Looking at the headline of our article today, I don’t blame you if you came here looking to learn about some latest ultrafast charging technology. Sure, we will briefly touch on that too, but the key is actually hidden elsewhere.
You might’ve heard the good old “So… how long does it take to charge?” question before. It is one of the most common questions we, as EV drivers get from others about our cars.
My answer to this question usually gets people either laughing in disbelief or results in mild shock.
My answer is: “Charging takes about 30 seconds.”
And that’s what I can say even about one of my 40 kWh Nissan Leafs, which is a decent EV yet far from the latest technological charging monster. But it’s still true.
If you’re an EV driver, you might already know what I’m hinting at. If you’re outside looking in, let me clear the confusion.
How to charge your EV in just 30 seconds
It’s quite straightforward, actually:
- Stop your EV next to a charger, a public one or at home;
- Get out of your car and plug the cable in (authenticate via EV charging app if necessary);
- Charging started, lock the car, and get on with your day.
Unlike with an ICE car, you can start refueling your EV and walk away from it completely. When charging at home, what you do while charging your EV in the meantime is none of my business. When charging outside of the home, if you’re like me, you’ll find amenities around to fit the charging right into your schedule. The EV charging time will be about you, not the car.
Opportunity charging for the win
Most EV owners charge at home. It’s convenient, affordable, and makes sense.
With this one, there’s no real question about what to do while charging your EV.
However, to support EV drivers in addition to home charging, we now have over two million public fast charging points deployed worldwide (IEA, 2024 data).
Of these two million, Europe had deployed 180,000, and 80% are located in China.
Europe did just cross the 1 million public charging point milestone, when taking both AC and DC plugs into account. And the utilization of these public chargers is growing year by year, as more EVs hit the road.
These public fast chargers have been deployed around large transport corridors to solve the very specific need of longer travel for EVs. The subsidy schemes from regions have also supported this. But now that EVs in larger numbers have become a part of our everyday life and larger ecosystems, we are arriving at another welcome benefit of EVs.
Opportunity charging. Something that has been mostly a thing for public transport and fleets that can’t be taken offline for a longer dwell time is now making its way to everyday life with an EV as well.
This solves the exact middle of the charging needs around EV ownership – mostly charging at home on the one end, charging while on longer travels at the other end – the middle would be taking any suitable chance and charging while you’re at any specific location anyway.
Opportunity charging would be plugging in when you go somewhere, whether it is grocery shopping, to the gym, your workplace, or any other visit. This should root out the question of what to do while charging your EV. The ability to conveniently charge while you are doing something else also solves the EV ownership problem for those who don’t have the luxury of charging at home.
Nowadays, it is completely normal not only to see the chargers in the charging hubs next to motorways or in petrol stations, but also at your local supermarket or a shopping center.
The dwell time at these locations is also often higher, and the EV owners aren’t necessarily anxious to get back to the road as fast as possible because they don’t have to wait for the charging to finish. This means there’s room to go for less of the ultra-fast charging and more of the few-hours-to-top-up charging levels.
Time spent “waiting” to charge is decreasing, too
The new battery and charging technology advancements go hand in hand: on one side, the batteries are developed to be able to be charged with a much larger power, and on the other side, the charging equipment is developed to deliver the same.
It is becoming common to see a new EV model charge at a peak 300 – 400 kW rate these days, when the norm was 50-100kW just around ten years ago. Electric trucks are already pushing past 1000 kW, a megawatt, but for passenger cars, the 400 kW range has been pretty much at its peak for a while.
However, the latest innovations from CATL, the battery maker, and BYD, the vertically integrated battery and automaker, have both pushed the limits of passenger car charging past a megawatt as well. Nowadays, most of the innovation on this side comes from Chinese EV charging advancements. The EV charging time with these new technologies can compete with ICE refueling all on its own.
It used to be a question of “what to do while charging my EV and waiting?”. Now, the question at times can instead be “how do I run my errands fast enough while charging to be here before my battery is full?”
However, with any of these technologies, it should be noted that the charging curve drop past around 80% or so will still be evident, meaning the latter part of the battery will fill up more slowly at a fast charger (the full EV charging time not making it worth it to sit there), even if the peak charge power nears incredible speeds before that.
The hidden time sink with ICE cars
From the start of the modern era of EVs, charging has been compared to filling up the petrol tank. The key benefit of owning the ICE vehicle has been refueling, which takes just minutes at the pump for the full range to be replenished.
However, if factoring in the petrol station is always the destination, demanding a special trip to it (even if it happens to be on the way), it is already starting to lose out on the time spent compared to charging. Especially since you cannot do anything else while refueling.
Since most EV owners mostly charge at home and only use fast chargers on road trips or opportunity-charging while visiting a location that has chargers available, they spend significantly less time on the actual refueling of their car.
The perfect evolution of charging
Do we have certain gaps in the charging market to address?
Yes, certainly. That’s why companies like Eleport and hundreds of others in Europe exist and actively tackle any step that is missing from the perfect EV ownership on the charging side of things.
Do we still play the chicken-and-egg game in the charging vs. EV deployment in the world?
Yes, still do to some extent. We need more EVs for charging to make sense as a business model. And we need more charging to make sure the EVs have plentiful options to recharge, so people would want to buy EVs in the first place.
However, we’re also certainly past the first chasm of not having enough of either, and I can see the charging market maturing these days, to the point where even large banking institutions are seeing these companies having reliable assets. This is evident in the recent large financing non-equity funding rounds of the large charging networks like IONITY, EVgo, and Electra.
Reaching this point will also mean there will be opportunities for consolidation of the charging market. I believe we will see the larger players start scooping up some of the hundreds of smaller charging networks soon.
For the EV driver, this consolidation will likely bring more seamless experiences across Europe.
Can an EV owner charge wherever they go today?
Not yet. And that’s the one thing missing from the picture in some regions, in addition to the usual scale-up of infrastructure. That’s up to us to fix so the EV ecosystem would truly work. As an EV driver, I already select my grocery shopping based on whether I can leave my car charging there. This will start to matter more and more in the coming years. What to do while charging my EV shouldn’t be a question – it should be about choosing which options to go for instead.
So… how long does it take to charge your EV?
About 30 seconds. I plugged in when I got to the gym this morning. I’m good for about a week now.
