BYD built a charging station every 26 minutes for six months

BYD said Friday it opened its 10,000th flash-charging station in Shenzhen's Longhua district — a pace of roughly one new station every 26 minutes since it unveiled the technology on March 5, based on the company's own account of averaging 55 stations a day over just under six months.

BYD (SEHK: 1211), headquartered in Shenzhen, said the network now spans 325 mainland cities, from Hulunbuir in the north to Sanya in the south, and has delivered 210 million kWh of electricity since launch. Executive vice-president He Zhiqi disclosed the figures at the inauguration ceremony for the milestone station.

More than 1.83 million users have registered for the network, BYD said, and close to a third of them drive cars made by other manufacturers, according to the company. That complicates the read on the rollout: rather than functioning purely as a loyalty perk for BYD owners, it is drawing traffic from rival brands' drivers too — though non-BYD vehicles cannot necessarily pull the same peak power as BYD's own compatible models.

The stations deliver up to 1,500 kW through a single connector, enough, BYD says, to take a compatible battery from 10% to 70% in five minutes. The network has been built with partners including Sinopec, PetroChina, CNOOC and Alipay, though BYD has not disclosed how many of the 10,000 sites belong to each partner.

Every figure behind the 26-minute pace — the station count, the user total, the kWh figure and the non-BYD share — comes from BYD itself, disclosed at a company-run ceremony rather than independently audited. The company has reiterated a target of 20,000 stations by the end of 2026, which would require adding roughly 80 a day, more than 40% faster than the pace it has just kept up.

The build-out is intended to support sales of vehicles carrying BYD's second-generation Blade Battery, and the company plans a parallel push abroad, with 6,000 more flash-charging stations targeted overseas, including 3,000 in Europe.