Range anxiety?
The Chinese CATL will launch a new type of car battery on the market in less than a year that can be charged very quickly. This is a new generation of the well-known LFP batteries.
Electric cars cannot get a ‘full tank’ as quickly as fuel cars, but with the new battery from CATL presented today, it will come quite close next year. CATL, which already supplies battery cells to Mercedes-Benz, Ford, Volkswagen, BMW and Tesla, among others, promises in a presentation of the ‘ShenXing’ battery that you should be able to recharge 400 km of driving range in 10 minutes. Those are fast charging times.
This is simply an LFP battery, so it is known technology in that respect, but CATL has succeeded in preparing it for very fast recharging, even under challenging conditions. According to CATL, even at -10 degrees Celsius, you should be able to fully charge it in half an hour and a range of more than 700 km should be possible with a full battery. The ShenXing battery will already be on the market in electric cars in the first quarter of 2024, although it is not yet known which car manufacturer has the scoop.
This still seems to be a different type of battery than what CATL was looking forward to earlier this year. This ‘Condensed Battery’ is primarily intended for electric aircraft due to its relatively low weight, but could also be of interest to the car industry for the same reason. These batteries have an energy density of 500 Wh per kilo, roughly double the energy density of a modern lithium-ion battery. If CATL succeeds in uniting the technology of the ShenXing battery with the Condensed Battery, you will not only have a car battery that can be charged very quickly, but also much lighter. Interesting times for the EV.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl