BYD opened its 2,000th highway flash charging stations, three months ahead of schedule

BYD (HKG: 1211) opened its 2,000th highway flash charging station on September 24, 2026, at the Baoying service area in Yangzhou, Jiangsu province. The site closes the last gap on the Beijing-Shanghai Expressway, which now has BYD megawatt charging along its entire length. It also completes the company's first-year highway build-out roughly three months ahead of its end-of-2026 deadline.

The wider network has grown alongside it. BYD had built 11,586 flash charging stations across 341 cities as of September 24. On the highway side, stations now cover 278 expressway routes at an average spacing of 121 km (75 miles). All 22 of the country's busiest trunk expressways, arranged as a grid of 11 north-south and 11 east-west corridors, are now fully covered.

The Beijing-Shanghai Expressway is one of China's core long-distance arteries, running 1,262 km (784 miles) between the capital and the country's largest city. Finishing it days before the National Day holiday in early October means the corridor is covered ahead of the autumn travel rush, one of the busiest weeks of the year for intercity driving.

The pace of construction has been steep. BYD unveiled its megawatt flash charging system in March 2026 and had 5,000 stations installed by April 1. The count passed 10,000 on August 27. That means nearly 1,600 more stations went up in the four weeks that followed, an average of more than 55 a day.

BYD marked its 10,000th flash charging station at an event in Shenzhen in late August 2026 (BYD)

Each station is built around chargers rated at up to 1,500 kW per connector, running on a 1,000-volt architecture. Paired with BYD's second-generation Blade battery, the system charges from 10% to 70% in five minutes and from 10% to 97% in nine minutes at normal temperatures. At -30°C, a charge from 20% to 97% takes 12 minutes. BYD sells that result with a simple promise: only three extra minutes in extreme cold.

The 2,000 highway sites are one part of a 20,000-station target for the end of 2026, split between 18,000 urban stations and 2,000 on highways. With the highway portion done, BYD needs roughly 8,400 more urban sites before December 31. That works out to about 86 new stations a day for the rest of the year, well above the pace it managed over the past month.

Usage is climbing with the station count. Through August 28, the network had delivered 210 million kWh of electricity to more than 1.83 million users. Nearly one-third of those users were driving vehicles from other brands. The stations accept any EV, although charging power is capped by what each vehicle can take.

Official product image of the megawatt flash charging terminal BYD unveiled in March 2026 (BYD)

BYD is also using the network to sell cars. Buyers of its flash-charging-capable models get one year of free flash charging at stations nationwide. The company has mapped themed road-trip routes along the Hexi Corridor in Gansu, the East China coast, and a heritage route built around traditional Huizhou-style architecture.

Wang Junbao, general manager of BYD's flash charging business, said at the Baoying ceremony that the goal is to have flash charging "wherever there is a road." With the Baoying site online, that pledge now holds for the full length of the drive between Beijing and Shanghai.

The milestone landed one day after Geely Auto (HKG: 0175) presented a rival charging system on September 23. Geely said its new AI-managed stations reach a peak of 2,250 kW per connector. In Geely's own room-temperature tests, its Lynk & Co 10 averaged 4 minutes 30 seconds from 10% to 70% and 8 minutes 40 seconds from 10% to 97%. On paper, those figures edge ahead of BYD's, which turns the race from peak power into who can put more stations on the road.

Both companies are building into a charging market that is still expanding quickly. China had 24.223 million EV charging facilities by the end of August 2026, up 39.6% year on year. Public chargers made up 5.16 million of that total, up 19.5%. The remainder are private units.

Abroad, BYD plans 3,000 flash charging stations in Europe and another 3,000 in other markets, with its first international site opening in June 2026. The UK alone is slated for 300 stations this year. Whether BYD can match its domestic build rate in markets with different permitting rules and grid operators is the next open question.