC disagrees, however, promising we’ll see the battery and charger technology in action this year, with the brand promising to roll-out 100 super-fast charging stations in China before the end of 2021, while the new GAC Aion V will debut in September with 3C and 6C technology and graphene batteries on board.