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A powerful thermal management scheme is the key to realizing the extremely fast charging of battery electric vehicles. In this scheme, a water-cooled plate is set at the bottom of the battery modules, which has a remarkable heat dissipation ability but increases the temperature difference between the top and bottom of the battery. This temperature difference problem is more obvious during the high-rate charge/discharge process; in particular, in the area of battery tabs, which are usually located far from the cooling plate, heat accumulates, risking thermal runaway. To address this problem, a thermal management method based on an ultrathin vapour chamber (UTVC) is proposed in this paper to improve temperature uniformity and reduce the highest temperature of batteries. According to the number of applied UTVCs, a unilateral UTVC (U-UTVC) and a bilateral UTVC (B-UTVC) cooling approach were presented, the effectiveness of which was verified by a set of thermal performance experiments. The test data show that the temperature differences in the batteries under the U-UTVC and B-UTVC schemes are 39.77% and 73.54% lower than those under the traditional method at a 25 °C ambient temperature and a 1.39C charge rate, respectively. The temperature difference on the battery surface with the B-UTVC scheme is approximately 3 °C at 25 °C and 40 °C ambient temperature. • An ultra-thin vapour chamber-based power battery thermal management is proposed to improve the temperature uniformity. • The methods have limited effect on battery volumetric specific energy, and the volumetric specific energy of battery is only reduced by 1.2% which is far less than reported investigations. • Temperature difference and maximum temperature of battery module of the presented scheme are reduced by 15.49% and 73.54%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]