Which electric vehicles charge the fastest? The Edmunds test reveals who is leading the charge and who is not

We all know that electric cars go fast, but what happens when they run out of power and it’s time to charge your electric car back up?

The amount of time it takes to quickly charge an electric vehicle varies from vehicle to vehicle. Some electric cars charge much faster than others, but there’s no industry standard measure for charging speed — automakers only quote a number that makes them sound good. At Edmunds, we wanted to set a new standard by independently evaluating electric vehicle fast charging speeds, ranking vehicles from top to bottom.

Through Edmunds EV charging testing, we put 43 EVs under our microscope to create a comprehensive charging leaderboard with the help of our partners at P3. It is an automotive consultancy that specializes in technology development, and has developed its own method of testing EV charging by monitoring the amount of current flowing from the charging station to the vehicle. We combined the P3’s charging data with Edmunds EV efficiency test results to produce a true-to-life measure of how long it takes to add range to a car’s battery. What we’re doing is setting an industry standard – there hasn’t been a standard for measuring charging speed yet. This way you can see if you’ll need to spend a lot of time charging during that road trip or spend 10 minutes less charging your electric car during your daily commute.

That’s also why we describe this as average miles per hour of charging, and to provide additional context, we also quote the average time it takes to add 100 miles of charging.

Lead the charge

The results are in from the first batch of tests, and you might be surprised to hear that the Hyundai Ioniq 6 Limited RWD can add up to 100 miles of range faster than any other electric car we’ve tested. It takes Hyundai’s latest electric car just 6 minutes and 55 seconds to add those 100 miles — for reference, the Tesla Model Y’s performance needs nearly double to do the same thing.

We now see electric cars regularly achieving at or above 300 miles of range, and it’s not just limited to higher-priced electric cars. The Hyundai Ioniq 6, Kia EV6, Tesla Model 3 and a number of other electric vehicles with an EPA-estimated range of more than 300 miles can be had for less than the average transaction price of a new car today. More expensive electric cars can have a range of up to 400 or even 500 miles on a single charge, as we’ve seen several times in our Edmunds EV range testing.