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Is 2025 the year "Pumpenfreude" becomes a thing?

EV range anxiety may never end ... in the same way that you've always worried about finding a late-night petrol station when you need one.

SL Staff B

• 2 min read

You're headed home after midnight on a cold, wet, and windy night. You've been worried for a while about the state of your charge: you're down to around 20%, the point where your EV begins to complain and bing and flash warning lights at you, the point where your EV seems to delight in pushing your anxiety up.

But you're in luck.

You pull into a charging spot at an all-night filling station. At the same time, a fossil-fuel SUV pulls up to the pumps across the parking lot.

You plug in the EV at the very moment the fuel nozzle goes into the tank of the SUV ... and now, somehow, now it's a race.

But it's not a contest.

Eight minutes later, you're out on the road again, kicking down the highway at 100 kph only three seconds after tromping on the accelerator.

The SUV owner is still standing out in the rain, squeezing the handle on the fuel nozzle. All that waiting, and sluggish acceleration, too. Poor guy.

You smile.

Short of having a Mr. Fusion1 bolted to the back of your electric car, this is about as good as it's going to get.

EV vendors claim to have broken the megawatt-rate charge barrier, and at least one claims to have consumer-ready plans (including rollouts of charge stations) for 2025:
  • On March 18, China's BYD announced two models that can accept megawatt charges from a new charging network2
  • The MCS (Megawatt Charging System) standard,3 able to deliver charge rates of up to 3.5 megawatts, has been collaboratively developed by a group of EV and infrastructure firms
  • Sweden's Virta will deploy a limited MCS pilot of a 1.2 megawatt charging network in 20254

So far, BYD will have the only passenger vehicles that will use megawatt charging. The MCS system is intended (at least at first) for larger commercial vehicles.

But, with BYD's megawatt passenger vehicles shipping this year, the advent of a five-minute charging stop —unlike the debut of Mr. Fusion— is just a matter of time.
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Reading

  1. Futurepedia. “Mr. Fusion,” March 17, 2025. https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion.
  2. Autoweek. “This Brand Now Promises Five-Minute EV Charging,” March 19, 2025. https://www.autoweek.com/news/a64229887/byd-megawatt-charging-system-blade-battery/.
  3. “Megawatt Charging Systems: The Future of Heavy-Duty EVs | EVBoosters.” Accessed March 21, 2025. https://evboosters.com/ev-charging-news/megawatt-charging-systems-the-future-of-heavy-duty-evs/.
  4. “Megawatt Charging System (MCS): The Future of EV Charging Is Here | Virta.” Accessed March 21, 2025. https://www.virta.global/blog/megawatt-charging-system-the-future-of-ev-charging-is-here.

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