BYD is rolling out EV batteries with 5-minute “flash charging” — but there’s a problem

On Thursday, Chinese automaker BYD unveiled a new battery pack that the company says is capable of charging from 10% to 70% within five minutes. Getting to almost 100% takes about four more minutes.

Recharging times like that would allay concerns about electric vehicle charging times – one of the few places where internal combustion engines retain an advantage. Even in extreme cold weather (-4°F or -20°C), the pack can be charged from 20% to 97% in less than 12 minutes, according to BYD. The battery pack, known as the Blade Battery 2.0 system, is set to debut in the Yangwang U7, a full-size luxury sedan.

There is an important caveat to this staggering number. The Yangwang U7 sedan, or any other future BYD vehicle equipped with the next-generation battery pack, can only reach this ultra-fast charging time when paired with one of the company’s new Flash Charging EV chargers, capable of delivering 1.5 megawatts of electricity.

However, BYD will likely rely on this flashy charging technology to boost sales and give it an advantage in the price war with other Chinese automakers that are rapidly rolling out new and improved electric vehicles.

The Shenzhen-based company has been a darling of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway holdings for years. The investor bought a 10% stake in the automaker in 2008 for $230 million — long before it became a Tesla competitor and a household name. Berkshire sold its last stock in 2025, returning more than 20 times the original investment.

Today, BYD is the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer — a position that other Chinese automakers and Tesla are keen to change. While BYD still outperforms competitors such as Li Auto, Xpeng, Xiaomi and Zeekr, there has been a decline in sales recently. The company reported that its combined sales volume for January and February in 2026 fell by approximately 36% compared to the previous year.

The next-generation battery system could help it attract new customers and retain existing ones.

The new Blade Battery 2.0 achieves the feat of ultra-fast charging using lithium iron phosphate (LFP), a chemistry that automakers are betting will help lower the cost of electric vehicles because it avoids the use of precious metals like cobalt or nickel. Currently, LFP packages cost $81 per kilowatt-hour compared to $128 per kilowatt-hour for nickel-manganese cobalt (NMC), according to BloombergNEF.

Because LFP is not as energy dense as other chemistries such as NMC, it cannot carry as much energy, which limits the range. As a result, Western automakers use LFP cells almost exclusively in their less expensive models. But BYD is betting that by speeding up the charging process, LFP could become accepted in more than just low-end electric cars.

Before launching Flash Charging, BYD rolled out a 1-megawatt charging system for a previous sedan, the Han L, that uses two 500-kilowatt charging cables that need to be connected. In the US and Europe, the fastest chargers tend to be 350 kilowatts, although there are an increasing number of 500 kilowatt chargers being introduced.

BYD’s fast-charging kiosks have cables hanging from overhead towers, allowing the cables to serve both sides of the vehicle. It’s also supposed to make plugging in easier since the cables and charging plug are probably too heavy to handle the amount of power they’re rated to handle. BYD said it has 4,200 flash charging stations completed across China with a goal of adding about 16,000 more by the end of the year, though we should note that the automaker is using the name “Flash” to describe its 1-megawatt chargers as well. It also said it would add grid-scale batteries to facilities to relieve pressure on the grid.

In the U7 full-size sedan, the battery can power the car for just over 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) in the China Light Vehicle Test Cycle (CLTC), which tends to be optimistic. The CLTC range overestimates by about 35% compared to the more realistic EPA test cycle. In real-world driving, the car will likely be able to cover just over 400 miles on a single charge.

That’s less range than the Lucid Air Grand Touring, which can travel 512 miles on a full 117-kilowatt-hour package, according to the EPA test cycle. But the ability to add 240 miles in five minutes may render such comparisons moot.