New EV Battery From Zeekr To Offer 500 kW Charging

The unprecedented DC fast charging rate allows replenishing 500 km (310 miles) of range in just 15 minutes.

The new EV battery from Zeekr is capable of offering lightning-fast 500 kW DC fast charging. They are calling it the ‘Golden Battery’. This is unequivocally much higher than the fastest charging speeds on offer today, which hover around 360 kW. The Chinese car marque’s new battery technology will support 800 V architecture and adopt LFP (Lithium Ferro Phosphate) cell chemistry to provide upto 500 kW speeds.

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New Zeekr EV Battery Charging Technology

While 800 V architecture is offered by other carmakers like Porsche already, 500 kW DC charging speeds are unheard of. The key behind this technology lies in its innovative cell chemistry. Traditionally, LFP batteries have lower energy density in comparison to NMC (Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt) batteries. However, engineers at Zeekr used “newly-developed materials” and “simplified structural design” to construct the new battery pack.

This has resulted in a higher volume utilization of the new battery pack at 83.7%. For reference, CATL’s NMC Qilin battery offers 72% volume utilization, as per Autocar. Hence, it is a clear advantage which addresses the energy density issue typically associated with battery packs with LFP chemistry.

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How Safe Is This Battery?

At the moment, the Blade Battery by BYD is considered the safest, as per the standard tests. Similarly, this battery from Zeekr has undergone nail penetration test, submersion in saline water at 10% concentration for 48 hours test, 1000° C fire for an hour test, -45° temperature for 8 hours test, 3 km dragging in mud water and debris, getting run over by a 22-ton road roller and a free fall from a height of 10 m. After all this rigorous abuse, the battery was still working. This is a video showcasing these tests without any fire or smoke.

Zeekr is owned by Geely. This means that the other car companies under Geely will also benefit from this battery. This includes the likes of Polestar, Lotus, Volvo and Smart. However, the first EV to get this battery will be the Zeekr 007 premium electric sedan. In fact, we might see it next month in some markets.

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Learn Electric Cars Says

While this is yet another innovative technology, we know that there is no wide-scale infrastructure available which is needed to support such ultra-fast charging speeds. There are only a few charging stations across the world at the moment which can support 500 kW charging capabilities. Most of these are in China and the plans to increase such charging stations are already in place.

Going forward, Ionity plans to install 7,000 350 kW chargers in Europe by 2025 and Electrify America will install 10,000 chargers (1,800 charging stations) by 2026 including many 350 kW chargers. Even with 350 kW DC fast chargers, the speeds would be around 15 minutes for 10-80%. As a result, the waiting times will come down drastically. Still, we understand that there is a long time to go before all this becomes the standard. Nevertheless, the signs are all positive.