Top speed is no longer the holy grail when it comes to electric cars. It’s the speed at which you can recharge the battery that’s much more important.
Consider this then, the ultimate version of speed dating. How quickly can you plug into one of our High Power chargers and hit the road again with your battery replenished?
To make sense of the rankings we need to first explain some science. I know, worst date ever, right? But bear with us, first impressions aren’t everything…
You’ll see many cars claim 150kW+ charging capability while some of the latest top-end models are now capable of achieving over 300kW. However, this maximum is a peak and not a constant.
You’ll only ever achieve this advertised top rate for a short period, usually at around 50% State of Charge (SoC). Think of it like sprinting, it takes a bit of time to get going out the blocks, then you’re like Usain Bolt, but you can only keep going for a short while before you need to ease off.
This is what’s known as the charging curve.
Each car has a different charging curve, and some models are able to sustain their peaks for longer, which means the average power across a whole charge is higher – and for you, that means a quicker charge.
See, we told you it was good pillow talk. The charging curve is the same reason that once you get above 80% the car will slow the maximum charging power to avoid the cell voltages exceeding their limit.
And that takes us onto our speed dating scoreboard. As we’ve explained above, just quoting the maximum power capability is not enough to really tell which car is fastest at charging. Instead, we’re using figures from ev-database.org, which has calculated a “miles per hour” charging figure. This takes the average power of a car across a 10 to 80% charge and calculates how many miles it would add over the course of an hour.
The Porsche Taycan – freshly updated with higher power charging – takes top spot ahead of the Audi e-tron GT, which shared most of its under-the-body engineering with the Taycan. That’s followed by the Lotus Emeya, with the Eletre also featuring in the top 10. On the more affordable end of the scale, the Kia EV6 and Hyundai IONIQ 5 deserve honourable mentions for delivering incredible charging performance that doesn’t break the bank.
