Source : THE AGE NEWS
By Keith Bradsher
The Chinese manufacturing giant CATL, the biggest supplier of batteries for the world’s electric cars, said it had made technological advances that would allow it to produce batteries that are cheaper, lighter, faster to recharge and more resistant to cold, while providing greater driving range.
Most of the changes, which are a couple of years away from being widely available in new cars, could make electric cars more competitive in price and performance with gasoline-powered models.
CATL produces a third of the world’s electric car batteries and supplies 16 of the world’s biggest carmakers.Credit: Shutterstock
CATL – its full name is the Contemporary Amperex Technology Company Ltd – produces a third of the world’s electric car batteries and supplies 16 of the world’s biggest carmakers, including General Motors and the Shanghai factory of Tesla. Its main rivals for the global market are BYD in Shenzhen, China, which makes about one-sixth of the world’s EV batteries, almost entirely for its own cars, and South Korean and Japanese battery manufacturers.
CATL executives spoke at a news conference before the Shanghai car show, which starts on Wednesday. The choreographed event evoked the launch of a new car model.
Batteries represent at least a third of the cost of an electric car, making CATL a critical player in the EV supply chain in China and beyond. Many carmakers have been watching nervously whether CATL will someday try to establish its own car brand that could overshadow their own models.
The biggest surprise by CATL was an announcement about auxiliary batteries for electric cars. The batteries would share space in the underbody of cars, where there is currently only one large battery.
The auxiliary battery would be the first commercially available electric vehicle battery that would not use graphite as one of its poles, CATL said.
Removing costly graphite will eventually make the batteries cheaper, after some initial costs, and will allow 60 per cent more electricity to be squeezed in each cubic inch of the battery, said Gao Huan, CATL’s chief technology officer for electric cars in China. The extra energy density means that the car’s driving range can be greater, or the overall size of the battery can be reduced, leaving more room for the car’s passenger compartment.
The second battery also would provide backup in case one has trouble. That has become more important as self-driving features, which require uninterrupted electricity, become more common.
Ouyang Chuying, co-president for research and development at CATL, said that auxiliary batteries without graphite would be available in cars in two to three years and possibly sooner. He declined to say which carmakers might be the first to use them.
Technological advances will allow CATL to produce batteries that are cheaper, lighter, faster to recharge and more resistant to cold, while providing greater driving range.Credit: Getty Images
But taking out the graphite has a downside, which is why CATL will remove it only for the auxiliary batteries. Batteries without graphite recharge more slowly, and cannot be recharged as many times as conventional EV batteries before they need to be replaced.
The auxiliary batteries are meant to be used less frequently, on longer drives after the main battery is exhausted.
CATL, which is based in the city of Ningde, Fujian, China, also said it had made more progress in the speed of charging main batteries. The company said its new system would allow an electric vehicle to be charged enough in five minutes to drive 520 kilometres.
BYD and Huawei, a Chinese electronics giant that plays an ever-larger role in vehicle parts manufacturing, have also announced five-minute charging systems, known as supercharging.
CATL also said it would start selling sodium-ion batteries, which can retain more than 90 per cent of their charge even at a temperature of 40 degrees below zero, for use in cars and trucks with internal combustion engines.
Ouyang said that the electricity of these sodium batteries would be compatible with the electrical systems of existing gasoline-powered cars, but the new batteries might not fit in the same space.
CATL said that its first customer for sodium-ion batteries would be freight trucks from First Auto Works, a vehicle manufacturer in Changchun, in China’s far north-east, where temperatures frequently fall well below zero. Developing sodium-ion batteries has been a priority for the Chinese electric car industry because the country’s northern provinces, bordering Mongolia and Russia’s Siberia, have bitterly cold temperatures in winter.
CATL showed a video of its sodium-ion batteries undergoing stress tests, such as being punctured with a nail or power drill or even cut in half with a power saw, without catching fire or exploding. Just five years ago, CATL had argued that nail tests were unrealistic and that batteries should not be expected to withstand them.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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