BYD Debuts 2nd-Gen Blade Battery with 9-Minute Flash Charging

BYD has officially launched its next-generation blade battery—and it’s already resetting the bar for charging speed.

On Thursday, the Chinese new energy vehicle giant revealed the second-generation blade battery, boasting eye-popping charge times. According to BYD, the battery can go from 10% to 70% in just five minutes, and from 10% to 97% in only nine minutes.

The company is calling this extreme charging performance "flash charging," and insists that only a nine-minute full charge truly deserves the name.

At the launch event, BYD chairman Wang Chuanfu explained that stopping the charge at 97% is no oversight—it’s a deliberate energy-saving strategy. The remaining 3% capacity is reserved for regenerative braking, helping to cut the vehicle's overall energy consumption.

Cold weather performance? Not an issue anymore. The new battery takes on a long-standing EV headache: sluggish charging in freezing temperatures. After being frozen at -30°C for a full day, the battery can still charge from 20% to 97% in just 12 minutes—only three minutes slower than at room temperature. BYD claims this effectively erases the cold-weather EV anxiety long felt by drivers in northern China.

The flash charging tech also plays well with others. Vehicles equipped with the new battery can tap into roughly 4.8 million existing public charging piles, and achieve charging speeds 30% to 50% faster than other models.

And speed isn't the only upgrade. The second-generation blade battery also boosts energy density by over 5%, giving vehicles a meaningful range lift.

Ten BYD models will debut the new battery. The Yangwang U7, for instance, packs a 150-kWh version and delivers a pure electric range of 1,006 kilometers. The fully electric Denza Z9GT goes even further, with a range of up to 1,036 kilometers.

BYD hasn’t skimped on longevity, either. The new battery comes with a 2.5% higher guaranteed capacity retention rate and now includes a lifetime warranty on the cells.

Safety remains at the core. In testing, the battery underwent a simultaneous charging and nail penetration test after 500 flash-charging cycles—and passed with no smoke or fire. It also survived a bottom impact test with ten times the force required by China’s updated national standards. And during a thermal runaway test, the battery pack handled four cells short-circuiting simultaneously without catching fire or exploding.

With a six-month sales slump and a sharp drop in February deliveries weighing on the company, BYD is clearly looking to regain momentum in a softening market—and it’s betting big on this battery to do just that.