And why it’ll win top trumps at every EV charging station debate
EARLY-ADOPTER EV lovers insist that range anxiety and charging speeds are red herrings, not actual issues with electric cars, but they’re wrong. These are legitimate concerns that will impede the growth and adoption of electric vehicles beyond the enthusiast set if not addressed.
But, after more than a decade of stops and starts in the development and deployment of electric vehicles, the marketplace has finally come up with an answer to both: really fast charging.
I was testing the Kia EV6 this week (corporate sibling to the Hyundai Ioniq 5 that I drove and loved last year) and was genuinely astonished by how speedy DC fast charging can be — less than 18 minutes to gain more than 200 miles of range — and it changes everything.
THE EV6 USES an advanced (and expensive) 800-volt architecture, achieved thanks to massive economies of scale from the E-GMP platform that will underpin most of the upcoming EVs from Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis. Competitors like the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Volkswagen ID.4, and Polestar 2 use 400-volt systems that charge much more slowly.
The increase in voltage is important, but we have to talk some physics to see why: volts * amps = watts. Translated into English, it means that if you want to increase an EV’s charging speed, you have to increase the volts or the amperage or both. By using an 800-volt architecture instead of a 400-volt, the E-GMP platform can charge twice as fast as a 400-volt vehicle at the same amperage.
Read more: Inverse
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