China already runs 2,250-kilowatt chargers while the fastest U.S. unit slips to 2027

Three times the power separates the charger Geely switched on in Ningbo last week from the one EVgo now says it will start building in the United States next year. Geely’s station carries a peak rating of 2,250 kilowatts; EVgo’s next-generation system tops out at 750 kilowatts and, after missing its original target of the second half of 2026, is now slated for 2027.

The comparison comes from Electrek’s reading of two announcements made days apart, and it carries caveats on both sides. A peak rating is a ceiling that no production car can yet reach, and the American unit is a design that has not yet reached a single site.

Geely’s 2,250 kW station and where it is running

Electrek reported on September 30 that Geely has rolled out the chargers in five Chinese cities: Hangzhou, Shanghai, Ningbo, Jiaxing and Xi’an. The outlet describes the station as running at 1,500 volts and 1,500 amps, then adds the detail that matters most for the 2,250 kW figure, which is that no production car yet accepts 1,500 volts. Instead, the station can serve two cars at once, each drawing more than a megawatt.

The launch itself dates to September 23. CnEVPost wrote that the fifth-generation Geely Smart Charging Station offers a peak of 2,250 kW, above the 1,500 kW maximum single-gun output of BYD’s flash-charging pile, and in testing a Lynk & Co 10 and a Zeekr 001 with Geely’s Golden Battery charged from 10 to 70 percent in 4 minutes 30 seconds, and from 10 to 97 percent in 8 minutes 40 seconds.

The gap between the rating and the car is visible in the testing numbers. CarNewsChina’s account describes a single-gun peak of 2,250 kW but records that the Lynk & Co 10 reached a peak of 1,093 kW in testing, about half the station’s ceiling. The same report quotes the observation that once charging reaches the megawatt level, further gains in charging time look very limited, and that building out stations matters more.

The benchmark Geely is aiming at is BYD, whose flash-charging pile tops out at 1,500 kW per gun, according to CnEVPost’s account of the launch. Geely’s own earlier hardware, a 1,500 kW unit described in March reporting by EV Engineering News, had already put it in that class; the 2,250 kW station extends the lead by half again. Charging a battery from 10 to 97 percent in under nine minutes also changes what a stop looks like: it is closer to a fuel stop than to the half-hour sessions common on American networks.

EVgo’s 750 kW system and the move to 2027

EVgo announced its next-generation architecture on September 29. In the company’s release, the system is described as able to charge the fastest-charging vehicles on sale in the U.S. in around 10 minutes, with actual times depending on the vehicle and conditions. Every stall uses a NACS connector, and dynamic power sharing adjusts the distribution across stalls in real time. Chief executive Badar Khan said the 750 kW investment “future-proofs” the network.

The release puts the final design and the start of deployment in 2027. Electrek’s separate piece on the EVgo announcement notes that the rollout was originally projected for the second half of 2026, the delay at the center of Electrek’s comparison. The outlet frames the 750 kW unit as the fastest charger on the American horizon. That is Electrek’s description of what is coming to the public network, not a census of every high-power charger in the country.

Delta Electronics is the development partner, and testing runs at EVgo’s Innovation Lab in El Segundo, California, according to Electrek. EVgo says charge rates on its network have risen nearly 20 percent in two years, its reason for building to 750 kW.

Scale: the 15,000-site claim and what it does not settle

Electrek says Geely plans a similar rollout at much larger scale, 15,000 chargers by the end of next year. CarNewsChina gives a different and larger target: over 100,000 charging guns nationwide by the end of 2027, more than 50,000 of them Geely Smart Charge units. The two outlets use different units, so the figures do not conflict so much as measure different things, and neither outlet cites a Geely filing for its number.

The comparison also compresses a mismatch. Geely’s number is a station peak that the best measured car reaches about half of; EVgo’s is a design target for a system whose final form has not been shown. Putting 2,250 beside 750 says which country has hardware in the field today. It says less about which drivers get faster charging first, since the Chinese figure depends on batteries and cars that mostly do not exist yet at that voltage.

Electrek’s own caution about the American unit is the one the data supports: the true test will come when several EVs plug in at once, in how much power each gets and how reliably the system delivers it. EVgo has not yet deployed the equipment on its network.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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