A bigger battery not only takes up a lot more real estate in a vehicle but also adds a lot more cost and weight. Especially weight. The GMC Sierra EV AT4 pickup, for example, has a 205-kWh battery that delivers an impressive EPA-rated range of 478 miles. But the truck weighs a staggering 8,844 pounds, nearly 48 percent more than its internal combustion engine cousin, the Sierra AT4X AEV Edition.
That extra weight means more damage to roadways and a greater risk of death and injury to the occupants of other vehicles in a collision. What’s more, it takes 30 minutes to put 213 miles worth of energy back into the Sierra EV AT4’s battery on a 350-kW charger, while it takes less than 10 minutes to pump a tankful of gas into the AT4X AEV Edition, enough to take it 360 miles.
When it comes to curing range anxiety, a bigger battery is thus a blunt instrument, say Mercedes-Benz engineers. That’s why the company, which has explored a variety of high-tech range-enhancing vehicle and battery management technologies with the Vision EQXX concept, which traveled the 747 miles from Stuttgart to Silverstone on a single charge of its 100-kWh battery, is now looking at fast charging. Indeed, fast charging, combined with advanced battery temperature management technologies, was the key to getting the electric-powered Mercedes-AMG GT XX concept to cover 25,000 miles in less than eight days at an average speed of more than 137 mph.
The Fast-Charging Breakthrough That Might Finally End EV Range Anxiety
Mercedes-Benz’s new high-speed charging tech shows why the next leap in EVs won’t come from bigger batteries. It will be how fast we can charge them.Angus MacKenzieWriter
ManufacturerPhotographerOct 09, 2025
The cure for electric vehicle range anxiety? It’s not bigger batteries, says Mercedes-Benz. It’s faster charging. Sure, a bigger battery will take you further between charges. But there are significant downsides.
A bigger battery not only takes up a lot more real estate in a vehicle but also adds a lot more cost and weight. Especially weight. The GMC Sierra EV AT4 pickup, for example, has a 205-kWh battery that delivers an impressive EPA-rated range of 478 miles. But the truck weighs a staggering 8,844 pounds, nearly 48 percent more than its internal combustion engine cousin, the Sierra AT4X AEV Edition.
That extra weight means more damage to roadways and a greater risk of death and injury to the occupants of other vehicles in a collision. What’s more, it takes 30 minutes to put 213 miles worth of energy back into the Sierra EV AT4’s battery on a 350-kW charger, while it takes less than 10 minutes to pump a tankful of gas into the AT4X AEV Edition, enough to take it 360 miles.
When it comes to curing range anxiety, a bigger battery is thus a blunt instrument, say Mercedes-Benz engineers. That’s why the company, which has explored a variety of high-tech range-enhancing vehicle and battery management technologies with the Vision EQXX concept, which traveled the 747 miles from Stuttgart to Silverstone on a single charge of its 100-kWh battery, is now looking at fast charging. Indeed, fast charging, combined with advanced battery temperature management technologies, was the key to getting the electric-powered Mercedes-AMG GT XX concept to cover 25,000 miles in less than eight days at an average speed of more than 137 mph.
All that background explains Mercedes-Benz’s latest EV research vehicle, the ELF. The name is an initialism for Experimental-Lade-Fahrzeug, German for “Experimental Charging Vehicle.” The ELF is, says Mercedes-Benz development engineer Malte Sievers, basically a rolling laboratory on wheels built to test a variety of fast-charging technologies. “When you try to build the best vehicle, the fastest-charging vehicle, it’s important to have a very good understanding of what the charging infrastructure can do right now and what we need it to be able to do in years to come,” Sievers says.
The ELF is equipped with two fast charging systems, MCS, which has been designed for heavy duty trucks and allows charging rates of 1,000 kW, or one megawatt, and the enhanced CCS setup used in the AMG GT XX record run. It can also test inductive charging systems and vehicle-to-home, vehicle-to-building, and vehicle-to-grid bidirectional AC and DC charging.
The MCS hardware and software serves as a research tool for testing the thermal resilience and performance limits of high-voltage batteries, power electronics, charging cables, and other components under extreme conditions. The CCS system in the ELF can achieve a charging rate of up to 900 kW, which means 100 kWh of energy can be added in just 10 minutes, theoretically enough juice to propel the GMC Sierra EV AT4 pickup about 235 miles if the truck’s battery and electrical architecture were able to accept such a high charge rate.
Significantly, the components used in the ELF’s fast-charging CCS setup, such as the battery and charging control software and hardware, are close to production ready, and will be incorporated into future Mercedes-Benz models, Sievers says. In fact, Mercedes plans to begin installing a version of the prototype HYC1000 CCS charger developed by European charging specialist Alpitronic for the Mercedes-AMG GT XX concept record run at its own Mercedes-Benz Mobility charging parks in 2026.
The prototype HYC1000 charger combined elements of truck compatible MCS megawatt chargers with liquid-cooled CCS components, including the cable and connector, and is able transmit currents of up to 1,000 amps. During the the Nardo record run, it allowed the AMG GT XX to accept peak charge rates of up to 1,041 kW, and an average charge rate of 850 kW. The production version will allow peak charge rates of up to 600 kW on select Mercedes vehicles with an 800V electrical architecture and enhanced battery controls.
“We’re coming from a mindset where we were about [addressing] range anxiety from a battery size point of view,” says Sievers. “Now, the whole [electric vehicle] sector is very much looking at fast charging. I expect this trend to continue. We’re going to see more and more fast charging.”
