Chinese manufacturing giant CATL, the biggest supplier of batteries for the world’s electric cars, said Monday that 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 — 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 auto show, which starts 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 automakers 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% 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.
