Last week was quite lively in the battery field. ZEEKR released the first mass-produced 800V lithium iron phosphate ultra-fast charging gold brick battery. According to the official statement of ZEEKR, the volume utilization rate of gold brick batteries has reached 837%, is "the world's highest volume utilization rate of power batteries", at present, the gold brick battery has been officially mass-produced off the assembly line, and will be equipped on the ZEEKR 007 for the first time in the future.
GAC Aion's Inpai Battery Smart Factory was completed, and its first mass production is the P58 microcrystalline super battery cell developed and produced by GAC Aion Safety Stack, with "an internal volume utilization rate of more than 90%, a cruising range of more than 700km, and a 3C fast charging capability".
SVOLT also announced that it will fully focus on short-knife batteries and fast charging, with the goal of building a new architecture of fast charging and ultra-long mileage +800V. Last month, Changan also released its own battery brand, "Golden Bell Jar".
Of course, last week's most lively was Li Bin's "Electric Vehicle 1000 km Real Range Challenge" live broadcast, in order to test NIO's 150-degree battery pack, Li Bin drove the NIO ET7 from Shanghai to Xiamen for a range test and successfully broke through 1000 km. This 150-degree ultra-long-range on-board power battery pack uses battery cells independently developed by NIO, with an energy density of up to 360Wh kg, which is "the highest energy density battery in the world".
During the live broadcast, Li Bin also called He Xiaopeng**, and suggested that He Xiaopeng also come to do a live broadcast challenge, and successfully brushed a wave of presence in social **. And the topic of battery life has once again been pushed to the public.
Earlier, CATL launched the "Shenxing Super Rechargeable Battery", which is "the world's first lithium iron phosphate 4C super rechargeable battery".Huawei has launched a fully liquid-cooled supercharger with a maximum output of 600kW, which can charge an electric vehicle for 1 km in 1 second. These are all known as milestone products for the large-scale promotion of fast charging.
As a car company in the industry that started with battery research and development, BYD launched an 800V high-voltage platform and step-up charging technology as early as 2015, opening the road of comprehensive innovation in charging technology. But seeing that its first-mover advantage was completely ignored by the market, BYD really couldn't sit still.
At the BYD full-scene efficient charging technology communication meeting held this week, Ling Heping, vice president of BYD Automotive Engineering Research Institute, said helplessly: "We achieved 800V fast charging 8 years ago, but there was no hype. Nowadays, the entire industry, whether it is charging speed or battery life, has long been a problem technically, and car companies should not use these as marketing points. ”
800V fast charging, what is the contention?
Battery range and energy replenishment anxiety have always been one of the key issues hindering the industrialization of electric vehicles. With the continuous development of battery technology, the battery capacity of new cars launched by car companies can be stable at more than 500 kilometers, and the highest has exceeded 1,000 kilometers. In the future, with the continuous breakthrough of battery technology, the cruising range will continue to increase.
Although battery life is no longer the biggest challenge, in the problem of charging, problems such as difficulty in finding charging piles and slow charging have not been well solved at present. Therefore, many car companies have begun to focus on the high-voltage fast charging route, such as the most popular 800V high-voltage fast charging platform, which is regarded as a big move and marketing hotspot to solve the anxiety of energy replenishment.
However, 800V high-voltage fast charging does not only refer to fast charging speed, but a complete set of architecture system, which includes 800V battery, motor, electronic control, connector, air conditioning thermal management system and charging pile.
Generally speaking, if you want to shorten the charging time, you either need to increase the current, increase the voltage, or work together. The technical logic of Yadea dual-gun fast charging is to increase the current. Taking the Denza N7 launched this year as an example, it is equipped with a dual-gun supercharge with a maximum power of 230kW, and it can charge 350 kilometers in 15 minutes on the public fast charging pile. In addition, Tesla's V3 Supercharger is also the same route, which can allow the Tesla Model S X to reach a maximum charging power of 240kW.
However, the biggest problem with this route is that the high current can cause problems such as cable heating, and there are some safety risks. In order to reduce the problem of wire loss, the technical requirements for the cable will also be relatively high.
Increasing the voltage is the main way for most car companies in the industry to solve the charging speed. According to the research released by Cinda**, 800V is gradually becoming the mainstream technology of fast charging, and it is expected that the penetration rate of 800V fast charging models in new energy vehicles will reach 15% in 2025, and the global sales of 800V architecture new energy vehicles will reach 3.7 million.
On the one hand, 800V can improve the charging speed and stronger power performance, in addition, the 800V motor is lighter than the 400V one, the cable can be thinner, and the overall body weight can be lighter. In 2015, BYD launched the world's first 800V high-voltage platform for passenger cars, and was installed in the 2015 Qin EV and Tang DM modelsIn 2019, Porsche released the Taycan, a production car with an 800V high-voltage platform, in 2021, Xpeng released the G9, and Great Wall SL released the Mecha Dragon.
Today, major car companies such as BYD, Porsche, Audi, Maserati, Hyundai, Geely, Great Wall, Ideal, Xiaopeng, etc., have all made 800V layouts and have been put on the car one after another. Especially this year, 800V has almost become the standard configuration of major new cars, such as AVATR 12, Geely Galaxy E8, Zhiji LS6 and the upcoming Wenjie M9, Ideal MEGA, etc., all take 800V as one of the marketing hotspots.
In Ling Heping's view, including battery swapping, different technical routes are all forms of energy supplement for better vehicle management, and they are also trade-offs made by car companies according to their own stages and strategies.
It should be noted that because the high-voltage electrical system of electric vehicles can be boosted, the current 800V in the industry usually refers to the average value in the range of 550-930V, not that the electrical system can reach 800V during the whole period of operation. As a comparison, the voltage range of the electrical system of the current mainstream electric vehicles is generally 230V 450V, and the average range is 400V, which is the so-called 400V. Compared with the voltage of the 400V charging system, the voltage of the 800V charging system is increased by 1 time, and the peak charging power can reach 300-500kW, which can be quickly replenished in less than 10 minutes, which is indeed a huge improvement.
Although more and more car companies are promoting their own 800V technology, so far, the industry has not reached a consensus on the 800V standard. For example, the rated voltage of the 2019 BYD Tang EV is 6132V, theoretically it meets the range standard of 800V, but BYD did not mention the problem of 800V before.
No publicity is not the same as no, in 800V high-voltage technology, BYD is ahead of the industry. Ling Heping said to Che Yun and the others, and his tone was quite unwilling.
The mass spread of 800V is a systemic problem
Since the 800V high-voltage technology is left over from BYD eight years ago, and now it has almost become the standard configuration of large, medium and high-end car companies, does it mean that the technology has no threshold for use and can be popularized on a large scale?
Ling Heping believes that there are still some systemic problems that need to be solved, for example, if the vehicles using the 800V high-voltage overcharging platform want to meet the overcharging standard, they need to have high-voltage overcharging piles, which require a high cost of upgrading and transformation on the existing charging network. However, if there are not enough supercharging piles, enterprises have no incentive to make 800V models, and it is difficult for supercharging piles to recover costs. This is actually the question of "chicken or egg", and it is also one of the difficulties in the large-scale popularization of supercharging.
In this case, car companies have to break the game first. At present, many pure electric vehicle companies have released their own plans for the construction of ultra-fast charging stations. For example, according to Xpeng's plan, the number of self-built ultra-fast charging stations will reach 3,000 in 2025, and the ideal number is the same as that of Xpeng. ZEEKR's plan is that by 2024, the total number of pole charging stations is expected to reach 1,000, and by 2026, the total number of pole charging piles is expected to reach 10,000, and "thousands of stations and thousands of piles" will be achieved in three years. Huawei expects to deploy more than 100,000 fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast chargers by the end of 2024. Although NIO is mainly promoting the construction of battery swap stations, it has not completely given up on ultra-fast charging, and there are corresponding supporting facilities.
In contrast, BYD, as the leader of new energy vehicles in China, has indeed invested very little in the issue of self-built supercharging stations for private cars, which is also one of the points of controversy in the industry. However, Ling Heping reiterated that BYD does not have a large-scale supercharging construction plan, and insisted that this infrastructure work should be handed over to a third party rather than the car company itself.
The construction of ultra-fast charging stations does have some potential problems, first of all, the expansion and transformation of the power grid, at present, the power capacity of many places is limited, and it is very difficult to upgrade. If many ultrafast chargers are charged together, the carrying capacity of the grid is a big problem.
Secondly, if these ultra-fast charging stations cannot be opened to public use, but are exclusive to brand users, then for users in the entire industry, they will not really enjoy the convenience brought by the increase in the number of ultra-fast charging facilities, but will cause a waste of resources and exacerbate the problem of energy replenishment anxiety. Just this week, Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo Cars, Polestar Technology, Lotus Technology and Lightning Energy announced the establishment of a flash charging alliance, which allows users of these four luxury car companies to realize the indiscriminate charging of charging pile sharing, also to improve the utilization rate of charging facilities, improve the user experience, and better promote the popularity of luxury electric vehicles.
In addition, there is the problem of charging costs, and many users have mentioned the problem of charging service fees this year. The construction cost of ultra-fast charging stations, compared with ordinary charging stations, has a very large increase, and will eventually be passed on to users in different forms, which will also largely hinder the large-scale popularization of the technology.
At the spring ** communication meeting in 2023, Li Xiang mentioned that the cost of each supercharging station is about 3.4 million, and if the plan of 3,000 supercharging stations in 2025 is followed, then the ideal cost is about 10 billion. This is the same as NIO's battery swap station, if you want to maintain the normal operation of a single station, you need to have a large number of users. However, if the number of users is too large and the resource allocation cannot keep up, it will cause problems in user experience.
BYD's solution is to solve these problems technically by changing the compatibility of public charging piles. For example, through the boost charging technology, the vehicle pile is completely compatible and fully adapted to all DC charging piles. Through the dual-gun overcharging technology, we can make full use of the existing resources of more than one million public fast charging piles, replenish energy in a short time, make more efficient use of existing public resources, and improve the utilization rate of charging piles.
But the issue of double guns is also the focus of debate in the market and the industry. Ling Heping's explanation for this is that BYD is more "thinking from a strategic level, with the aim of promoting the popularization of electrification throughout the industry". Therefore, I hope that "we should not focus on a single point, but should do technological innovation and thinking from a more systematic level".
"Car companies should be guided by market demand".
During the whole communication meeting, Ling Heping said the most that "technically it is not a problem", so many controversial issues need to be comprehensively looked at and analyzed from more angles, especially from the perspective of users.
For example, on the popular 1000+ km battery life issue, Ling Heping said that in BYD's previous survey of users, users did not think that the higher the battery life, the better, but paid more attention to the problem of battery life retention rate. BYD's technology can achieve a range of 1,000 kilometers or even higher, but for daily use scenarios, "as long as the energy replenishment network and facilities are perfect, there is a range of about 500 to 700 kilometers, and it can be charged once a week, it can already meet the daily needs of most people." ”
The issue of battery life also involves long-distance scenarios for users. In Ling Heping's view, these are low-frequency needs, and it is not necessary to use low-frequency use behavior as a marketing point.
Each technology has its own market, in fact, what the industry needs is not to show off its skills and do the competition of technical parameters, but to be guided by market demand, and what users need is the best. "Our attitude is very clear, and we want to use universal to improve the user experience. ”
Just two days after the communication meeting, a series of new news related to BYD batteries broke out on the Internet: next year BYD will release the second generation of blade batteries, which have higher energy density, longer mileage, and are more resistant to low temperatures. At the same time, BYD will also release a 1000V high-voltage SiC platform to achieve a range of 500 kilometers in 5-8 minutes. In addition, in 2025, an all-solid-state lithium battery will be installed on a trial basis, and a new pure electric platform and new pure electric model equipped with an all-solid-state lithium battery will be released in 2026.
Although BYD has not yet responded to these news, if it is combined with the current development trend of the battery and fast charging industry, the high-voltage charging platform above 800V and the next generation of battery technology will inevitably become a new marketing hotspot. So at the same time, the second-generation blade battery, high-voltage SiC platform and solid-state battery force, this is what BYD called the "new design theory system and platform integration" forward-looking strategy is necessary, but at that time, I am afraid it will trigger a new round of technology competition and competition in the entire industry.