By Ma Shiqing | Edited by Ma Guangyu
Editor's Note: Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA) released the "15th Five-Year Plan for Building a New Energy System," explicitly stating the need to "build heavy truck energy replenishment facilities along major freight corridors" and emphasizing the "construction of a charging infrastructure network with city-wide surface, highway-line, and rural-point layouts." Leifeng.com recently communicated with energy industry experts and corporate executives to gain insights into the changes and impacts in the field of transportation-energy integration.
"The era of 'points' for Huawei's heavy truck ultra-fast charging is over. This year, we will open the world's only three long-distance trunk routes for heavy trucks exceeding 1,000 kilometers." At Huawei's Lianqiuhu R&D Center, Wang Zhiwu, Director of the Charging Network Expansion Department of Huawei China Digital Energy, shared with Leifeng.com the phased achievements and future plans of Huawei's ultra-fast charging.
In 2023, Huawei's all-liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging product was launched, taking the lead in the passenger vehicle sector to achieve "one kilometer in one second," gradually accumulating user reputation. However, in Huawei's blueprint, passenger vehicles are just the starting point; the next goal is the comprehensive electrification of heavy truck logistics.
"The electrification of heavy truck logistics is more urgent than that of private cars, but the process has always been constrained by the energy replenishment system," Wang Zhiwu told Leifeng.com frankly.
The core of the energy replenishment system lies in charging efficiency. A frequently used electric heavy truck needs to be charged three times a day. Using traditional charging piles, these three sessions could take up to four hours in total. For drivers and fleets who charge by the trip and rely on "carrying more and running faster" to make a living, low charging efficiency means shrinking income.
However, simply increasing the power of charging piles is not the best solution to improve efficiency, as it brings along thermal bottlenecks and grid impacts. The charging power of an electric heavy truck often reaches 500 to 600 kilowatts, equivalent to the simultaneous power consumption of hundreds of households. A 10-megawatt charging station has a far greater impact on the local grid than an ordinary passenger vehicle charging station.
In 2025, Huawei launched its first all-liquid-cooled megawatt ultra-fast charging solution specifically designed for heavy trucks, bridging the entire technological chain of high-power charging, efficient off-vehicle heat dissipation, and grid friendliness. Public information shows that multiple OEMs and charging giants have already laid out megawatt-level charging products for heavy trucks in the market, including BYD, Zeekr, TELD, and Star Charge.
"Up to now, we are the first to reduce heavy truck charging time to under 20 minutes," Wang Zhiwu told Leifeng.com.
To make charging piles compatible with more vehicle models, the core is to solve the standardization issue. Huawei initiated the Ultra-Fast Charging Alliance 2.0 for commercial vehicles, bringing together automakers, battery companies, the power grid, operators, logistics enterprises, and others to jointly formulate standards. Huawei has also opened over 200 related patents to ecosystem partners for free.
After standards are unified and the ecosystem takes shape, the implementation of ultra-fast charging still needs to face the tests of different scenarios. Ports and mining areas have fixed routes, controllable mileage, and determined replenishment points; whereas trunk logistics have scattered routes and high timeliness requirements, so the replenishment network must be rolled out as comprehensively as gas stations. In the process of network-wide deployment of trunk replenishment, the form of replenishment nodes at the city end will also be reconstructed.
Discussing the landscape of the ultra-fast charging network after the comprehensive electrification of heavy trucks, Wang Zhiwu told Leifeng.com: In the future, a city will have two or three large heavy truck central stations, plus some satellite stations. The satellite stations will be unmanned, and only the central stations will have staff on duty.
To turn this vision into reality, Huawei is accelerating its promotion in conjunction with ecosystem partners. Recently, the 2026 Huawei Ultra-Fast Charging · Heavy Truck Ecosystem Conference was held in Shanghai, gathering ecosystem partners of the Ultra-Fast Charging Alliance. Before the conference, Leifeng.com had an exchange with Wang Zhiwu. The following content has been edited without changing the original meaning:
01From Passenger Vehicles to Heavy Trucks
Leifeng.com: It has been 3 years since Huawei first launched its all-liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging product in 2023. Why did you choose to focus on passenger vehicles first and then new energy heavy trucks?
Wang Zhiwu: Our ultra-fast charging was first implemented on passenger vehicles and then applied to new energy heavy trucks. Our core target is heavy trucks, but the technology needs to be iterated step by step, so we first achieved "one kilometer in one second" on passenger vehicles. Because passenger vehicles have lower power requirements for ultra-fast charging and smaller batteries, a single charge usually requires only 40 to 50 kWh, and a charging pile power of 500 to 600 kW is sufficient.
We believe that new energy heavy trucks are the ones that truly have a demand for ultra-fast charging, because they charge too frequently and have larger batteries. Some frequently used heavy trucks need to be charged three times a day. Finding a station takes time, and slow charging takes time. These three sessions combined could take up to four hours a day. If these four hours were used to haul goods, we have calculated that it could haul an additional 400 to 500 RMB worth of goods, yielding more revenue.
China's annual freight volume (total output value of the freight market) is about 5 trillion RMB. Taking out 4 hours a day for charging, we calculated that it can basically affect 15% of the freight, equivalent to hauling over 700 billion RMB less goods a year. Assuming all heavy trucks are electrified in the future, using slow charging solutions would lead to a loss of over 700 billion RMB in freight fees.
Leifeng.com: Megawatt-level charging power can solve the problem of slow charging, but high power also generates high heat. How was this considered during project initiation?
Wang Zhiwu: This can be divided into two dimensions. The first dimension is the charging pile side. Currently, the utilization rate of passenger vehicle charging stations in large cities is very low, only 8% to 10%, and this is still a mid-to-upper tier proportion; the low ones might only have a 5% utilization rate. Therefore, the reliability and durability issues of the charging piles themselves have not been fully exposed.
But we have already found that the utilization rate of many heavy truck charging stations reaches over 50%. The charging mode for heavy trucks is intermittent: the vehicle comes and charges, leaves when fully charged, and the next one follows immediately. In this high-frequency, intermittent usage environment, the equipment will repeatedly experience cycles of current increasing and temperature rising, then current decreasing and temperature dropping. This is a huge test for reliability.
We have observed in multiple stations that once the charging load utilization rate exceeds 50%, the charging equipment is very prone to damage. This is why we adopt all-liquid-cooled technology on the pile side, essentially to solve the thermal balance problem.
The second dimension is the vehicle side, with the core lying in the battery. The battery capacity of passenger vehicles is usually 40 to 50 kWh, and the heat dissipation power is about 8 to 10 kW. The C-rates in the industry are getting higher and higher, but they are essentially short-term transients with a very short duration and relatively small capacity, making heat dissipation relatively easy.
But heavy trucks are completely different. If you want to fully charge a 500 to 600 kWh heavy truck battery in 15 to 20 minutes, we have calculated that it basically requires 80 kW of heat dissipation capacity. What is the concept of 80 kW? Heat dissipation would require installing a water-cooling unit weighing 200 to 300 kg on the vehicle.
So, we brought together more than a dozen automakers and battery companies to discuss, and that's how our heavy truck ultra-fast charging ecosystem alliance was established. The final conclusion of our discussion was that only off-vehicle heat dissipation is the viable path. When we charge, we will simultaneously dissipate heat for the battery, bringing the heat from the vehicle down from underneath the vehicle.
Leifeng.com: The rapid start and stop of high-power charging piles will also cause severe instantaneous pull on the grid, affecting the stability of power facilities. In July, Huawei received the "Grid-Friendly Performance Evaluation for Energy Storage and Charging Systems for Electric Vehicles" issued by the China Quality Certification Center. How exactly is "grid-friendly" achieved? Can you explain with specific cases?
Wang Zhiwu: Grid impact is a very serious issue. In the past, the power of passenger vehicle fast charging was basically only 120 kW. Later, even when doing passenger vehicle ultra-fast charging, it was basically 500 kW or 600 kW, meaning the power of the entire charging station generally would not exceed 1 MW. Heavy truck ultra-fast charging is different; many charging stations are basically over 10 MW.
Last year in Beichuan County, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province, we jointly built the world's first 100-megawatt charging station with a customer. During the process, we discovered a large number of problems.
In the past, when building a small passenger vehicle charging station, the charging equipment was used together with the park's load. The park's load includes inductive loads and capacitive loads, and the charging equipment is essentially a capacitive load. So when connected to the park, it would offset the inductive loads in the park, and did not show a strong impact on the grid.
When we truly scaled the charging station to over50 MW for the first time in Beichuan, we encountered huge challenges, mainly the issue of grid resonance. Our charging equipment contains a large amount of capacitance, which will form an inductive and capacitive resonance with the leakage inductance of the transformer, once shaking the voltage very high. This phenomenon only gradually appears when the capacity exceeds 20 MW.
When we encountered this problem, we were also very stumped. We gathered all the top algorithm experts from Huawei to discuss how to do it. In the end, the core was to use grid-friendly algorithms. We will dynamically detect the harmonic quality of the grid and use algorithms to offset it, ensuring that it does not cause any interference to the grid.
Leifeng.com: Is the grid-friendly algorithm unique to Huawei?
Wang Zhiwu: Currently, it is unique, because only we have built charging stations to over 20 MW, which is very rare in the industry. There were no 100-megawatt stations in the industry at that time; other manufacturers hadn't done it. The grid-friendly algorithm is also our advantage in combating grid impact.
Leifeng.com: Huawei launched the all-liquid-cooled megawatt ultra-fast charging relatively early, but many other companies have also launched similar technologies. Compared with peers, what is Huawei's barrier?
Wang Zhiwu: First, I think heavy trucks are still in the initial stage, with a penetration rate of only 5%, and there is still a long way to go. The large amount of old air-cooled technology in the industry basically has a lifespan of about 3 years under high-frequency use in heavy truck scenarios, while one of the most important characteristics of Huawei is that our products have a 10-year long lifespan.
Second, we conducted an industry survey a few days ago. The failure rate of heavy trucks is very high, so many heavy truck stations cannot achieve unattended operation. The core of our all-liquid-cooled technology is to solve the reliability issue and push it towards unattended operation.
In the future, I believe the true heavy truck ultra-fast charging network will consist of two or three large heavy truck central stations in a city, plus some satellite stations. The satellite stations will be unmanned, and only the central stations will have staff on duty.
Comprehensive electrification means the ultra-fast charging network must be sound, because the hauling routes of many heavy trucks are uncertain. In addition to central stations, there must be satellite stations. To build up this network architecture, long lifespan and unattended operation are very important.
Third, the industry talks a lot about megawatts now, but almost only we talk about fully charging heavy trucks in 15 to 20 minutes. The reason is that you can't just consider increasing the power of the charging pile without considering whether any vehicle can achieve it, or if the cost of implementation is too high, such as installing a heat dissipation unit weighing hundreds of kilograms on the vehicle, which would also increase the vehicle's price.
We consider not only increasing the power of Huawei's piles but, more importantly, how the battery dissipates heat, the battery's chemical formula, and how to achieve 4,000 battery cycles in heavy truck scenarios. This requires the ecological technology of the entire industry chain. It should be said that up to now, we are the first to reduce heavy truck charging time to under 20 minutes.
Leifeng.com: We also noticed that all of Huawei's charging equipment is sent to extreme scenarios for testing. What specific tests will they undergo? Is there a complete testing system?
Wang Zhiwu: Huawei has a very strict IPD (Integrated Product Development) process system for making products. We also have an internal organization called GCTC, which is the Global Certification and Testing Center. This center is independent.
Our quality assurance is mainly achieved through three links. The first link is Huawei's IPD process system. Under this R&D system, the technologies and components selected by Huawei can be said to be relatively high-quality in the industry. Our IPD process system and supply chain system jointly determine our extremely high requirements for product quality.
The second link is laboratory testing. We have large-scale high-temperature, low-temperature, and temperature cycling test environments, and even lightning strike testing. All products must undergo a round of strict verification here.
The third link is full-condition scenario trial. Generally speaking, from the release of a product to its true maturity, we will also trial it in various actual working condition scenarios. Especially for products like charging, the usage environment itself is relatively harsh; wherever there are vehicles, there is a charging demand.
To verify the reliability of the products, we will also put the products in Turpan, the hottest place in China, and Mohe, the coldest place, for field testing.
Leifeng.com: Does every batch of products go through this?
Wang Zhiwu: For every newly developed batch of products, we will conduct these tests. After the products are deployed for testing, we collect over 100 optimization points. We will continuously optimize these issues, and only after all improvements are made will we officially push them to the market. We also jointly built an ultra-fast charging station with a customer at Mount Everest. It is extremely cold and at a high altitude there, but the equipment still operates normally and is completely sufficient.
02Standards, Alliances, and Open Ecosystems
Leifeng.com: The charging industry has a common pain point of inconsistent vehicle and pile standards, especially in the heavy truck field. Huawei established the Ultra-Fast Charging Alliance, and one of the purposes is to align the standards. In this process, what specific difficulties will be encountered compared to passenger vehicles?
Wang Zhiwu: The core lies in the current. For passenger vehicle charging, a current of 500 A or 600 A is sufficient, but heavy trucks require over 2,000 A. When the current reaches this magnitude, if the passenger vehicle charging interface system is continued to be used, there may be no major problems in the short term, but as the number of plug-ins increases, the contact surface of the connector will gradually wear out, and accidents are likely to occur. Therefore, we designed a dedicated solution for heavy trucks.
Actually, in Europe, small vehicles use the CCS 2 standard, and large vehicles use the MCS standard; the two were originally separate. In China, there are currently no corresponding standards.
Huawei is not building behind closed doors in this industry. The heavy truck charging interface system we made is essentially the direction of the next-generation national standard port, helping to promote the standardization and sustainable development of the new energy replenishment infrastructure industry.
Leifeng.com: At the end of 2025, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released relevant documents, incorporating the megawatt charging standard for commercial vehicles into subsequent key work arrangements. Has Huawei carried out related work?
Wang Zhiwu: It is already underway. We are also actively participating. The megawatt standard for heavy trucks is also being gradually improved. We also hope this industry can flourish.
Leifeng.com: In 2024, Huawei initiated the Ultra-Fast Charging Alliance for passenger vehicles; in 2025, it initiated the Ultra-Fast Charging Alliance for commercial vehicles. What are the differences in the roles involved between the two?
Wang Zhiwu: Our cooperation models are different. As I just mentioned, we deduce inwards from market and customer needs. For passenger vehicles, we basically follow the extension line of basic technologies. At the same time, our cooperation with passenger vehicle enterprises mainly focuses on digital interconnection, with the purpose of improving the charging experience for car owners.
In the passenger vehicle segment, you will see, for example, that AITO vehicles driving to many of our ultra-fast charging alliance stations can achieve plug-and-charge and automatic backend settlement. After the car owner arrives at the station, they save a series of tedious operations such as plugging in the gun, scanning the code, and paying. They just plug in the gun and charge directly. After charging, the backend automatically completes the settlement through the car owner's automaker APP, and they can even use points to pay. It is more of a digital alliance, leaning towards a digital and experience alliance.
Leifeng.com: For the participants, what value can they obtain by joining this ecosystem?
Wang Zhiwu: We jointly create a high-value overall solution for customers. After this solution comes out, all parties in the alliance can naturally benefit from it. Whether it is their enterprise's overall technical layout or marketing, it will bring certain benefits.
Switching from fuel heavy trucks to electric heavy trucks can save about 150,000 RMB in fuel costs alone every year. Who gets this 150,000 RMB? The cargo owner, freight trade, fleet, charging operator, etc., everyone gets a share. This profit margin is large enough, so everyone is willing to participate.
We are very open. Huawei's over 200 technology patents are all open to ecosystem partners for free. Our philosophy is to co-create the entire industry chain, which is somewhat different from the approach in the passenger vehicle field. Moreover, we will not excessively intervene in the layout of cooperative battery enterprises and automakers in other technologies.
Leifeng.com: There is a view in the industry that joining the ultra-fast charging alliance ecosystem built by Huawei can actually enhance the brand premium capability for automakers?
Wang Zhiwu: The core is still to create value. Our commercial vehicle ultra-fast charging alliance was just released last year, and afterwards, we spent about seven or eight months doing small-batch pilots. Next, we will gradually scale up the technical route. The core value of scaling up is: reducing the charging time from over an hour, saving two to three hours for the fleet every day. Who ultimately benefits? The fleet benefits, and the cargo owner also benefits.
We have regular meetings where we bring together the R&D teams of relevant automakers and battery companies to jointly discuss these topics. Basically, Huawei takes the lead and invites everyone to participate; in addition, we also organize joint research every year.
03The Era of "Points" Is Over, but the Challenges Have Just Begun
Leifeng.com: Outsiders have always said that Huawei's products are more expensive. From your perspective, are these products really "expensive"?
Wang Zhiwu: Our megawatt technology is different from ordinary technology. When it comes to whether it is expensive or not, we need to look at it from several aspects.
A core issue for heavy truck charging stations in the future is that the site is too large. So when we discuss whether it is expensive or cheap, we need to look at the comprehensive cost of the entire station, not just the cost of the equipment itself. You see, after we charge faster, for example, serving a fleet of 1,000 heavy trucks, if you use slow charging, you have to build an incredibly large station, covering about 300 to 400 mu (approx. 20 to 26 hectares).
But with our solution, 70 to 80 mu (approx. 4.6 to 5.3 hectares) might be enough, and the land purchase and rental costs are greatly reduced. In addition, the site area determines the routing distance of the power cables. One of our parking spaces can serve three to four vehicles per hour, while others only serve one vehicle per hour. This is the gap.
Let's calculate this account, is it expensive or cheap? You need to calculate it from the top level of a charging station. Based on serving 1,000 vehicles, reverse-engineering the total cost of the entire station, the megawatt solution is actually not expensive.
Moreover, what you save is not only land but also cables. Charging equipment accounts for only about 30% of the investment in the entire station, while land purchase or leasing costs account for 20%-30%, and cable costs account for about 15%. This proportion is the major part.
Leifeng.com: When selecting customers, do we also have a boundary? Which market are we mainly targeting?
Wang Zhiwu: In the heavy truck market, we have currently cooperated with many partners in the logistics circle, because they have transportation resources and fleet resources. It is most beneficial for them to do this, and we will also help them succeed.
But what I want to say is that the partners who truly use Huawei's megawatt solution from vehicle to pile are very confident in this solution and continue to purchase and deploy it, because the overall return is fast and the effect is good. We have calculated an account: compared to slow-charging models, ultra-fast charging models can bring an additional 95,000 RMB in transportation revenue per vehicle per year from hauling more goods.
The reason is that time is saved, about 300 hours can be saved per year. These 300 hours used for hauling goods can earn an extra 95,000 RMB. The vast majority of this 95,000 RMB will directly become profit, because the driver's salary has already been paid, the vehicle depreciation has already been paid, and the insurance premium will not increase because of this.
Leifeng.com: In specific scenarios, is Huawei growing faster in closed and short-distance scenarios, or in trunk logistics scenarios?
Wang Zhiwu: Currently, over 80% of electric heavy truck sales are still mainly in closed and short-distance scenarios. It's not that medium and long distances have no benefits or commercial value, but because there is currently no charging network for medium and long distances. Therefore, we hope to use the megawatt ultra-fast charging solution to move electric heavy trucks from closed scenarios to all scenarios, build a single megawatt ultra-fast charging network, and accelerate the electrification process.
Leifeng.com: In closed scenarios, Huawei may cooperate more with large platforms, such as Yangshan Port or Tianjin Port. What is Huawei's subsequent market strategy in these scenarios?
Wang Zhiwu: Previously, because we were doing small-batch trials, the selected pilots were relatively limited. But subsequently, we will roll out comprehensively. We will use ultra-fast charging to standardize and unify all scenarios, because efficiency is high-value in any scenario. After the ultra-fast charging efficiency problem is solved, it can support full-domain electrification, not limited to short-distance and port scenarios.
Leifeng.com: Huawei's strategy on trunk routes is implemented in a "point, line, surface" manner. Will this state be maintained in the future? What do you think is the core pain point behind it? What specific problems need to be solved?
Wang Zhiwu: Overall, the strategy will not change. The era of points is over. This year, we expect to open three long-distance trunk routes of over 1,000 kilometers, including routes from Xinjiang to Gansu.
The real pain points may come later. After a large number of heavy trucks are electrified, many places will face the problem of insufficient land and insufficient power.
Because heavy truck charging stations occupy a very large area, this is completely different from fuel heavy truck gas stations. Fuel heavy trucks refuel once every three or four days, while electric heavy trucks need to be charged two to three times a day, which is a gap of nearly 10 times. A 10-fold increase in replenishment frequency means that the service range previously covered by one gas station now requires a very large site to meet the demand.
Leifeng.com: What solutions has Huawei adopted to address these problems?
Wang Zhiwu: The first is to deploy ultra-fast charging, which must increase the charging speed to reduce the footprint; the second requires government support. Land and power resources need to be coordinated uniformly by the government, and currently, many local governments are also promoting this work.
Leifeng.com: In the trunk scenario replenishment, does Huawei have competitors in the current overall market?
Wang Zhiwu: There are currently two routes for replenishment: either ultra-fast charging or battery swapping. In trunk logistics, we believe the ultra-fast charging solution is more suitable. Because trunk logistics will eventually move towards diversification, and there are currently many logistics enterprises and fleet holders. Battery swapping means that at least one party must hold the batteries, and the batteries need to circulate among different fleets. There is an ecological problem here, and the ecosystem itself is a bottleneck.
Currently, Huawei has no competitors in the heavy truck megawatt ultra-fast charging market. The core issues of megawatt ultra-fast charging lie in battery technology and heat dissipation technology. Solving the charging technology at a single point is useless; the efficiency problem is not solved from the root.
Leifeng.com: What is the current situation in overseas markets? For example, the power grid aging in the US or Europe is relatively serious. How will high-power charging be implemented?
Wang Zhiwu: We are also laying out overseas. In the field of charging, among the technology-based enterprises going global in China, we are actively and comprehensively cooperating with European enterprises.
We adopt DC energy storage solutions on a large scale overseas. Taking passenger vehicle ultra-fast charging as an example, in China, we will build a 600 kW transformer; but overseas, we do not need to build a transformer. We can directly draw 50 kW of power from the substation to achieve 600 kW ultra-fast charging. Relying on our DC energy storage technology, we can achieve over 10 times the grid over-provisioning.
Leifeng.com: In the last few months of this year, what important things will we do?
Wang Zhiwu: From last year to this year, we have been actively promoting the construction of China's trunk logistics electrification. Currently, the mileage of heavy trucks traveling on medium and long-distance trunk routes accounts for 81% of the total mileage, while short-distance transportation only accounts for 19%, a very small proportion.
The national ministries and commissions also attach great importance to this matter. Recently, 11 national ministries and commissions jointly issued a major beneficial policy regarding heavy trucks, specifically requiring all localities to deploy heavy truck charging networks on expressways as soon as possible. As long as this basic network is built, the vehicles will naturally follow.
The coordinated development of vehicles and charging piles means that the chess game of medium and long-distance trunk routes is truly revitalized.