Fast-Charging Commercial Vehicles - A Megawatt Application Similar to Electrolysis

Charging an electric passenger car today got down to about 30 minutes using up to 350 kW of charging power. For electrified heavy-duty vehicles, recharging up to 500 kWh in the same time, representing the driver’s lunch break, requires charging powers in the MW-regime. Current high-power charging standards include power levels up to 2.2 MW with options to upgrade to more than 3 MW in the years ahead. Recent solutions for passenger cars, based on power semiconductor devices like IGBTs or SiCMOSFETs, target power levels up to 350 kW but simply scaling up this approach may not be the best solution. Topologies and technologies used for similar high-power DC-applications like electrolysis pose the better option in size, cost, efficiency, availability, and reliability.