Chinese electric vehicle (EV) battery manufacturer Guangzhou Juwan Technology Research Company Ltd (also known as Greater Bay Technology), has announced it has started production of extremely fast-charging (XFC) batteries at a plant in Guangzhou in China’s Guangdong province.

XFC refers to batteries that can be recharged from 10% to 80% in under ten minutes to provide an additional range of 320km, a target proposed by the US Department of Energy for 2025. The technology helps address one of the key issues said to have slowed sales of EVs so far – range anxiety.

The Guangzhou-based startup, spun off from Chinese automaker GAC Group in 2020, last year claimed its latest batteries could be recharged up to 80% in 8 minutes by using superconducting materials. The company already supplies its batteries from other plants to EV maker GAC Aion and also to local EV startup Hycan.

The new Guangzhou plant has a production capacity of 4 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of batteries per year, but can be expanded to twice that volume.

Larger battery manufacturers such as CATL and BYD have also been developing such batteries, but only Great Bay has succeeded in putting them into mass production so far. The company’s president, Gong Feng, suggested that battery manufacturers that do not produce XFC batteries “will lose their market as there will be a growing number of people who demand faster charging”.

Boston Consulting Group forecasts XFC batteries will account for 16% of EVs sold by 2025, rising to 68% by 2030.