Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1614
The Ningde era threw an astonishing figure to the power battery and new energy vehicle industry on Wednesday morning-500 Wh/kg. This is the energy density of the condensed matter battery just released by CATL, which is much higher than mass-produced automotive power batteries.
This breaks through the industry perception. It took thirty years for the energy density of lithium batteries to increase from 100 Wh/kg to 300 Wh/kg. A number of battery company executives have told LatePost that under the current technical framework, the energy density limit of lithium batteries is about 300 Wh/kg. The energy density of mass-produced lithium batteries will not exceed 400 Wh/kg within five years.
Energy density directly determines battery mileage. Under the same weight and volume, the higher the energy density, the higher the power. Continuously improving energy density is the long-term goal of battery technology evolution, just like every new generation of chips seeks to accommodate more transistors and provide more computing power in the same area.
In addition to automobiles, the high energy density of condensed matter batteries has also opened up a new market. One of the futures envisioned by the Ningde era is to install lithium batteries on civil aviation airliners, so that Boeing and Airbus large aircraft that are currently burning oil can become electric.
Tesla CEO Musk once said that as long as the energy density of the battery can exceed 450 Wh/kg, and the lighter battery can provide more power, the electric passenger plane can be established.
An Ningde era technical executive explained that the 450 Wh/kg that Musk said refers to the energy density of the entire battery pack, and the 500 Wh/kg of the Ningde era condensed matter battery refers to a single battery cell. After integrating the battery management system, the overall energy The density will be lower than 450 Wh/kg, “but very close”.
Wu Kai, chief technology officer of Ningde Times, said at the press conference that Ningde Times has been cooperating with companies in the field of civil aircraft to develop electric aircraft. The condensed matter battery on the car may land faster. Wu Kai said that Ningde era will form the ability to mass produce condensed matter car batteries by the end of this year.
Niche route makes amazing products
The key innovation of condensed matter batteries in the Ningde era is to update the electrolyte in the battery. Condensed matter refers to the form of electrolyte.
All metal-ion batteries, including lithium-ion and sodium-ion, are mainly composed of positive electrode, negative electrode and electrolyte. Metal ions use the electrolyte as the medium to shuttle between the positive and negative electrodes to complete charge and discharge. This is the working principle of the battery.
The current mass-produced lithium batteries use liquid electrolytes, that is, electrolytes, so it is also called “liquid lithium batteries”. Based on the speculation of many practitioners, the condensed matter battery of the Ningde era uses an electrolyte in the form of jelly or gel.
According to Wu Kai, the chief scientist of Ningde Times, the condensed matter battery has also upgraded the positive electrode, negative electrode and separator. He did not disclose more specific materials and technical information.
According to an energy density of 500 Wh/kg, a positive electrode researcher at a car company speculated that Ningde era may have adopted lithium-rich manganese-based positive electrodes and lithium alloy negative electrodes, as well as thinner separators, which makes the direct material cost of batteries lower than existing The solution is about 30% more expensive, but if the energy density is increased accordingly, the cost per unit of electricity will not increase significantly.
A Ningde era source said that the condensed matter batteries supplied to car companies will most likely not use the 500Wh/kg version of positive and negative electrode materials: “The current 500Wh/kg solution can achieve at least 1,000 charge-discharge cycles, but this is not good for There are still too few cars, and the service life is not enough, so the condensed matter battery solution used in the car will appropriately reduce the energy density and increase the service life.”
Compared with the “solid-state battery” and “semi-solid battery” that have been discussed for a long time, the condensed matter battery released by CATL is a more niche technical route. Except CATL, among major battery companies, only South Korea’s Samsung SDI has laid out similar technologies according to public information.
Like “condensed state”, solid state and semi-solid state also refer to the state of the electrolyte in the battery. The reason why these new solutions are being continuously researched is that the current mainstream liquid lithium batteries are still not satisfactory.
Ideally, car batteries need to meet the requirements of safety, cheapness, long cruising range, long service life, and fast charging speed at the same time, but they often cannot have both: the higher the energy density, the lower the safety and the higher the cost; The faster the charging speed, the shorter the lifespan.
Liquid electrolyte is one of the root causes of current battery safety hazards. Electrolyte is flammable and may spontaneously ignite if leaked.
Along the direction of improving electrolytes, all-solid electrolytes are considered to be the closest to a perfect solution. It is safer, so it can use higher energy density, but more active and dangerous positive and negative electrode materials in the whole battery, such as lithium metal negative electrode. In the current liquid lithium battery structure, the negative electrode is graphite. The theoretical energy density of solid-state batteries can exceed 700 Wh/kg, which is more than twice that of current car batteries.
However, mass production of all-solid-state batteries is difficult to achieve. Toyota Motor, which has been investing in this direction for nearly 30 years, has not yet mass-produced all-solid-state batteries. Zeng Yuqun, chairman of Ningde Times, also said that all-solid-state batteries will not be industrialized before 2035 .
The key difficulty in mass production is that the contact between the solid electrolyte and the solid positive and negative electrodes is not close enough, which will hinder the movement of ions between the positive and negative electrodes.
A transition route—semi-solid batteries have thus entered the industry’s field of vision. It uses a solid-liquid mixed electrolyte, such as soaking a solid electrolyte in a liquid electrolyte, to improve the tightness of the contact between the positive and negative electrodes and the electrolyte, and to solve the problem of ion movement between the positive and negative electrodes.
Lithium battery companies such as Guoxuan Hi-Tech and Ganfeng Lithium Industry, and start-up companies such as Weilan are developing semi-solid batteries. People close to Ningde Times told LatePost that Ningde Times is not optimistic about the semi-solid battery route, because there are still flammable liquids in the batteries, and safety issues have not been resolved.
The electrolyte of the condensed matter battery is neither solid nor solid-liquid mixed, but a gel substance. “It is physically a solid, but it retains some liquid characteristics. This can partially solve the problem of the lack of close contact between solids.” A senior executive of an electrolyte company explained.
On the way to the ultimate solution in the vision of solid state, Ningde era has made a breakthrough on the condensed matter route that fewer people take.
A battery material researcher at a car company believes that to be able to use these new materials in condensed matter batteries in the Ningde era, not only must solve engineering and process problems, but also need to overcome some basic scientific problems. He believes that the mass production of condensed matter batteries “will take some time.”
In the field of aircraft power batteries, condensed matter batteries are still facing challenges. Airplanes require batteries that can deliver energy consistently at higher power levels. Aircraft have higher safety requirements than automobiles and have more complicated working conditions. The electric aircraft jointly developed by Ningde Times and civil aviation companies is still in the research and development stage, and there is no clear timetable for mass production and commercial use.
“Not even a large-capacity power bank is allowed on the plane, not to mention installing so many lithium batteries. This is not only a technical problem, but also involves changes in standards and regulations.” A battery practitioner said.
But electric aircraft itself is a market with huge potential. There are currently more than 25,000 civil aviation aircraft in the world, and the high fuel cost makes airlines look for new power solutions. The price of aviation fuel currently exceeds 5,000 yuan/ton, and a Boeing 747 flying from Beijing to Shanghai will burn nearly 40,000 yuan in fuel. Electrification could reduce the cost of operating commercial aircraft.
Another new market that is emerging is urban air mobility, which complements increasingly congested urban ground transportation. A group of companies are already developing a “flying car” for urban air traffic, which is like a large drone that can take off and land vertically and can carry people. This type of aircraft is lighter than a commercial airliner, and it uses batteries itself. However, the current battery solution is not mature enough, and battery life, cost and safety need to be continuously optimized. The new condensed matter products of Ningde era also have a place to play in this market. According to Morgan Stanley’s forecast, the global urban air mobility market will reach US$1 trillion by 2040.
The “platform” moment of power battery
Wu Kai, chief scientist of Ningde era, said that condensed matter batteries are a milestone in opening the next round of innovation in Ningde era.
An Ningde person told “LatePost” that next, Ningde era can use condensed state electrolyte as a fixed module, and on this basis, make a variety of suitable positive and negative electrodes, giving car companies more choices.
This brings a platform-based way to develop batteries. Before developing a new lithium battery from scratch, it took 2-3 years from the verification of the feasibility of the scheme to the actual mass production. A sample verification process, in which, sample A is a single cell test, sample B is a battery module test, and sample C is a vehicle loading test.
Each new battery will use a different material formulation. Most of the time, battery companies have to go through the process of material development, feasibility verification and product verification from scratch.
The condensed state battery electrolyte is a relatively fixed material basis within a certain period of time. Compared with liquid electrolytes, it can support a variety of positive and negative electrode materials. The main advantage is better safety. When Ningde era develops new batteries on this basis, it will save some electrolyte development and testing processes, and may also improve the development and testing efficiency of positive and negative electrode materials. The above-mentioned electrolyte company predicts that this can reduce product development and testing time by about one-third.
This is similar to the platform and modular vehicle development ideas explored by Volkswagen in the 1980s. The essence of platform-based car manufacturing is to allow different models to share the same platform, so as to share the main components, save development time, increase the procurement scale, and lower the purchase price, so that car companies can launch more models suitable for different models at a lower cost and in a shorter period of time. Products for different groups of people. “Platform-based” car manufacturing was later imitated and learned by the entire automobile industry, and became an industry standard.
With the help of condensed matter batteries, Ningde Times will further improve its product development efficiency and come to the “platform” moment of the battery industry.
The birth process of condensed matter batteries is also a manifestation of the large-scale research and development capabilities established in the Ningde era in the past. After the press conference, a CATL technical management explained the process of developing a new generation of products in CATL: In the early stage of development, CATL will propose hundreds of technical solutions at the same time, and there are differences in materials or structures between different solutions, and then they will do it in parallel. test. As testing and verification progress, each round of testing will result in fewer solutions being screened out. Before finalizing the manufacturing process, Ningde era will freeze R&D and iteratively come up with a finalized plan.
“Test and develop more solutions at the same time. These solutions may not be fully implemented at the time, but some of the results can be precipitated and play value in other products or future products.” The CATL person said.
CATL invested more than 15 billion yuan in research and development last year, 7.5 times that of Guoxuan Hi-Tech, China’s fourth largest battery company. “LatePost” learned that CATL has more than 40,000 battery test channels, while some second-tier battery companies have less than 10,000. This allows CATL to test more batteries at the same time, collect more data, and find better solutions.
In addition to the scale of research and development brought about by the scale of resources and facilities, the introduction of more cutting-edge technologies is also helping CATL to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of research and development.
Starting from 2019, CATL began to use high-throughput computing platforms and simulation technologies to develop materials and manufacturing processes. The dilemma faced by the research and development of battery materials before is that only by doing experiments can the performance of materials be verified, which is high in cost, long in cycle, and limited in the number of experiments.
Simulation can predict the results without real experiments to help screen better solutions, speed up the experimental process, and expand the scope of material trials. Simulation can also discover material problems more efficiently, and help locate whether it is an engineering problem or a basic scientific problem, and whether it can be solved in the short term. “Material research and development is like digging a well. Originally, you dug all the time and didn’t know if there was water underneath. After the simulation, you will know if there is water after digging to a certain extent, which can save more time.” The technical management of CATL mentioned above layer said.
He revealed that the Ningde era has been developing battery technology similar to M3P (an improved version of lithium iron phosphate battery) since 2011, but the progress was slow in the first 8 years. After using simulation technology in 2019, the development speed was accelerated, and it was completed within two years. research and development.
Starting in 2020, Ningde era has also begun to build AI capabilities, which can not only improve the intelligence and automation of the production process, but also do some work on material performance prediction and new material discovery. “Most of the increase in the speed of battery technology research and development in the future will come from AI technology.” The above-mentioned Ningde era technology management said.
The scale effect of research and development can help Ningde Times maintain and expand its product and technological advantages in existing markets, and it will also increase Ningde Times’ competitiveness in some fast-growing or emerging new markets, such as energy storage batteries and electric aircraft and ships.
In the short term, the common pressure of Ningde era and all power battery peers is still the slowdown in demand growth in the electric vehicle market. The company that sells the most electric vehicles in China, BYD, does not use externally supplied batteries. It also has many years of experience in battery research and development and manufacturing. In the first quarter of this year, BYD sold more than 550,000 electric vehicles (including hybrids), and the market share of electric vehicles has reached 35%.
The competition between Ningde era and BYD is not a simple competition of products, technology leadership and cost control capabilities. The Ningde era will enter a situation of “powerlessness” within a certain period of time, and produce products that far exceed the general level of the market, so as to leverage some large markets other than automobiles, which is one of the ways to break the situation.
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