China's BYD launches EV fast charging system

[rcjordan]

...it says works nearly as fast as a fill up | AP News

https://apnews.com/article/china-byd-tesla-buffet-ev-63280ec09317d2c0a8e70449fd0e4a95

[buckworks]

Is our electrical grid ready for that?

[ergophobe]

Generally speaking, no, it's not.

There was an article a while back (posted here I'm sure) about how a single truck stop for electric cars and trucks would take as much juice as a city for 18,000. Many if not most truck stops are far from anywhere with power lines that can handle that. Switching to an all-electrical vehicle fleet is a huge infrastructure project.

So *our* grid in the US and Canada may not be ready for that, but the Chinese grid is becoming quite advanced. They have made some breakthroughs on high-throughput, high-efficiency transmission systems that are breaking records on just how much power can be moved around over long distances. And, of course, they don't have to contend with pesky local regulations and environmental review and all that. So *their* is advancing fast and will advance fast.

Our grid likely will not. The classic case is the project to bring electricity from Quebec to Massachusetts. They were going to bring the lines through New Hampshire. Big fossil fuel interests funded local grassroots NIMBY groups and stopped it. They switched the project to Maine. Everything looked good, but the same alliance killed the project.

But note, BYD is not looking at *our* grid:

>> It plans to build more than 4,000 of the new charging stations across China.

Derek Sivers recently said that when he went to China 15 years ago it was a hard place to travel. Now when you go there, it feels like you have stepped into the future.