Volkswagen has fast charging—like refueling. In the lab. It might be available in regular cars in the next decade.

Volkswagen’s sales director revealed in a T-online podcast that the company already has charging speeds comparable to refueling,即5 minutes. It is extremely expensive and can only be achieved in a laboratory, but it will “very soon” be available commercially. When pressed to specify when this “very soon” would happen, he said it would be around the beginning of… the next decade. That is, in about five years. Five years after China’s BYD.

Volkswagen has been lagging behind BYD for years. And so far, the gap seems to be widening rather than narrowing.

Five years ago, Chinese electric cars were clunky, heavy due to the use of LFP batteries, charged slowly, and had an unattractive design. Today, many brands (Xpeng, Geely) already use batteries that can charge at 4-5-6 C rates (taking ten to several dozen minutes), while BYD’s Blade 2.0 batteries can reach 10 to 70 percent charge in just 5 minutes. Meanwhile, Volkswagen’s partnership with QuantumScape has not been successful; solid-state batteries still do not exist, and its own PowerCo batteries also lack impressive specifications. The group has fallen behind.

In Volkswagen Group, the fastest-charging batteries are used in the Porsche Taycan. Yet even Porsche can only barely achieve around 3.4 C rates, and that only under peak conditions.

It seems this is how the statement that “Volkswagen has a five-minute charging solution in the lab” should be interpreted. Worse still, such rapid recharging might only be available at very high costs for a narrow group of consumers [according to Volkswagen’s director], while the company aims to produce affordable electric vehicles for a broader customer base. Indeed, BYD has introduced ultra-fast charging in its most expensive models (Denza, Fangchengbao), but it is gradually expanding to cheaper models as well. Volkswagen has no answer: it lacks neither cells with ultra-fast charging capabilities nor those that can recharge at an acceptable speed, but they are cheap instead.

PowerCo cells, a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group. It is known that the company is ready with Li-NMC chemistry.

BYD already has both. Many Chinese companies, backed by CATL or CALB, also have both. Perhaps only Europeans' loyalty to local brands, lack of trust in Chinese companies, and substantial subsidies for electric cars in the Union's largest markets are saving Volkswagen. The company has observed a significant increase in interest in BEVs and also noted that almost none of those who have driven electric cars want to return to gasoline vehicles.

Martin Sander, Volkswagen's sales director cited in the article (c) Volkswagen

Editor’s note from Elektrowozu: The topic was first posted on the Elektrowozu Forum by armata, who also added an automatic translation: Will VW start charging quickly only in the 1930s?

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