BYD flash charger serves record 74 cars in a day but kids use MW cable as swing

According to BYD's staggering vehicle turnover report for the performance of its charging network during the National Day travel, one of its MW chargers served the whopping 160 cars in a single day. BYD now offers both cars and piles capable of 5-minute charging speeds, with an ingenious T-shaped design with hanging cables that allows for flash charging of two vehicles at once from a single pile.

Unfortunately, those hanging cables have been attracting the attention of children, too, who have been caught using the high-voltage cables as swings. Needless to say, the risk is not only electrocution, as the chargers have plenty of safety triggers, but also damaging the equipment that affects EV owners in the area.

The DC contactors stay open while the gun is docked, so power only flows once the connector couples with a car and the checks pass. The mechanical side is troubling because the cable hangs from an overhead rail with a spring retractor, and the gun weighs ten pounds, which turns a swinging child into a pendulum. Under the jacket sit copper conductors, coolant channels, and a protective earth line that repeated stress could damage without any visible sign, too.

Still, BYD's network handled a record 188,344 vehicles on National Day, with the busiest urban station of all at a parking lot site at Beijing's Jindu Auto City, which managed the jaw-dropping 160 sessions in a single day.

The busiest highway site, on the Beijing to Shanghai expressway, handled 144, with one of its charging guns peaking at 74 vehicles and 4,069 kWh dispensed that day. Needless to say, those figures rest on the ability of both the second-gen Blade Battery to take them and the 1.5 MW charging network that BYD has been building out at breakneck pace.

BYD claims a 10%-70% charge in five minutes and a full charge to 97% in nine at those 1,500 kW piles from one gun. This explains the whopping turnover numbers around one of the busiest travel periods, though only newer BYD flagships with MW powertrain architecture like the Han L and Tang L get that speed.

BYD has been taking measures against the cable swings trend, too, as the safety standards test for 5,000 N compression and 200 to 400 N pulls, not repeated pendulum loading. The gun that charged 74 cars in a day is obviously working hard enough already without moonlighting as playground equipment.

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