The Cybertruck is Tesla's first electric vehicle built on the modern 800V powertrain architecture. Since Chinese EVs built on 800V or 900V platforms boast superfast battery charging of under 20 minutes, one would assume that the Cybertruck can deliver the same.

Tesla's engineering chief Lars Moravy even mentioned during one Cybertruck walkthrough that it has the potential to charge to 80% in less than 20 minutes on suitable stations.

The V4 Superchargers are certified for 350kW output, but their power supply is housed in V3 cabinets that are only rated for 250kW charging.

Even at third-party 350kW chargers, however, the Cybertruck returns a rather disappointing charging curve, and it takes it 40 minutes to go to 80% charge, rather than the 18 minutes that Lars teased.

Cybertruck zero to full 4680 battery charging test

A new Cybertruck charging speed test, this time of the ultimate zero-to-full battery charging time variety, has now returned a similar experience. The test used Tesla's regular 250kW V3 Supercharger, since the V4 stalls are still few and far between, and they currently aren't outputting 350kW anyway.

It took the Cybertruck the whopping one hour and a half to bring its 4680 battery pack to full, a far cry from the ultrafast charging that Chinese SUVs built on similar 800V platforms exhibit.

Tesla splits its Cybertruck battery in virtual units that can be charged simultaneously, similar to what Chinese phone makers are doing with their fast charging phones that take under half an hour for a full charge.

The truck started off strong, taking the maximum 250kW Supercharger output, but it took less than 5 minutes for that power to taper off. At 20 minutes, the Cybertruck hadn't even hit a 50% charge, and was taking in only 131kW.

In half an hour, the pickup was at only 60% charge, and the speed had dropped to under 100kW. That's a pretty abysmal result, especially for an EV with a large 123kWh battery pack, explaining why it took nearly 1.5 hours to bring it to full charge. For comparison, the Hyundai Ioniq, also on 800V architecture, charges way faster, at an 868 mi/hr rate.

Evidently, even splitting the battery can't fix the bad Cybertruck charging curve, no matter how powerful the charger is. Since the first Texas-made Model Y with 4680 battery pack exhibits the same slow charging curve, the culprit can be chalked off to the 4680 battery's chemistry or power control.

Granted, Tesla stopped making the Model Y with 4680 battery in Austin, and the Cybertruck comes with the second generation of the Tesla 4680 battery. Called the Cybercell, it offers 15% higher energy density, showing that improvements in the battery chemistry or production process have been made.

Even so, Tesla still needs to collect enough data from real-life Cybertruck charging sessions to gauge if it should stay conservative with the 4680 battery management, or that it can take much faster charging.

Tesla teased that it will be pushing an OTA update that will allow 154 miles of range to be added to the Cybertruck in 15 minutes by the end of the month.

This means that it must have collected enough real charging data to compensate the 4680 battery shortcomings with software fixes.

The zero-to-full charging tests like the one below will then have to be redone to see if there is any real difference in the Cybertruck's rather slow charging curve. 

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