New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) in China

Crang said:

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I love his videos, but he does throw around hyperboles a lot. What CATL produced here is not really going to set them apart from competition.

The news from BYD's new luxury coupe just came out. It's going to have 1000 km range on a 150 kWh soft battery pack combined with chips (don't ask me what this means, this is what the person that released the news said). It would be called soft blade battery and is 2m long.

That's quite incredible for LFP battery. All the 1000 km range cars thus far that use 150 kWh battery pack are doing so with semi solid state battery. For LFP to achieve this with all of its benefits, it would be hard for any other lithium ion battery to compete in terms of costs, safety, longevity and reliability.

I think Bridget here saw the same social media news I saw

Nio accident. it's sad!

siegecrossbow said:

Aren't they collaborating on the battery? What does the battery have to do with wheels?

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Not for this. For a possible Corolla like or Corolla BZ vehicle.

Crang said:

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I test drove a Polestar this afternoon. By far the smoothest and quietest car I've ever driven. To the point where it's a bit dangerous. You don't feel the acceleration with this car.

tphuang said:

They should absolutely not rethink cooperation with Toyota. BYD's currently cooperation with Toyota is the classic Trojan horse. The BZ5 is for practical purpose a BYD car. Toyota sent BYD a conceptual design + expected specs and BYD is doing the rest. Toyota is the one that's inviting trouble for putting its China hopes all on BYD doing its work. That is a really stupid strategy for the largest automaker in the world. BYD is not going to put full effort into this JV while it has trouble fulfilling the huge pre-order book it already has on hand. I honestly don't know what Toyota is thinking.

On the other hand, I can see this is a good way for BYD to "enter" Japanese PV market. All Toyota EVs depending on BYD electric motor, chips and blade battery is great way to make dent in a market where the homegrown brand are always going to dominate due to loyalty. We've now seen CATL partner up with KIA. No better way to kill off Panasonic and LG Chem than having their home market also using Chinese battery manufacturers.

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The Japanese and Koreans are known for copying technology from others and then claim as their own. BYD and CATL should guard their trade secrets from these Japanese and Korean copycats.

China unveils EV battery with unprecedented 1,000km on single charge



Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. (CATL), China's leading automotive lithium-ion battery maker, unveils its Qilin battery, June 23, 2022. /CATL

A record-breaking electric vehicle (EV) battery, with an unprecedented volume utilization efficiency of 72 percent, an energy density of up to 255 watt hour/kilogram (Wh/kg), the world's highest integration level, and capable of delivering a range of over 1,000 kilometers on a single charge, was revealed by a Chinese company on Thursday.

The battery, named Qilin after a legendary creature in Chinese mythology, is expected to go into mass production in 2023, said Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. (CATL), China's leading automotive lithium-ion battery maker.
In 2019, CATL launched the world's first module-less battery pack cell-to-pack (CTP), taking the lead in achieving a volume utilization efficiency of over 50 percent.

The Qilin battery, or CTP 3.0 battery, with the third generation CTP technology, has a volume utilization efficiency of 72 percent and an energy density of up to 255 Wh/kg for ternary battery systems, giving it the highest integration level in the world, according to CATL.
The battery delivers 13 percent more power than the 4680 battery produced by global EV giant Tesla, with CATL saying it offers improvements in range, fast-charging, safety, service life, efficiency and low-temperature performance.



A charging station for new energy electric vehicles. /CFP

World's most integrated e-car battery

The CTP technology, which directly integrates cells into packs without modules to improve system energy density, simplify manufacturing and help reduce costs, features the CTP 3.0 battery with improvements in service life, safety, charging speeds and low-temperature performance.

The integrated energy unit, composed of the cell and the multifunctional elastic interlayer, builds a more stable load-bearing structure perpendicular to the driving direction to enhance the shock and vibration resistance of the battery pack.



With the world's first large-surface cell cooling technology which places liquid cooling functional parts between adjacent cells and expands the heat exchange area by four times, the Qilin battery is able to support a hot start in 5 minutes and fast charging in 10 minutes. /CFP

World's first large-surface cell cooling tech

The Qilin battery, with the world's first large-surface cell cooling technology placing liquid cooling functional parts between adjacent cells and expanding the heat exchange area fourfold, can support a hot start in 5 minutes and fast charging in 10 minutes.

According to CATL, in extreme cases, the battery can enable the cell to cool down rapidly, effectively preventing abnormal thermal conduction among cells. Moreover, it has also achieved thermal stability and safety for all chemical systems, making it compatible with materials with higher energy density.

1000 km range battery packs for 2023 isn't really ground breaking anymore. NIO car using semi-solid state will have that. BYD's new luxury coupe will have that.

What is quite interesting is CATL's claim that it is making battery on condensed matter. I have no idea how that works.

A couple of pieces of news on BYD from social media.

A Song+ revamp is underway with interior/exterior redesign for the export market. The goal is to export it to Europe and USA. To be revealed at end of this year or start of next. Keep in mind that Song+ is currently the best selling model of BYD lineup. It's also the only one they have not really offered for the export market.
June sales will probably hit 135k. D9 sales is going well.

Thanks to @latenlazy yesterday, I got a little more understanding of chips in cars. Here is an explanation of MCU and power chip usage in cars.
Note the huge shortage in MCU that's hurting the entire auto industry. ECU shortage is also affecting ICE cars.
IGBT chip shortage is becoming a critical issue too.

Interesting enough, BYD semiconductor is #1 in China in industrial MCU and continuing to come out with new MCUs.

As posted this week, it's continuing to come out with a more efficient 1200V SIC modules. They are also working on 1200V IGBT modules and have launched 1200V power device driver chip. Should continue to improve charging/efficiency of BYD cars. E 3.0 platform for BYD use 800V platform, including even Dolphin.

BYD Semiconductor’s current products available for mass production include IGBTs, SiC devices, IPMs, MCUs, CMOS image sensors, electromagnetic sensors, LED light sources and displays

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Keep in mind that BYD only started to use SIC with Han

Among domestic car companies, BYD Han's EV models have begun to use the self-developed Sic MOSFET (Silicon Carbide Power Field Effect Transistor). It is expected that by 2023, BYD will achieve a full replacement of silicon-based power semiconductors for SiC-based vehicles in its electric vehicles

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This an interview with BYD semiconductor from 2020. China needs to improve its IGBT production.

Wu Haiping: with regard to the market for IGBT and power device applications, China accounts for about half of the global market share, but the local supply is only about 10%. Since the beginning of these two years, with the support of the state and the development of the industry, a lot of work has been done and some achievements have been made in localization. No matter from the perspective of supply chain or from the perspective of customers, everyone has begun to have a certain degree of acceptance of localized IGBT power devices. BYD began to make automotive power devices in 2005, reaching more than 90% of internal power devices, which has made a good start in China.

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Wu Haiping: with regard to the market and supply share, it is not only power semiconductors, but also the whole integrated circuit is almost a similar situation. Basically, China accounts for nearly half of the global market, but its own supply is very small, which has something to do with the development of the industry as a whole. In terms of power devices, there are many sub-areas of this problem, but now because of the development of new energy vehicles, so the demand for power devices IGBT has been magnified, we can see very clearly.

For silicon carbide, we have been optimistic about the third generation semiconductor devices. Preliminary understanding, our company is the first company in China to use a large number of silicon carbide on cars. We first began to use silicon carbide devices on car chargers. This year, the silicon carbide module with full silicon carbide has been applied in the electric drive system on the newly listed Han EV model. The Han model has a very strong ability to accelerate for 3.9s at 100km, torque up to more than 600Nm and maximum power over 300kW. These amazing data are closely related to the use of silicon carbide devices. So we are very optimistic about silicon carbide materials.

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Here is more about China's IGBT market from 2020.

BYD is fighting a fierce competition against Germany’s semiconductor giant Infineon Technologies AG, which produced 58% of the IGBTs used in China’s electric cars in 2019. BYD finished with an 18% share that year

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Hopefully, they can increase on that 18%, but there was story from late last year that they had to buy IGBT externally because its fabs cannot produce enough for their own cars.

BYD imo will increasingly be competing against Huawei.

Huawei continues to announce new partnerships to setup more NEV JVs. Huawei has been working on the electrical platform technology for a while now. It's leveraging existing strength across so many areas here. It's dominant in so many of the hard tech fields that are relevant to the EV revolution and probably AI that it's making itself something like the OS supplier for all the automakers that don't have the resources to do well in this area.

Can the "Uyghur law" choke China's EV industry? I don't think so. The innovation of China's EV technologies is nothing short of explosive at this point. No one can contain it anymore. Notice that CATL's founder and chairman has a Ph.D from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the world's #1 institution in physics science and chemistry, according to Nature Index. The subject of his Ph.D program? Condensed matter physics.

CATL working on condensed matter batteries, chairman says​

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In addition to solid-state and semi-solid-state batteries, Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL, SHE: 300750) is also working on condensed matter batteries that people haven't heard of, Robin Zeng, the company's founder and chairman, said today.

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supercat said:

... Notice that CATL's founder and chairman has a Ph.D from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the world's #1 institution in physics science and chemistry, according to Nature Index. The subject of his Ph.D program? Condensed matter physics.

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Didn't know Zen has a Ph.D. from the Institute of Physics of CAS. Institute of Physics has been one of the leading research center of condensed matter physics (a fancy way of saying solid state physics) in China. Among its achievements, it was among the few research labs and institutions in the world to discover the in the '80s. It was also in there that the world's first was developed back in the '80s and a company (三环公司) was founded to commercialize the uses and applications of the material. It was one of the early pioneers and better known company started in Zhongguancun (Beijing's northwestern suburb with large clusters of universities and research institutes, known to be China's Silicon Valley these days) when China had just opened up and started its reform era.