One of the most stubborn objections to electric vehicles has always been the same: filling up a petrol tank takes two minutes; charging an EV takes forever.
That argument is becoming increasingly hard to make.
Chinese battery giant CATL — the world’s largest EV battery manufacturer, whose products power everything from Chinese EVs to Teslas and Fords — has just unveiled its third-generation Shenxing fast-charging battery. It goes from 10% to 98% charged in just six minutes and 27 seconds.
To put that in perspective, charging to 80% takes under four minutes — roughly the same time it takes to fill up a large petrol truck.
Why This Matters
For everyday urban driving, EV charging has never really been the issue. Most owners plug in overnight at home and barely think about it. The problem arises on long trips, where charging stations can be scarce, queues are common, and a meaningful top-up can eat the better part of an hour.
That friction has kept many drivers hesitant to switch. But if you can charge an EV in roughly the same time it takes to fill a tank, that hesitation largely disappears. As one analyst note put it, this development “effectively closes the gap with internal combustion engine vehicles.”
The Technology Behind It
Previous generations of fast-charging batteries have tended to run hot, which degrades battery life over time. CATL says it has tackled this by reducing heat generated during charging, improving how that heat is dispersed, and controlling when and how it builds up. The result is a battery that retains over 90% of its capacity after 1,000 charging cycles — a meaningful improvement in longevity for a fast-charging cell.
CATL has been pushing its Shenxing line since 2023, with each generation shaving off significant minutes. Rival BYD recently made headlines with a battery that charges from nearly empty to full in nine minutes. CATL has now gone further still.
The Caveats
Impressive as the numbers are, there are reasons not to get too far ahead of the technology just yet.
Headline specs from press announcements don’t always match real-world performance, and this battery isn’t likely to appear in showrooms immediately. When it does arrive, it will probably debut in Chinese models first, carry a premium price tag, and require next-generation chargers that most existing charging networks don’t yet have.
The infrastructure gap remains a real challenge too. There are still far fewer charging points than petrol stations, and the newest, fastest chargers are a long way from being widely deployed.
The Bigger Picture
Still, the direction of travel is unmistakable. The EV industry has been improving both range and charging speed in parallel, and charging speed may actually be the easier of the two problems to crack. Once you can travel a similar distance and stop for a similar amount of time, the practical differences between electric and petrol cars on long journeys become largely theoretical.
Six-minute charging won’t transform the roads overnight. But it does mark the point where the old objection — “but the charging takes so long” — starts to sound less like a dealbreaker and more like a habit of thought we haven’t quite updated yet.