Debate worth having: will megawatt charging see range anxiety consigned to the history books?

Range anxiety: the dreaded phrase that has been top of mind for EV drivers - and potential EV drivers - for years. It is the fear that your EV will run out of charge before reaching your destination, or the next charging point. But what if range anxiety was finally a thing of the past? With megawatt charging, it could be.

While conventional EV charging methods are getting faster, the time it takes to charge your car will depend on the speed of the charging point, as well as the size of its battery.

The RAC reports that EV non-rapid charging times - which drivers will typically use at home overnight - are ‘typically’ around six to 12 hours using alternating current (AC) chargers. These kinds of chargers have an output of anything from 3 kilowatts (kW) to 50kW.

Faster still are direct current (DC) chargers, which deliver power at 50-100kW, and can be much faster, at 30 to 60 minutes. These types of rapid chargers are often found along major driving routes, at places like gas stations, in car parks and shopping centers.

But the very latest charging technology, megawatt charging systems (MCS), promises to leave these kinds of chargers for dust. This type of high-voltage DC charger has a power of up to 3.75 megawatts. The technology is in its infancy, and at the moment, it’s just beginning to roll out for trucks.

Volvo reports that in February this year, Milence opened its first public MCS points at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, which are able to charge trucks with a power of up to 1440 kW. There are more MCS points planned in Murcia, Spain, and in the UK’s BP Pulse truckstop at Ashford International, as well as another 284 MCS Milence charging stops in the world at 71 European locations by the end of 2027, as part of €111 of funding from the EU’s Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Facility (AFIF).

But it's not just trucks - megawatt charging solutions aimed at cars are now on the way, too. In spring this year, Chinese manufacturer BYD unveiled the Han L and Tang L, the first EVs to incorporate its Super e-platform, including a ‘Flash Battery’ that charges the car to 262 miles in five minutes. And with megawatt-charging cars, come the plans for accompanying charging stations, with Electrive reporting that BYD announcing plans to launch 4,000 MCS points across China, as well as future plans to roll out stations across Europe ‘within the next 12 months’.

Taking charge

The HERE-SBD EV Index 2025, which measures growth in EV adoption and infrastructure development shows that Europe deployed 6.6 times more EV charge points vs the US in the last year – a much faster pace. Overall, in the US, Delaware and D.C. retained top spots as the most EV mature states, but saw slight declines in score due to decreasing average charge power and charger ratio respectively. In the EU, Norway outpaced Denmark for the top spot, driven by impressive fleet share and high average charge power. It seems Norway would be best suited for the megawatt charger revolution.

John Ellmore is EV Fleet Editor at Know Your Business. He says, “The technology is revolutionary and will remove the concept of range anxiety as we will be able to charge EVs as quickly as we fill up a regular car with petrol. There will be no more fear from drivers of waiting hours to recharge because with megawatt charging you can add hundreds of miles to your car in minutes. It will be just like filling up a petrol car.”

John thinks that megawatt charging will be a critical factor in the mass adoption of EVs. “It's the biggest breakthrough in EV tech that I can remember,” he says. “Mass adoption depends on convenience. No one wants to be inconvenienced, even with the best environmental intentions, inconvenience on a long road trip is never going to work for the masses. Megawatt charging delivers that convenience.

“However, we are only expected to get a couple of BYD megawatt chargers in the UK next year. Plus, at the moment, it's only suitable for a select few EVs, so we are decades away from a complete rollout.”

There’s been progress made with EV adoption in countries such as the UK, with the BBC reporting that there’s been a near doubling of EVs on the roads over the last two years - and one in five new cars being electric in the UK in 2024. But there’s still a way to go to reach Net Zero.

Joseph Nagle is Head of Corporate Strategy at Pando Electric, an EV charging solution for apartment blocks and commercial buildings. He disagrees that megawatt charging is the silver bullet that’s needed to cure range anxiety - and give the uptick in mass EV adoption that’s needed to get the planet closer to Net Zero. Instead, he believes that easier access to charging points is what drivers really need.

“Megawatt charging is all well and good when it comes to public charging spaces. But in my opinion, what your everyday EV driver needs is to have the ability and the convenience to charge their car overnight at home. There are many people living in apartment blocks, or multifamily homes, who can’t get an EV because they don’t have the right access to the road to charge it.

“Would you rather leave your home in the evening, drive somewhere else to charge your car, and then come back, or simply charge your car from home overnight when you're asleep? There’s a convenience that exists with charging your car at home, that doesn’t come from megawatt charging.

“I think one of the biggest wins for the US, where I’m based, would be getting EV chargers installed en masse at apartments and condos and homes in general. Curbside charging in general needs to happen. What we need isn’t more high power stations in some locations, it's a lot more low power stations in every location.”

John insists that "it's not an either-or” between megawatt charging and other solutions, such as chargers for those in apartment blocks. “Yes, we need overnight charging for households without driveways, but megawatt charging deals with the issue of mass charging for long-distance travel,” he says. “Drivers want to know they can both top up at home and recharge quickly on the road. That’s what will ultimately put an end to range anxiety.

Joseph concedes that megawatt charging is “a really good idea”, but thinks it’ll be most useful for drivers on longer trips. “Megawatt charging will work well for those on a road trip or during an emergency - those are really great use cases. But when you think about how often you actually do either one of those two things, they're more rare than your daily charging convenience - and that’s what we really need to solve for drivers first.”

A huge energy drain?

Moritz Vornfeld is Segment Owner for Fleets at Kempower, a leading EV charging manufacturer, which delivered its first megawatt charging solutions to pilot customers in Linköping, Sweden in 2024. He believes that megawatt charging is best kept to trucks and commercial vehicles - its current application.

“We’ve done a calculation at Kempower, and we expect up to 500,000 electric trucks potentially to be on the road by 2030. So that's five years from now, which is completely mind blowing. And the enabler for that is megawatt charging, because that technology enables, ultimately, the trucks to charge in the driver’s mandated 45 minute breaks when they're on the roads - and that basically enables this 100% electrification of road transportation. This is the best use of megawatt charging, in my opinion.

“Logistics is an industry where it is absolutely important to have sufficient charging power to charge up during idle times where the truck is standing still, because as we all know, time and money are very important where margins are very small.”

Moritz explains that he doesn’t think it’s “mission critical” for electric cars to charge in megawatt time, which it is when it comes to long-haul trucking, with the mandated breaks that drivers must take - because existing rapid charge times are already sufficient for EVs, and are likely to get faster still as technology evolves.

“We don’t have the need to charge cars in the same way as we do with trucks - they can still charge in 10 minutes, when you’re at the station, going in to buy a Snickers. But they don’t require this superfast charging that long-haul truck drivers do - plus, electric truck batteries are much larger than those in electric cars, which is another key reason why trucks require this kind of power, when cars don't.”

Still, BYD is planning to roll out MCS points across Europe - with a car audience in mind.

“China are moving quickly here,” John says. “They will have the full infrastructure set up within a few years and the sheer scale of its EV industry is why it sets the pace for everyone else to follow.”

Only time will tell if megawatt charging is the silver bullet to cure range anxiety - or if it’s the mixture of various different solutions that will finally solve the issue for EV drivers. One thing’s for certain, whether you’re a truck or a car driver - megawatt is coming. Watch this space.