Chinese electric vehicle giant BYD is going high end.
The firm just announced a 1,000-plus-horsepower supercar that measures its speed in seconds at both the track and the plug. Unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show under the automaker’s premium Denza brand, the Denza Z is claimed to hit 100 km/h in less than two seconds and recharge in under ten minutes. The clearer R&D angle is that BYD is pairing these metrics with a second-generation Blade Battery and a Flash Charging system already moving into cheaper models. This includes the new Song Ultra EV, which starts at about $22,000 in China and is claimed to charge from 10% to 70% in just five minutes.
The Denza Z rides on a derivative of BYD’s Super e-Platform, the 1,000-volt architecture the company rolled out in March 2025. With the support of ultra-high voltage (1000V) and ultra-high current (1000A), BYD’s “Flash Charging Battery” reaches a mass-produced charging power of 1 megawatt. On the Han L sedan that first carried the platform, BYD says the system delivers 400 kilometers of range in five minutes. Reports on the Denza Z itself cite a 10% to 97% recharge in nine minutes, with InsideEVs noting compatibility with BYD’s “Flash” chargers, which deliver 1,500 kilowatts of power for sub-10-minute top-ups.
The car is scheduled to make its public debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in July, with European sales beginning before the home market. Denza has not confirmed UK pricing. UK trade outlets put the figure somewhere north of £100,000 and within striking distance of the Maserati Granturismo Folgore at around £180,000, which Autocar identifies as the closest rival on paper.
Independent verification of BYD’s most aggressive charging claims at scale is still pending. The company says its Flash Charging system can deliver up to 1,500 kW through a Chinese-market connector, enough to take the Denza Z9GT from 10% to 70% in five minutes and from 10% to 97% in nine minutes. The Denza Z will use BYD’s Flash Charging system, but its battery capacity and model-specific charging curve remain undisclosed.
BYD says thousands of Flash Charging stations are already installed in China and has committed to an initial European rollout, but Reuters reported in March that no chargers then on the market could handle the 1,500 kW needed for BYD’s fastest charge rates. In Europe and North America, 350-kW-class chargers still define the upper end of most public fast-charging deployments.
The Denza Z was shaped by Wolfgang Egger, BYD’s global design director, whose earlier work includes the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione. The car also gives BYD a premium European calling card: a four-seat, 1,000-plus-hp electric super-GT aimed at brands such as Porsche and Maserati, with coupe, convertible and track versions planned.
The timing underscores how quickly Chinese battery makers are turning charge time into a competitive metric. The Denza Z reveal came the same week CATL, BYD’s main domestic battery rival, announced its third-generation Shenxing LFP battery, which CATL says can charge from 10% to 98% in six minutes and 27 seconds.
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