CATL, the world’s number one battery maker, has blown all competitors of fast charging technologies out of the water by announcing it’s latest battery which can be charged at speeds which will add 520 km of charge in just 5 minutes.
At a CATL Tech Day 2025 event held in Shanghai this week, the company announced its latest version of the Shenxing battery can be charged at speeds of up to 1,300 kW while providing 800 km of range.
Even in subzero temperatures where traditional batteries struggle to charge at faster charging rates, it’d be able to charge up to 80% in just 15 minutes.
Based on the Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) chemistry, the Shenxing battery was first introduced back in 2023.
At that time, given its LFP chemistry, it was one of the fastest charging batteries in the world with charging range of 400 km added to the pack in just 10 minutes.
The latest generation of this pack announced this week will charge much faster at half the time, highlighting the pace of development in battery technologies.
This announcement from CATL comes less than three months after BYD announced that some of its new models will have it’s latest blade batteries that can be charged at up to 1,000 kW using a two-gun charging setup.
With that tech BYD announced that the Han L and Tang L models will be able to have 400 km of range added in just 5 minutes.
Soon after that announcement, Zeekr announced it’s 1,200 kW charging technology which will deliver that power via a single plug, instead of BYD’s two.
This was upped once again by Huawei which announced it’s 1,500 kW charging, suited for more commercial and truck charging applications.
Zeekr currently has its LFP golden battery which it uses in a few of its models, including the Australian-bound 7X, which can reach charging speeds of close to 480 kW, allowing a 10-80% charge time of just over 10 minutes.
CATLās batteries are found in the majority of EVs in Australia, including most of the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles which were made at Tesla’s Shanghai factory.
The company also produces large grid scale batteries and in recent years, has also worked on cell to body skateboard tech made for EV manufacturers to fast track rollout of new models sooner.
With the rapid progress in battery technologies and faster charging becoming a bit of a race amongst top-tier battery and charging technology companies, it’ll soon be available to the masses in years to come, making range anxiety a thing of the past.
