Chery has demonstrated megawatt-class charging, and the headline figure in Golem's report is the sort of number that used to belong to a fuel nozzle: 6 minutes and 50 seconds to reach 97 percent of battery capacity.
Context matters here. Megawatt charging started as a commercial-vehicle proposition — trucks and buses that cannot afford a 40-minute stop — and the standard behind it, the Megawatt Charging System, was built for power levels around a full megowatt. Passenger cars have been edging toward that territory through 800-volt-and-up architectures, silicon-carbide power electronics and batteries that tolerate high charge rates, but sustained charging at megawatt scale remains the rare end of the market.
In Chery's demonstration, as reported, the whole session — not just a peak window up to 80 percent — lands under seven minutes at 97 percent. The tail matters: charging typically slows sharply above 80 percent, so a figure that holds all the way to 97 says as much about thermal and cell management as it does about raw power.
The usual caveat applies to numbers like this: demonstrations run under controlled conditions, on a prepared battery, at a charger that may or may not exist near you. What is real is the direction — charge times are compressing toward the length of a coffee break.
Why it matters: for EV adoption, charging time is the objection that range improvements never fully answered. Figures in this range change what a long trip looks like.
Golem has the report.
