Geely says its new charging setup can take an electric car from 10% to 70% in 4.5 minutes. Keep the plug in a bit longer and the battery reaches 97% in 8 minutes and 40 seconds. Those figures apply under normal ambient temperatures, the company said at a launch event in Ningbo, China, on Wednesday, September 23.
The system rests on 2.2-megawatt charging infrastructure and a high-rate battery. Geely also showed a next-generation EV battery and an upgraded Galaxy E5 pure-electric SUV, Reuters reported.
A response to BYD
The timing is not an accident. China’s EV market has become a fight over technology, with automakers competing on driver-assistance systems, range and charging speed. Sales are the pressure point: EV sales in China fell for 11 consecutive months through August, and Geely is trying to revive them.
BYD set the pace earlier in the year with a flash-charging system that takes a battery from 10% to 97% in nine minutes. Deutsche Bank has said, citing a meeting with BYD management, that the company plans 90,000 stations by 2028. Digital Trends, writing the day before the launch, put Geely’s 2.2 megawatts at roughly 50% more power than BYD’s 1.5MW Flash Charging 2.0. It also noted that Geely’s earlier Golden Brick technology had already claimed a charge time of 4 minutes and 22 seconds.
Zhang Dewang, a Geely executive, was blunt about the limits of the race. “Current charging speeds are already approaching the physical limit,” he told Reuters, adding that the gains from chasing still faster speeds “will become increasingly small.”
AI and safety
Pushing that much power into a battery raises the risk of overheating, so Geely is leaning on software. It runs cloud-based twin simulations alongside deep-learning models on the vehicle itself, which monitor battery health, manage heat and try to predict hazards. Digital Trends reported claims of as many as 3,500 charge and discharge cycles with limited degradation, and cautioned that those claims need to be tested once more technical detail is available.
Power alone does not decide charging time either. Digital Trends pointed out that battery chemistry, thermal management and state of charge all matter. For comparison, Tesla’s Supercharger network reaches up to 325kW at some sites, and Electrify America offers chargers rated up to 350kW, so Geely’s figure is more than six times higher.
What comes next
Zhang said the charging landscape would eventually look like traditional gasoline stations, with several brands operating side by side. Multi-party infrastructure development, he argued, would speed the global rollout of fast-charging networks. Digital Trends found no sign that the 2.2MW system is headed to the US.
Sources
- Geely turns to 4-minute EV charging, AI in battle with BYD | KSL.com
- China's Geely teases absurd fast-charging tech that can juice up an electric car in just four minutes – Digital Trends
