According to this report from New Atlas, the first 1000 km EV coming off the production line is going to be the Zeekr 001 in Q2 of next year. You’ll remember a few weeks back we talked about the cool new CATL battery technology which is promising massive range and ridiculously short charge times? Well this is the first fruit of that development cycle. It’s not clear exactly what the charge time will be on the Zeekr 001, but it looks like they’re aiming for 300 kms of range from 5 mins of charge. Wow!

This report from The Driven site reveals a little more about the secret sauce behind the tech. Zeekr owner Geely (which also owns Lotus, Smart Cars, Volvo and Polestar) happens to have an affiliate company called VREMPT which is about to roll out a network of ultra fast 600kW liquid cooled chargers. This is up from the current network of 360kW units.

To put this into context, it appears that the Chinese are about to move to a charging system which is significantly faster than the typical 50kW speed of our main networks in Europe. Couple that with the new CATL batteries and the idea of charging up to 300 kms / 180 miles of range in 5 minutes looks like it’s going to be a reality in less than a year.

https://youtu.be/oTBQ7DMIOwY