Chery's 1.44 MW Charger Claims 500 km in 5 Minutes, With No Car or Test Condition Named
Hardware / news
Chery's 1.44 MW Charger Claims 500 km in 5 Minutes, With No Car or Test Condition Named
Volt-dragon charges 10% to 97% in 6 minutes 50 seconds by Chery's account, 23 seconds behind CATL's Shenxing, and 100 chargers are due in 10 Chinese cities.
Chery announced a 1.44 MW charging system called Volt-dragon on Oct. 22, 2026, and says it adds 500 km of range in 5 minutes, but it has not said which vehicle, battery or test condition produced the figure.
The details below come from the company's announcement as relayed by CarNewsChina, which cites Sina Finance and Xia Liao Che, and by Electrek, which cites CarNewsChina. Both are repeating Chery's claims. Nobody independent has run the test.
What Chery published about Volt-dragon
Peak power is 1.44 MW, from silicon carbide power electronics, with 96.5% grid-to-plug efficiency, immersion liquid cooling and a 2 kg cable-and-plug combination, per CarNewsChina. Noise is capped at 50 dBA. Chery says 10% to 97% takes 6 minutes 50 seconds and that 500 km takes about 8 minutes in what it calls conservative scenarios.
The company did not give voltage or current. CarNewsChina says supported cars are expected to use 800V or 1,000V-plus platforms.
The number that matters is energy, not power
The headline figure is peak power, and a charge session never holds peak. As arithmetic, not a Chery figure: 1.44 MW for 5 minutes is at most 120 kWh, so 500 km of range from that energy implies about 4.2 km per kWh, or roughly 24 kWh per 100 km, with zero taper. Chery's own 8-minute conservative case is the more plausible reading.
The 96.5% efficiency figure implies about 50 kW of loss at full power, which is why the cooling spec matters. Chery has not published performance in extreme heat or cold, a gap Electrek flags, and it has not named the test car.
How the 10% to 97% time compares
CarNewsChina's comparison table puts Chery second, behind CATL's third-generation Shenxing battery at 6 minutes 27 seconds to 98%.
- CATL Shenxing (3rd gen)387 s
- Chery Volt-dragon410 s
- Hongqi Ultra Fast Charging483 s
- Geely Energee Golden Brick522 s
- BYD Blade Battery 2.0540 s
Source: CarNewsChina, Oct. 22, 2026; vendor-supplied times, converted from minutes and seconds
The gap to CATL is 23 seconds. Every entry is a manufacturer's own number, measured by different methods to either 97% or 98%.
Rollout against BYD
Chery says installation has started, with 100 chargers in 10 Chinese cities planned first and more than 20,000 stations worldwide by 2029. Robotic-arm automated charging and vehicle-to-grid support are planned, and further expansion plans are due before the end of 2026.
BYD's lead is in installed units. Electrek lists BYD's 1.5 MW charger at 10,000 installed and Geely's at 2.2 MW. CarNewsChina says BYD reported 10,000 stations in late August 2026 and targets 20,000 by year-end. The US benchmark Electrek gives is about 400 kW at public chargers, with 750 kW possibly next year.
Chery also unveiled a language model, CheryMind, alongside the charger and says it will power Volt-dragon, but CarNewsChina notes Chery has not said how it improves charging. Geely's comparable system uses AI to predict cell temperature 30 seconds ahead and adjust power. Grid draw is the other side of a 1.44 MW plug; our look at per-request grid carbon in Texas and Sweden shows how much the local grid mix changes the footprint of the same load. For another hardware build-out, see Tesla's Optimus line in Fremont.
The test that settles it is a named car, a named battery and a temperature. Chery has promised a further expansion plan before Dec. 31.
Sources
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