Reprinted-High-tech Power Battery-AI Automotive Manufacturing

The battery is the most important part of a pure electric vehicle. Whether it is volume or price, it can perfectly prove this.

Therefore, whether you want to make electric vehicles more powerful or if you want to make them cheaper, you need continuous innovation in battery technology.

As for the battery pack as a whole, there are two physical and chemical ways to optimize its overall performance. Physical means refers to improving the rationality of the internal space layout of the battery pack through various engineering optimizations. Space for the battery;Chemical means refers to finding a more advantageous battery solution by adjusting the proportion and principle of chemical substances in the battery.

Of course, everyone has been \"deceived\" many times by various practical battery news over the years. This time, we will focus on talking about plans that can be used commercially this year.

At the Frankfurt Auto Show in 2019, Ningde Times released its own CTP technology. CTP is actually an abbreviation for Cell to Pack. As the name implies, it has changed the principle of the layout of the battery of passenger cars.

Prior to this, all passenger car batteries basically had a triple structure. The first layer was a cell, which is also the smallest component unit produced by a battery manufacturer. The second layer was a module. Packaged in groups according to a certain specification, it becomes a module. The third layer is the battery pack (Pack), which is a large battery that is directly installed on the vehicle.

The reason for the intermediate layer of modules was to facilitate transportation and maintenance on the one hand. When the vehicle encounters a problem, there is no need to replace it as a whole. It is only necessary to replace the defective module. On the other hand, it is for safety. , More reinforcement ribs can be arranged between the modules, to give the cell an extra layer of protection.

However, with the advancement of vehicle engineering design, people also realize that such a multilayer structure is to a certain extent redundant in design. Through the integrated design with the vehicle body, the module layer can be directly removed without removing the module layer. The battery cell layout is in the battery pack, but it does not affect the technical indicators of the entire vehicle.This is CTP.

The benefits of CTP can be divided into three aspects. One is capacity. In addition to reducing the module's shell and various additional wiring, a battery pack of the same volume can provide 15-20% more volume to hold the discharge core;The second is reliability. After removing unnecessary components, the overall number of parts can be reduced by 40%;The third is that it is cheap. After eliminating many processes, the manufacturing cost can be much lower.

Of course, this technology also requires car manufacturers to have a closer relationship with battery factories during the research and development stage, in order to develop battery modules in a deeper and more reasonable way. Vehicles equipped with CTP batteries should be seen by the end of 2020Q1. .

The blade battery is a technology that BYD recently proposed on the Han EV, but it is certain that this technology will become the standard for BYD pure electric vehicles in the next few years.

Benefiting from the advantages of integrated battery and vehicle production, BYD can customize the shape of the battery at a deeper level of the vehicle design. The latest blade battery is morphologically based on the current thickness of the approximately rectangular cells in a controlled thickness. Next, a larger extension was made in length, so that the battery looks thin and long, similar to the shape of a blade.

广In theory, the application of blade batteries in electric vehicles can also be analogized to a special case of CTP technology. According to the materials announced by BYD, after such structural upgrades, BYD's lithium iron phosphate batteries are compared with the original The battery system can increase the energy density by more than 30%, while saving a lot of material and labor costs, so that the overall cost of the battery can be reduced by 30% compared to the traditional ternary battery of the same specifications.

In addition, the blade battery has a larger single chip area, and by adding a heat dissipation pipeline in the middle, it also helps to better improve battery heat dissipation.

In addition, BYD has recently revealed more battery parameters of the Han EV. The battery pack voltage of the Han EV has reached 570V, and most mid-range electric vehicles on the market also use a 400V body structure. Only the ultra-luxury cars such as the Porsche Taycan The 800V architecture is used, which means that the Han EV using blade batteries can not only conduct energy more efficiently, but also allow the battery pack to have better charging power.

According to the rhythm that Han EV intends to release at the Beijing Auto Show, in Q2 this year, we can see the related technology of blade batteries.

When it comes to passenger car battery technology, Tesla cannot be bypassed. Due to the rapid increase in production and sales in recent years, Tesla has become the single car company with the largest lithium battery capacity in the world.

Among the currently available models, Tesla also holds two records:Tesla has the highest energy density battery pack in the industry, and the lowest cell cost per unit capacity.

Since Tesla has insisted on using a cylindrical battery structure so far, Tesla has paid more attention to the performance optimization of the cell body. Prior to this, Tesla acquired the battery technology developer Maxwell, which has always adhered to the dry electrode technology. It is also expected to be commercially available in 2020.

Traditional cell electrode manufacturing requires the use of a liquid adhesive, and then it needs to wait for it to dry before performing other processes, which is tedious and time consuming. Dry electrodes refer to the solid powder without the use of these types of industrial volume during the manufacturing process. The material is made in the form of smearing and pasting.

The introduction of Maxwell pointed out that after the use of dry electrode technology, the energy density of automotive lithium batteries is expected to increase by 10% and the manufacturing cost is reduced by 10%. Although it seems that this technology is not as large as the first two improvements, it is important that It starts from a higher standard than other batteries.

Tesla will host a battery day event in April, when more detailed introductions of this technology will appear, so the technology is expected to be commercially available before the end of this year.