What is a rapid charger?

The wider availability of charging infrastructure has played an important role in making electric cars an established part of the mainstream motoring market. Better infrastructure means drivers can go further and visit more remote parts of the UK, without worrying about being able to recharge for the return journey.

However, it’s not just the number of charge points that matters. EVs have become a practical option, partly because recharging is now very fast. While the fastest public charging stations still cannot rival the 3-5 minutes it takes to fill a petrol or diesel tank, the top makes and models of electric cars can reach 80% charge in 20-30 minutes.

As a result, the old notion of a ‘splash and dash’ refuel stop has been replaced by a ‘flash and dash’ rapid recharge instead. But what do we mean by ‘rapid’ in relation to electric cars?

Types Of Charging Point

The term ‘rapid charger’ has a specific meaning when talking about EVs. To understand that, you need to know about the different types of charging points in common usage and roughly how long they take to charge your vehicle:

• 3-pin mains charging up to 3kW (12 hours)
• Fast chargers up to 22kW (3-4 hours)
• Rapid chargers up to 50kW (1 hour)
• Ultra-rapid chargers up to 350kW

Ultra-rapid chargers, offering power ratings of hundreds of kilowatts, have been introduced relatively recently on public charging networks like GRIDSERVE’s Electric Forecourts. Compatible EVs can add about 100 miles of range for just five minutes of charging – a flash and dash that can rival a conventional petrol station visit.

Are Rapid Chargers AC Or DC?

It’s typically faster to charge an electric vehicle using a direct current or ‘DC’ supply than the alternating current (AC) you’ll find in your mains electricity supply at home. But electric cars are fitted with a converter so they can be charged from either.
Confusingly, ‘rapid charger’ can refer to chargers at the top end of AC power ratings and/or those at the lower end of DC ratings, including:

• AC chargers around 43kW
• DC chargers 50kW and above

Moving up towards ultra-rapid chargers, these supply DC power at very high ratings of 150kW and above. The current top end is around 350kW, while the Tesla Supercharger network supplies up to 250kW.
So although it’s accurate to say that ultra-rapid chargers use DC power, it’s not necessarily the case with rapid chargers. But it’s true that by bypassing the car’s built-in converter, DC rapid charging is usually much faster than AC rapid charging.

How Many Rapid Chargers Are In The UK?

The UK government publishes quarterly updates on the number of EV charging devices installed in the UK, using data from the charge point mapping app Zap-Map.

As of July 1st 2022, there were:

• 32,011 public EV charging devices
• 5,974 rapid chargers (18.7% of the total)

Compared with April 2022, this was a 6% increase in public charge points, but a 9% increase in rapid chargers, indicating they are becoming a larger proportion of all installed EV chargers for public use.

There are now 47.7 publicly available EV charging devices in the UK per 100,000 population, of which 8.9 are rapid chargers. Surprisingly, Inner London has only the average number of rapid chargers – 8.9 per 100,000 people – but this is very location-specific, with 27.1 in Westminster, 27.2 in Hammersmith, and 36.6 in the City of London.

How Rapid Can Charging Get?

The Combined Charging System (CCS) currently offers some of the fastest charging on mainstream EVs. It’s compatible with the widely used Type 2 connector for AC charging, but adds two chunky DC charging pins for ultra-rapid 350kW charging.

In terms of just how fast charging can get, it’s not only about the power rating of the charge point. Putting huge amounts of power into an EV battery in a short space of time can damage the battery, which is why each make and model of EV is limited to its own charging speed.

Future charge points will undoubtedly be even faster than the current 350kW infrastructure. Still, the flash and dash ability of the top models of electric cars already on the market means that ‘refuelling’ in a 5-minute visit is very much a reality for EVs.