The fastest charging electric cars

The fear of adding hours to your journey by stopping to charge is still a hurdle for many considering an electric car. Good news? Public networks are installing more and more rapid and ultra-rapid chargers, with Gridserve – one of the major players at motorway service stations – promising to double or even treble the number of what it calls High Power charging bays as part of a £1bn investment. But can all electric cars keep up?
Well, some charge faster than others and you’ll see manufacturers claiming all sorts of different numbers, not helped by variables like weather, grid demand and whether or not the car is ‘ready’ to charge all potentially affecting how long you’ll be plugged in. For public charging the key stat you want to be looking at when comparing cars is the charging rate, measured in kW, and how that compares to the output of the station you’re hooking up to. More on the maths here but once you get your head round it things aren’t as complicated as they first seem. It can make a big difference, though, and a Honda e:NY1 plugged into a 350kW ultra-rapid charger like those Gridserve is rolling out would still take 45 minutes to go from 10 per cent to 80 per cent charge because of its lower charging speed, while a Hyundai Ioniq 5 can do the same in as little as 16 minutes. Which could mean the difference between getting your coffee to go or resigning yourself to sitting in while the car charges. For those in a rush here’s our run down of the fastest charging cars currently available, and the ones best placed to take advantage of the new generation of ultra-rapid chargers appearing on the public network.

Everything Porsche does is about speed, and that extends to charging. But high-performance electric vehicles need big batteries and big batteries take longer to charge. Porsche being Porsche it took lessons learned from racing electrified cars in events like the Le Mans 24 Hours to equip the Taycan with charging hardware several steps on from what anyone else in the business could match. Indeed, when it launched the Taycan’s charging capacity was arguably faster than anything the existing public network could handle, so Porsche went as far as installing specific ultra-rapid chargers at its dealerships so owners could top-up quickly while the rest of the world caught up. In a best-case scenario with the bigger of the battery packs a Taycan GTS can therefore race from 5 per cent to 80 per cent charge in just 22 minutes.
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Hyundai and its partner brands Kia and Genesis have invested heavily in electric technology, and the shared platform beneath vehicles from all three Korean manufacturers are among the fastest charging anywhere. This demands an uprated 800-volt system, which adds significant cost and complexity. But by sharing it across three brands it evens out, and the Ioniq 5 and its Ioniq 6 saloon brother can both suck in the charge at an astonishing 350kW, meaning if you can find a charger capable of matching that you can top your battery up from 10 per cent to 80 per cent in as little as 18 minutes.
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The costs of developing new cars are such that it’s not unusual to find brands pooling resources to develop a common platform of batteries, motors and other parts onto which they then build their own models. This collaboration is especially effective when brands are part of a bigger group of companies sharing the costs, which is why the Kia EV6 uses many of the same bits as the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and shares its astonishing 350kW maximum charging speed. Hook it up to one of Gridserve’s new ultra-rapid chargers and, like the Ioniq, in theory you’ll whip from 10 per cent charge to 80 per cent in just 18 minutes. The new EV9 is also based on the same tech, so is similarly fast on a top-up.
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Another example of pooled resources, the Audi e-tron GT is based on the same technology as the Porsche Taycan, so benefits from the same super fast charging hardware capable of adding 62 miles (a round 100km) of range in a little over five minutes. With the right charge card in your pocket you can even cash in on your ‘honorary Porsche’ status and plug in at the sister brand’s ‘secret’ ultra-rapid chargers at its dealerships, a theory we tested not so long ago.
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Another beneficiary of Hyundai’s investement in the 800-volt system required to achieve class-leading charge speeds, the GV60 – like the related Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5 – can draw power at an incredible 350kW if you can find a charger powerful enough to deliver it. Enough to score an 18-minute pit-stop for the 10 to 80 per cent top-up you’ll see many manufacturers list for comparison purposes.
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Like any feature, many manufacturers tend to reserve the fastest charging speeds for their top of the range models, while others may offer higher ratings as a cost option on some models. So, while they’re based on basically the same kit, the flagship EQS charges faster than the (relatively) more junior EQE, with a best-case maximum charging rate of 200kW over the EQE’s 170kW. This means EQS owners spend less time plugged in, with that default 10 to 80 per cent top-up taking just 31 minutes. This is also a big upgrade over the 110kW older electric Mercedes like the EQC can manage, and a sign of how fast the technology is progressing.
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BMW’s electrification programme is a little different from rivals, and uses a twin-track approach of pure-electric variants alongside more conventional petrol, diesel and hybrid versions of the same car. So, while you can buy a combustion-powered version of the new 5 Series there’s also a pure-electric i5, just as there is an i4 to the 4 Series and an i7 to the 7 Series. As the freshest of the fold the i5 can charge at up to 205kW, which is still a little way behind Porsche and Audi but enough for a 30-minute stop at a suitable charger to take you from 10 to 80 per cent.
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Against some of the rivals listed here Tesla’s 170kW maximum charging rate looks relatively modest, but it’s more than offset by the ease with which you can do it, and fact that the brand’s proprietary Supercharger network has been specifically designed to keep you moving without the need for long charging stops. Owners have long appreciated this integration between car and infrastructure, which even now remains the envy of the rest of the industry and a powerful example of how Tesla doesn’t just sell you a car, it sells you mobility. As such, just 15 minutes on a Supercharger should be enough to score another 175 miles and get you to where you’re going free of the range anxiety experienced by other electric car drivers.
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At a basic level chargers are rated by their output in kilowatts - or kW - and batteries by kWh, which is short for kilowatt hours.
A car’s maximum possible charging speed is dictated by the battery, control systems and rating of the wiring and other hardware and you’ll usually see two figures quoted by manufacturers. The lower one will be for AC charging, which covers most home wallboxes and some slower public points you typically need to hook up to with your own cable. Expect this to be in the region of 7.5kW to 22kW depending on the car, some brands reserving higher charging speeds for fancier trim levels or including it as a cost option. Fast, rapid and ultra-fast DC chargers with built-in (or ‘tethered’) ‘CCS’ plugs can handle anything from 50kW upwards, the latest generation now capable of as much as 350kW where the local grid can support them. DC charging rates vary from car to car, 100-150kW is pretty common and fine for standard batteries but for faster, heavier and more premium models with bigger batteries manufacturers will invest in the hardware for faster charging rates to reduce how long you need to plug in. But how do you know how long your electric car will take to charge? It’s complicated and there are many variables. But some basic maths can help you get a sense. For example, if your charger is rated at 100kW, your car has a 100kWh battery and is capable of charging at up to 100kW it should, in theory, take an hour to charge fully, or half an hour for the same with a 50kWh battery. And so on. The reality is a bit more complicated, and depends on factors like ambient temperature, whether the car’s battery is ‘ready’, how fast the charger is actually working at a given moment, the demand on the local grid and much more. Nor will you ever be charging from zero to 100 per cent out there in the real world. But when comparing chargers the short version is the bigger the number in kW the less time you’ll hopefully need plugged in. Back to top