NIO has unveiled a new charging system for its EV batteries that delivers ultra-fast 500kW charge. The new charging architecture can recharge an EV from 10-80% in just 12 minutes. This makes charging its EVs to be super-fast, thereby significantly cutting down on idle times. The NIO 500kW charger was part of a raft of products and innovations highlighted during the 2022 NIO Day event.

The new charging architecture will also be available for non-NIO EVs, which is great. It is open to all brands of electric vehicles and it has a maximum current output of 660A. NIO says that the 500kW charging system can charge a vehicle built on the 800V platform at a faster pace than EVs from the 400V platform. It takes up to 20 minutes to achieve 80% charging for 400V EVs and 12 minutes for 800V models.

The ultra-fast charger has a 15.6-inch display and proprietary liquid-cooling technology. This allows the weight of the charging cable to be significantly reduced and users can easily operate it with one hand.

The 500kW charger is among the highest capacity announced for EVs so far. This comes after another Chinese firm, XPeng released a 480kW charging system earlier this year. The XPeng Supercharger has a maximum current output of 670A. It can charge some of the EVs from the XPeng lineup from 0-80% in 15 minutes.

NIO is also expanding the capacity of its swap stations to accommodate up to 408 battery swaps in a day. The expansion will see swap stations operating up to 21 batteries at a time. The new 500kW battery charger and the revamped swap stations will be available in March 2023, according to the Chinese company.

NIO’s charging network, according to CEO William Li, is open to all brands of vehicles. Li also says that about 80% of the power provided in the charging stations goes to more than 110 non-NIO brands. Some of the EV brands that utilize the NIO charging infrastructure include BYD, Tesla, XPeng, and Li Auto.

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