Polestar is showcasing the charging capabilities of the upcoming Polestar 5 sports sedan using a prototype model and StoreDot’s Extreme Fast Charging (XFC) technology. This is the first EV to test StoreDot’s ultra-fast charging technology, and the initial tests are quite promising.

When it arrives, the Polestar 5 will be—you guessed it—the fifth model in the Geely-owned automaker’s EV portfolio. The all-electric sports sedan’s inception stems from the Precept concept, and Polestar continues to be one of the few automakers that actually evolves its concepts into production vehicles.

The production prototype version of the Polestar 5 debuted in late 2021, equipped with carriage doors and a “Smart Zone” grille that houses many of the sensors for the EV’s ADAS. In July 2023, a camouflaged prototype of the 5 appeared publicly at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, touting 884 horsepower and Polestar’s 800V architecture that will enable ultra-fast charging speeds.

By November 2023, we learned that EV battery specialist StoreDot would trial its new 100in5 battery technology in the Polestar 5, giving the 4-door GT charging capabilities of garnering 100 miles of range in just 5 minutes.

These fast-charging cells have since become the nucleus of StoreDot’s I-BEAM XFC concept design, which is targeting mass production later this year. Before the Polestar 5 and fast-charging architecture hit the market, however, both Polestar and StoreDot are showing off those capabilities, and they’re quite impressive.

Per Polestar, the first verification prototype of the 5 GT successfully demonstrated the promised charging rates enabled by StoreDot’s XFC technology, charging from 10-80% in just ten minutes. The companies shared that the 5 held a consistent charge rate during the session, starting at 310 kW before surpassing 370 kW.

By comparison to the current market, those are some of the higher charge rates achieved by a BEV and offer encouraging results for a future in which drivers can park, recharge, and get back on the road more similarly to the time it would take to stop and refill an ICE vehicle at a gas station. Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath shared a similar sentiment:

Time is one of life’s greatest luxuries, and as a manufacturer of luxury electric performance cars, we need to take the next step to address one of the biggest barriers to EV ownership – charging anxiety. With this new technology, on longer journeys when drivers do stop they’ll be able to spend less time charging and be back on the road faster than before. In fact, that stop time will be more akin to what they experience with a petrol car today.

The Polestar 5 prototype houses a specially commissioned 77 kWh pack, with charging speeds bolstered by StoreDot’s silicon-dominant cells. However, the automaker says the battery pack has the capability to be increased to at least 100 kWh, enabling the BEV to recoup 200 miles of range in a ten-minute charge.

When the Precept became the Polestar 5, the automaker aimed to reach the market in 2024. However, the company’s current focus is on the two SUVs that will precede the GT – the Polestar 3 and 4. While we await the Polestar 5’s arrival on the market, you can check out its prototype’s charging capabilities in the video below:

Tesla’s stock (TSLA) is surging this morning on several reports that China is going to approve the automaker’s deployment of its Full Self-Driving package in the country.

The Full Self-Driving package is a promise that Tesla has been selling to its vehicle owners since 2016: that promise is that all new vehicles are equipped with the hardware necessary to become self-driving and it will become that through future software updates.

In the meantime, the package includes additional ADAS feature, like city-street driving where the car handles all the driving, but it needs to be supervised by the driver at all times.

However, this is only available in North America right now. That’s partly due to it having been first designed for the market and it is not completely ready to be deployed elsewhere, but also because regulations in some markets don’t yet approve of the system.

That includes the world’s largest auto market: China.

New reports claim that this is about to change. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been on a visit to China over the last few days and met with Premier Li Qiang.

Now, Bloomberg reports Tesla was able to secure a deal to get approval for its Full Self-Driving deployment in the country:

The US carmaker was granted the approval under certain conditions, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because details of all the criteria aren’t clear. Tesla did manage to clear two of the most important hurdles: reaching a mapping and navigation deal with Chinese tech giant Baidu Inc., and meeting requirements for how it handles data-security and privacy issues.

Tesla has had issues with data management in China for a few years. The company’s vehicles were even banned by Chinese authorities at times in certain locations due to fear of spying related to the use of cameras on Tesla’s vehicles and its data management.

Several Chinese media are reporting today that this issue has now been solved.

Combined that with a conditional approval by regulators and a deal with China’s Baidu for mapping, which was already partnering with Tesla on maps in China, Tesla appears to be on track for a deployment of FSD in China.

Electrek’s Take

This is understandably making Tesla’s stock surge because after the US, Tesla has more vehicles in China than anywhere else, and that means more potential FSD customers than anywhere else.

If it can deploy its Supervised FSD in the market, it can recognize more revenue from those who bought the package and sell more of them.

It’s unclear how many people in China have already bought FSD, but it’s not likely many because of the lack of approval for the system – although Tesla does sit on more than $3 billion in unrecognized revenue primarily due to FSD. Some of that is from Chinese customers.