It’s a battlefield out there, and the fight is to see who can get to 80% battery the fastest.
Lynk & Co, Chinese sister brand of Volvo, has unveiled a new electric performance saloon that charges even faster than the second generation of BYD’s Blade battery that we heard about the other week.
The car won’t be coming to the UK, sadly, but the tech might make its way here eventually – once we have a few chargers that can match up to its crazy charging capacity.
The five-metre long 10+ saloon is no small car, but appears to have a slippery aerodynamic profile for efficiency and a giant rear wing to help stick it to the road and ruin all that efficiency. It’s a heated up version of the company’s 10, which it sells in the Chinese market, and the new car features parent company Geely’s 900V ‘Energee Golden Brick’ battery tech, which is around 83% less cool a name than the BYD Blade.
We don’t know exactly how fast the peak charging rate is on the 10+, but the numbers that Lynk & Co has given indicate an average charge rate of almost 300kW across the whole charge, which is impressive enough.
Lynk & Co says that the 10+ will take 4 minutes and 22 seconds to get from 10–70% battery, and another 50 seconds gets it to 80%. And that’s from a chunky 95kWh pack. Of course, the demonstration was on a 1.2MW charger, which is a touch more powerful than you’ll find down your local Tesco.
Even more bonkers if you’ve ever sat for hours trying to coax your car past 85% charge, Lynk & Co says that the car will get from 10–97% in less than nine minutes. But really who has the time for that when you could have been on the road with 300 miles of range five minutes ago?
The car manages 507 miles under the CLTC protocol – China’s slightly more optimistic version of WLTP – which even if you take off 20% to bring it in line with what a European test cycle might produce is still impressive for a performance EV.
And fear not, the 10+ is able to use its battery almost as fast as it can fill it – the 925hp, dual motor, all-wheel-drive super saloon gets to 62mph in a mere 3.2 seconds. No word on top speed, as if it even mattered.
Will the Lynk & Co 10+ be coming to the UK? No. Will any Lynk & Co ever end up on sale in the UK? Who knows. It’s been coming next year every year since 2018.
The exciting thing is that Geely also owns Volvo, Polestar and Lotus – so will we see some of this Golden Brick tech making its way to any of these brands? Very possibly.
The Golden Brick isn't actually golden, but it could be worth its weight when it comes to getting one over on rivals' charging speeds 
