XPeng Bringing Truly Ultrafast Charging To Town — 200 Kilometers in 5 Minutes

I wrote about it a bit in my article about the XPeng G9 yesterday, but it deserves a headline of its own. Chinese EV startup XPeng is on the verge of releasing an electric vehicle that will be able to charge at a wicked-fast pace. According to the company, the G9 will be able to gain 200 kilometers (124 miles) of driving range in just 5 minutes. But where are the chargers for that, you ask? Well, the company is reportedly rolling those out as well. More details are supposed to be coming today in China (tomorrow where I’m based).

The era of Supercharging is coming.
More to come on Aug 15. Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/AKEGCv4dTt

— XPENG (@XPengMotors) August 12, 2022

The G9 has 800V architecture, rather than the standard 400V architecture almost all other EVs have. (The Porsche Taycan is an exception.) XPeng is now installing 480 kW “S4 supercharging piles” (charging stations) in order to be able to make use of that 800V architecture.

This also implies, of course, that XPeng plans to include such charging capability in future models as well. The company wouldn’t be launching a whole new type of supercharger if it didn’t plan to sell a decent number of EVs capable of using such charging stations. Naturally, an 800V architecture is going to be more expensive than a 400V architecture, so expect this capability to be in play only in XPeng’s higher-trim, larger, more expensive models. But I think it’s safe to say that we’ll see more model launches in the next couple of years that have this ultrafast charging capability.

If much additional information comes out from XPeng tomorrow/today regarding this ultrafast charging innovation, we’ll update you soon. In the meantime, you can keep an eye on the XPeng Twitter account or press release page for updates.