Chery Volt-dragon 1.44 MW Charger: 500 km in 5 Minutes

Chery has unveiled the Volt-dragon ultra-fast charging system, which the company says can provide a vehicle with roughly 500 km of range after a five minute charge. The system reaches a maximum power of 1.44 megawatts, and Chery reports an official top-up time from 10 percent to 97 percent state of charge of just 6 minutes and 50 seconds.

Technical details and rollout

The Volt-dragon stations are built around silicon carbide power electronics, and Chery says the end-to-end system efficiency from the grid to the charging nozzle reaches 96.5 percent. To control the heat generated by more than one megawatt of power, the system uses liquid immersion cooling. The combined cable and plug weigh about 2 kilograms, which Chery highlights as part of the hardware design. The stations also support vehicle-to-grid, or V2G, functionality, allowing bidirectional power flow between compatible cars and the grid, and they can perform automated charging using robotic arms. Chery adds that station operation noise does not exceed 50 decibels.

Chery introduced Volt-dragon at its Anhui Global Automotive Innovation event alongside an artificial intelligence platform named CheryMind. The company describes CheryMind as an AI familiar with the physical world that will manage robotics, Level 4 autonomous systems and the charging network, although Chery has not disclosed technical details of how CheryMind will handle electrical power distribution.

By recording a 10 percent to 97 percent charge in 6 minutes and 50 seconds, Chery places Volt-dragon among the fastest charging technologies in China. CATL's third-generation Shenxing battery remains the quickest on record, with a 10 percent to 98 percent time of 6 minutes and 27 seconds. Other manufacturers report slower figures: BYD's Blade Battery 2.0 about 9 minutes, Geely's Energee Golden Brick about 8 minutes 42 seconds, and Hongqi's ultra-fast charging around 8 minutes 3 seconds, depending on testing conditions and specifications.

Chery has started building 100 Volt-dragon stations in 10 Chinese cities and aims to expand the network to more than 20,000 sites by 2029. All performance and timing figures are Chery's announcements and come with the usual caveats about compatibility between specific vehicles, battery chemistries and test conditions.