ILLYA VERPRAET
Testing, testing
This Lotus can accept 420kW, but it’s not easy to find a 400kW charger
How long does it take to fill up a car? When the difference between a fast fuel pump and a slow one and a big tank and a small one is three minutes, the answer is ‘who cares?’. That said, I still find filling up with fuel quite tedious, largely because you have to stand there looking at your money ticking away for the whole duration.
Even so, the question is more pertinent with EVs, which is why, since 2022, our road tests of electric cars have included a rapid-charging test, where we measure how many kilowatts an EV can pull at increments of 10% state of charge.
In recent years, we’ve seen rapid increases in the speeds that both cars and chargers can reach. Our 2019 road test of the Audi E-tron complained that its 150kW peak charging speed was effectively pointless because such chargers hardly existed in the UK. Today, 150kW is about the lowest we would expect from a new EV or a newly installed rapid charger.