earlier today, the battery giant CATL unveiled an impressive new lithium-iron phosphate battery at a tech event in China. The third-generation Shenxing battery is CATL’s answer to BYD’s recently announced Blade Battery 2.0, and like BYD, CATL has focused on improving a couple of big pain points.
One is charging speed. Humans have long been conditioned to expect pumping an energy-dense liquid fuel into a vehicle to be quick. Batteries, meanwhile, can have non-linear charge curves depending on cell chemistry, and they behave differently at different temperatures and starting states of charge. OEMs like Hyundai and Porsche have 800 V nickel manganese cobalt battery packs that can charge from 10 to 80 percent in as little as 18 minutes. But according to a report in CarNewsChina, CATL’s Shenxing 3.0 is nearly five times faster.
LFP batteries have more linear charging curves than NCM batteries, and unlike the latter, they don’t mind being fully recharged by a DC fast charger. Charging from 10 to 98 percent took just six minutes and 27 seconds. The more standard 10–80 percent time takes just three minutes, 44 seconds. Only have a minute to plug in? Still sufficient to get from 10 to 35 percent state of charge.*
BYD’s Blade requires 12 minutes to charge from 20 to 98 percent, according to its maker.
Soon these new batteries will trickle into the new EV supply making them even-steven with ICE vehicles in the refueling department.
Of course the US 100% tariff on Chinese EVs means we will never see these EVs. And I suppose US manufacturers will be unable to put these batteries into US made EVs as we have just banned Polestar due to its Chinese technology.
We can blame the above to the corporate controlled congresscritters.
Early adopters will be dumping their old tech EVs with 30 minute charging batteries for the newer better battery technology EVs. So another spate of lightly used EVs will be entering the used EV space overseas. EU & Chinese & other foreign nations will benefit from the changeover furthering EV adoption outside the USA.