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Australia's fastest EV chargers are poised to expand beyond a handful of brand showrooms – and BYD's luxury division has a plan to avoid melting the power grid.
Electric Cars
A national network of Australia's fastest electric-car chargers – designed and built by BYD's luxury division Denza – is under consideration to follow a limited rollout later this year.
Five 'Flash' chargers will be installed at Denza showrooms in major Australian capitals by the end of this year, capable of supplying up to 1500kW – nearly four times the power of the country's current-fastest charging stations.
They are designed for the Denza Z9 GT, a new luxury electric station wagon capable of charging from 10 to 70 per cent in just five minutes on the Flash plugs, or 10 to 97 per cent in nine minutes, for a range rating of 1036km in Chinese lab testing.
"We're not going to limit ourselves just to those [showrooms]," Denza Australia chief operating officer Mark Harland told Drive.
"I think we had three examples [announced initally; Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide], but we'll also have Brisbane and Perth.
"As our dealer network multiplies, we'll have Flash charging at a lot of the flagship stores – not every store," adding Denza launched in December with four dealers, which has since expanded to eight, and is aimed to reach 20 to 25 by the end of this year.
"We'll try to get Flash charging in those flagship stores across the country by Q4 [October to December], essentially is what we're aiming for," he said.
Asked if there are plans for a broader Flash charging network, including stations on major country thoroughfares such as the Hume Highway, Harland said: "We're exploring that.
"Priority number one is for our what I call House of Denzas, for our customers; [to] take care of our customers. That's the first priority, and obviously it's a competitive advantage.
"Priority number two then is look at building out the infrastructure in publicly-accessible spaces, not only for our customers, but potentially other customers."
Harland was open to initially keeping Flash chargers exclusive to Denza customers, similar to the years of exclusivity Tesla owners had on the brand’s Supercharger network, before going wide.
"I don't know of anyone else who has that [charging] capability [in the car]. I don't think anyone can really fully take advantage of that for some time to come. We're not against [opening the network up]," the Denza executive said.
"In fact, and this is me just spitballing … if someone wanted to bring their competitive car to our dealership, plug in, have a coffee and walk around the showroom, it's not the worst thing [for them] to come check out our range of Denzas while they're charging their competitive car."
The 1500kW power output quoted for the Flash chargers is nearly four times what the most powerful electric-car plugs in Australia can supply (400kW), and about 10 to 20 times what many of the charging stations in capital cities are limited to.
Even installing a handful of Flash chargers – and seeing multiple cars connect to them at once – would place significant strain on the electricity grid.
However, Denza says the chargers operate like a water storage tank, allowing drivers to pull energy from a large battery pack that is partially depleted each charge, and topped up once a customer leaves.
"It's being stored in that giant battery. Someone comes, charges, does their nine minutes, and it kind of goes down 10, 20 per cent," said Harland.
"It [then] gets topped up, ideally, with solar; if you don't have solar, then you top it up from the grid. So I don't think you're going to need substations with every supercharger.
"If we can do it through solar the majority of the time, then we really... The idea is not to be on the grid."
Denza spokesperson Paul Ellis added: From day one, that [pulling 1500kW from the grid] was not a consideration for us."
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Alex Misoyannis has been writing about cars since 2017, when he started his own website, Redline. He contributed for Drive in 2018, before joining CarAdvice in 2019, becoming a regular contributing journalist within the news team in 2020. Cars have played a central role throughout Alex’s life, from flicking through car magazines at a young age, to growing up around performance vehicles in a car-loving family. Highly Commended - Young Writer of the Year 2024 (Under 30) Rising Star Journalist, 2024 Winner Scoop of The Year - 2024 Winner
