Invest1 publisher3 min readPublished
Geely's new battery charges 20 seconds faster than BYD's on 2.2-megawatt chargers
Geely's new battery charges from 10% to 97% in 8 minutes 40 seconds on 2.2-megawatt chargers, 20 seconds faster than BYD's Blade. Its larger contest is with CATL, supplier of 63% of Geely's batteries and twice as profitable in the first half as 15 listed carmakers combined.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Geely unveiled the Shendun Golden Battery, which charges from 10% to 70% in 4 minutes 30 seconds and from 10% to 97% in 8 minutes 40 seconds.
- BYD's second-generation Blade battery, unveiled earlier this year, charges over the same 10% to 97% range in nine minutes.
- CATL's third-generation Shenxing battery, launched earlier this year, supports ultra-fast charging in about six minutes.
Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint Geely quotes its times on 2.2-megawatt equipment, so drivers get the gain over BYD only as quickly as chargers of that size are built.
- contradiction Geely has narrowed the gap with BYD alone; taken at face value, CATL's six-minute figure is still faster than Geely's 8 minutes 40 seconds.
- decision Geely's next supply contracts decide whether Ziyao Tongxing's 10-point share gain since 2024 keeps coming at CATL's expense, and with it how much leverage Geely has on battery prices.
Past 70%, the new pack fills at about half the speed. Geely's own figures put the first 60 percentage points at 270 seconds and the last 27 at 250 seconds, roughly 13.3 points a minute falling to about 6.5 [2]. The 97% mark is also the one BYD quotes, and over that shared window Geely is ahead by 20 seconds out of 540, or 3.7% [1]. The report does not give the charge window behind CATL's six minutes [4], so the same test cannot be run against the battery maker.
The cooling extends past the pack. Geely's liquid cooling system covers the charging station's energy storage system, the charger, the cable and the charging port as well as the battery [6]. Xingrui PowerMind, an AI model Geely built with StepFun, predicts battery temperature 30 seconds ahead and adjusts charging output to hold the average below 55 degrees Celsius and the peak at 65 [5]. Chief executive Gan Jiayue said that the faster charging becomes, the greater the safety concerns, and that Geely had secured safety, speed and convenience in charging through AI [13]. BYD, for its part, has kept up large-scale spending on megawatt-class charging networks [7].
The money in Chinese electric cars sits with the supplier. Split the 15 listed carmakers' combined first-half profit evenly and each earned about 1.4 billion yuan, so CATL made roughly 31 times what the average one did [3]. Carmakers' profits fell about 20% from a year earlier in January to July as price cuts dragged on [10]. The tech outlet 36kr said that as profits concentrate at battery makers, carmakers face growing pressure to secure core technologies and control over costs [12]. According to the report, carmakers are reducing reliance on CATL and speeding up in-house battery work to cut costs and gain bargaining power on price [15].
Ziyao Tongxing and CATL together supplied 91.71% of the batteries installed in Geely's cars from January to July, according to local media tallies cited in the report [4]. If Geely builds enough 2.2-megawatt chargers, a 20-second lead over BYD becomes a lead inside its own network; if most of its cells keep coming from CATL, the new battery is mainly a lever in price talks; and if the chargers stay scarce, 8 minutes 40 seconds stays a number measured at a test center [2][1]. I think the second outcome is the likeliest, because the lead over BYD is 3.7% while CATL out-earns the average listed carmaker 31 to 1 [1][3]. The counter-case is that buyers end up choosing cars by charger access. Then a network would matter more than any supply contract.
A CATL share still above 60% of Geely's installs a year from now would prove the diversification argument wrong.
What to watch
- How many 2.2-megawatt chargers Geely commits to building, where they go, and who pays for them.
- The charge window behind CATL's six-minute Shenxing figure, needed to compare it with Geely's 10% to 97% time.
- Which Geely models get the Shendun Golden Battery first, and whose cells are inside it.