Zerova Technologies – a new subsidiary based in Taiwan – made its debut at the eMove360° Europe exhibition in Berlin this week. The company previewed a 480-kilowatt prototype charger that promises to make EV charging more convenient than ever by reducing charging times to 10 minutes.
Those who don’t have a full 10 minutes can pump nearly 100 miles (160 kilometers) of battery power into their cars in less than half the time. The new Four Gun charger can also charge up to four vehicles at the same time from a single device.
Designed to charge passenger cars and commercial fleets, Zerova’s new Four Gun charger packs some supercharging power into a compact space with separate chargers at the front and rear of a single body. Each charger has a 16.4-foot-long (5-meter) cable as a way to help with the logistics of parking and charging four separate vehicles. The chargers support CCS-1, CCS-2, CHAdeMO and GB charging standards and include a digital screen designed to play advertisements.
Since the 10-minute full charge is based on vehicles with 75 kWh battery packs, vehicles with larger packs will take longer to charge. Zerova also estimates that the charger will add 93 miles (150 km) in less than five minutes, which allows some drivers to quickly power up and complete their journey, then plug in for a more complete charge at their destination.
In May, the company announced a partnership with Shell to build a network of 200 Terra 360 chargers across Germany. The company plans to install the entire network by 2023.
Zerova calls the 480-kilowatt Four Gun “the world’s fastest” new standard, but it does face some very similar competitors. A few months before ABB launched the Terra 360, China’s Guangzhou Automobile Group Aion showed off a 480-kilowatt charger. When used with its super fast-charging graphene battery, the charger can cut charging time to 5 minutes for 124 miles (200 km) of range and 8 minutes for 80 percent. Xpeng also has a 480 kW charger design, while Azera made headlines this July for a more powerful 500 kW charger, though not many details are available about it.
Of course, the battery and in-car charging hardware must also keep pace, and these high-powered, super-fast chargers must be installed in large numbers for these attractive charging times to make sense in the real world.
In addition to the 480 kW charger prototype, Zerova also showed a 360 kW variant. It plans to launch the new Four Gun charger in the fourth quarter of 2023, but it did not say whether both the 360 kW and 480 kW variants will be available at launch.
The eMove360° Europe show began on Wednesday and runs through Friday.
