BYD’s Fastest-Charging Car in the World Is Astonishing—in Good and Bad Ways

The Denza Z9 GT is the world's fastest car—fastest at charging, that is. It's by no means slow in speed, and it is packed to the brim with bleeding-edge tech. But, trust me here, it's the formidable charging tech BYD has brought to bear here that should get you hot under the collar.

Many auto brands claim charging times that are, shall we say, massaged. Not so with the Denza Z9 GT. I sat in the car and personally watched it go from 10 percent to full in just over nine minutes. It makes all other EVs look like they are standing still in this department, and the Z9 GT heralds a new age of electric cars that will confound gas faithfuls whose primary argument has always been that you can't fill EVs quickly.

Denza is BYD’s “premium” EV brand, here to bother the likes of Porsche and Polestar, and the Z9 GT is its opening salvo in Europe, intended to scare the hell out of the Western competition with a heady mix of performance, everything-as-standard abilities such as crab-walking and all-wheel steering, and an electric architecture miles ahead of any competition.

Yes, the Z9 GT has all of these, but in a rushed attempt to prove it deserves to be considered by consumers alongside the high-end German carmakers, BYD has unwisely abandoned its winning strategy of offering more for much less and is here offering more for more. This Z9 GT will cost €115,000 in Europe. That's roughly $134,000. This is a staggeringly punchy price, going against one of the primary brand values we associate with BYD, and to add insult to injury, the same car sells for about £45,000 in China.

How on earth can BYD justify such a huge price hike for Europe? I asked BYD, and the only other reason I got for the thumping price increase was “market contextualization.” Which, to put it simply, means BYD thinks it can get away with charging more in the EU. But you can't price your way into the premium market. Just because you charge the same as Porsche doesn't mean buyers will think of you in the same way. Trust at this price level is built slowly.

The main event is BYD's Flash charging tech. BYD's engineers have designed new tech to make the internal plumbing of the Blade Battery 2.0 so efficient that huge amounts of electricity can flow through. This means BYD's coming Flash chargers will be able to push 1.5 megawatts into the Blade 2.0 without it overheating or degrading. The best Tesla Superchargers can manage is 325 kW. It's simply game-changing.

Aside from the unbelievable charging ability, the rest of the experience leaves the high price hard to justify. The exterior design is confusing. Inside, a great deal of effort has been made to justify the premium positioning. The 1,100-watt, 20-speaker stereo system is by French audiophile brand Devialet, and it is superb. The car weighs 2.9 tons, and you can actually feel it. It feels like too much attention may have been paid to the statistics as opposed to making it a genuinely Porsche-rivaling ride.