How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps • Hacker News Board

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#281

Post by therealdrag0 » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

thephyber wrote: post #144

therealdrag0 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rule of thumb for modern EVs is to not care about the battery at all. They are expected to last longer than the car. I would doubt even faster charging significantly changes this, or if it does it’s worth the trade off to those who need it.

“Rule of thumb” is a heuristic, which is necessarily inaccurate. My only EV was a 1Gen Nissan Leaf, which is a perfect example of the EV that violates your assumptions.

1. A lot has changed in 15 years.

2. Old leaf batteries are popular with the modding community. I have friends who who’ve done ICE to EV car conversions using old leaf batteries that still work fine.

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#282

Post by boringg » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #128

boringg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traffic congestion costs for electricity is going to get wild if we start stacking all sorts of random >= 1.5 MW demands scattered everywhere.

Imagine if we had a parallel information network that could coordinate the charging times of all these things in real-time.

Fair bit of overhead to pull that off, but interesting.

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#283

Post by stavros » Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 6:11 PM UTC

boringg wrote: post #282

stavros wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if we had a parallel information network that could coordinate the charging times of all these things in real-time.

Fair bit of overhead to pull that off, but interesting.

Not really, all you'd need to do is make a live price ticket that's dependent on congestion and make that available over the network, and economics takes care of the rest.

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#284

Post by loeg » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

hbarka wrote: post #184

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Right now EVs are almost strictly superior for day to day usage (only real downside is that the higher weight goes through tires faster). But for road trips, combustion vehicles blow them out of the water. If I'm taking a 12 hour road trip, no way am I going to take an EV if that means I will have to spend an extra hour or two charging it. My wife has an EV and it's genuinely really nice. But until they get t…

For once or twice a year road trip I’d just rent a combustion car, otherwise it’ll just be sitting in the garage not good as a daily driver.

Or just eat an extra few minutes of charging time once or twice a year; it's simply not a big deal. Charging at home saves me so much time relative to getting gas that the occasional road trip wait is already overcompensated for. ICE/hybrid only saves you time if you can't charge at home or do lots of road trip type driving.

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#285

Post by thephyber » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 9:09 PM UTC

twodave wrote: post #151

thephyber wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Rule of thumb” is a heuristic, which is necessarily inaccurate. My only EV was a 1Gen Nissan Leaf, which is a perfect example of the EV that violates your assumptions.

I don’t think the first gen leaf is what parent had in mind when referring to “modern EVs”…

Which is why I commented — because there was a blind spot to their point.

I interpret “modern EV” as an EV in the 2010+ era (as opposed to the original EVs from the 1880s-1910s, which were not modern) which were made for streets / commuting (as opposed to golf carts / theme park cars, which have been around for many decades). And I don’t think I’m alone when using this framing.

Re: How BYD got EV chargers to work almost as fast as gas pumps

#286

Post by aaravchen » Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 4:36 AM UTC

knocte wrote: post #260

RevEng wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an Ioniq 5 is a poor choice, I would love to know what a good choice is. Its energy usage is comparable to the vast majority of SUVs and it can charge at up to 227kW. The lack of good fast charger is certainly a difference compared to many areas.

Only the Long Range version of the Ioniq5 has decent range IMO. And BTW, the fact that it's an SUV is precisely a downside about it; smaller cars would have obviously more efficiency.

It's worth noting that at least EU vs US, most the the better quality EVs are not available. Almost all the long range and more efficient EVs are Chinese-made and are not available in the US. My understanding is that the vast majority of EVs in the EU are these Chinese-made ones because of their hugely superior performance.

I don't know if Canada has the same restrictions on EVs, and I definitely can't speak to longevity or quality of the Chinese-made EVs, only to the charging speed and range. BYD for example is one of these Chinese-made brands prohibited in the US but leading the industry in performance.