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CATL (Tesla Supplier) Launches Superfast Charging Battery (10 min)
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago"Tesla supplier" aka "world’s largest battery manufacturing company" with about 1/3rd of all battery production.
- Flockster 3y agoBut this is different from the 500Wh/kg Battery that was announced around 3 month ago right [0]? Has something happened in this regard? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35649935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35649935
- jillesvangurp 3y agoYes, different market segments. That one is aimed at the aviation industry where weight matters a lot and is worth a lot to customers. LFP is technically a bit less energy dense than some other chemistries but it has cost as its big advantage which is why it is the go to choice for a lot of the mass produced mid range EVs. A cheap fast charging battery is going to be quite nice as it makes fast charging stops less disruptive. Which means the utility of EVs with smaller batteries increases. So what if you have to take a 10 minute break every few hundred miles? Not a big deal. You'd probably do that anyway if you value your health and sanity.
- jacobp100 3y agoI also saw that one being incredibly useful for EVs, as you could make the car weigh less and so wouldn’t need as high kWh storage
- jillesvangurp 3y agoNice for expensive sports cars where cost doesn't matter. But everything else competes on cost, not weight. These high density batteries are going to be very premium priced for quite some time to come. Plenty of customers willing to pay that premium. High volume production of that things is likely some time away. Catl also produces some sodium ion batteries. They have even less density than LFP but contain no lithium or other valuable materials. For mass production, cost is king. And with faster charging speeds, range becomes less important.
- extraduder_ire 3y agoI thought lithium wasn't especially valuable, especially compared to the other things that go into a battery. I'd buy that sodium is cheaper though, with the amount of sodium salts that are knocking around the economy.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoThe price of lithium fluctuates a bit. Currently around 37 dollars per kg. A kg of salt is a lot cheaper. Just check in your local supermarket.
- londons_explore 3y agoI'd like to know why aircraft have batteries at all... When you have three huge jet engines, there should be no need for batteries on an aircraft where every kilogram saved is worth tens of thousands of dollars over the life of the plane.
- 7e 3y agoUsually on family road trips you don't get to decide when you're going to stop for a bio break. So with an EV you end up stopping twice (or more). With an ICE there is usually a gas station at the first stop.
- hliyan 3y ago"Shenxing leverages the super electronic network cathode technology and fully nano-crystallized LFP cathode material to create a super-electronic network, which facilitates the extraction of lithium ions and the rapid response to charging signals." Are these actual technical terms, or some sort of marketing speak?
- londons_explore 3y agoI suspect it is marketing speak that has been translated to english by a non-technical translator.
- tooltalk 3y agoYeah, it's really nothing burger. I'm rather amused that they managed to sneak in Zeekr's 1000km range EV which ironically doesn't even use their LFP.
- magnat 3y ago> super electronic network cathode > fully nano-crystallized LFP cathode material > second-generation fast ion ring technology > superconducting electrolyte formula Can someone confirm those are proper names of some recent breakthroughs in LiFePO4 manufacturing or just some marketing technobabble?
- myrmidon 3y agoMostly marketing technobabble I'd say. If CATL had a roomtemperature superconducting electrolyte you'd know ;) Probably exacerbated by internal/non-common terminology and maybe questionable translation.
- ngrilly 3y agoGreat, but how large and heavy is the battery? The announcement doesn't say anything about the energy density.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- solidr53 3y agoExactly what I was thinking. They mention 700km as some reference point, then 400km in 10 minutes, not sure what the density is. Hyundai/Kia launched the EV6 with 10-80% charging in 17 minutes more than two years ago. They then launched Hyundai IONIQ 6 with 10-80% at the 16 minute mark. I guess we will be seeing 10-80% times get close to gas pump refill times in the near future.
- bestouff 3y agoI hereby officially launch a new verb: I'm short on charge, I'll shenx my car for 10 minutes and I'm coming. You heard it first on HN.
- friendzis 3y ago@dang, not only this heading is editorialized in a blatantly fanboyish manner, but there is absolutely no need to do so as CATL is literally the largest battery manufacturer and is supplier to almost everyone.
- hef19898 3y agoAt least people start to recognize that Tesla batteries actually are sourced from third parties, e.g. Panasonic and CATL. Baby steps.
- j16sdiz 3y agoWhy the "(Tesla Supplier)" remark, which is not in the original article? CATL is the largest battery manufacturing company, supplying battery for almost every high-end devices.
- boeingUH60 3y agoFounded in 2011. It’s mind-bending how they grew so fast..
- donny2018 3y agoLimitless government subsidies can do wonders.
- FooBarWidget 3y agoDefinitely not limitless. Subsidies are only provided to get an industry to grow up. As they grow up and can increasingly fend for themselves, subsidies become progressively smaller. There are a ton of other sectors where subsidies don't help nearly as much as the govt hopes. Until the US sanctions hit, subsidies for the semiconductor industry only had very limited effect.
- donny2018 3y ago>There are a ton of other sectors where subsidies don't help nearly as much as the govt hopes. Until the US sanctions hit, subsidies for the semiconductor industry only had very limited effect. Probably some sectors are easier to grow if it only involves copying something that already exists, and outscaling/outpricing everyone else. Then this is (in most cases) is a purely money+organization problem. But if it isn’t just copying/outscaling/outpricing issue, like replicating ASML’s EUV lithography, then yes, we have a problem.
- FooBarWidget 3y ago70% of the profits are generated by older processes, not sub-14nm, and so are perfectly well serviceable using mature DUV litography which is much easier to "copy". But even there, subsidies did not yield much progress. On the other hand, new energy vechicles are... well... new. There is no mature ecosystem to copy, a lot of things have to be newly developed. In this sector, subsidies have been massively successful. The problem is mainly one of market pressure, not one of technical ability. Chinese semiconductor companies wanted the best suppliers, so they chose international suppliers rather than domestic suppliers. Domestic customers didn't buy from domestic chip designers. Domestic chip designers didn't manufacture with domestic fabs. Domestic fabs didn't use domestic equipment. As a result, domestic suppliers never got enough customers to practice and improve their processes, which is why they remained low-quality. It was a vicious circle which the Chinese govt tried to solve for years without much success. Then US sanctions came and all of a sudden, Chinese semiconductor companies had no choice but to work together with domestic suppliers: it was either shitty domestic suppliers or die. Nowadays you see domestic semiconductor equipment companies have something like 150-200% growth YoY, something which they previously could only have dreamt of. Domestic DUV litography was at 65+nm for a long time but now 24nm DUV litography (still good for ~60+% of market demand) is around the corner because they finally get enough practice. People ascribe too much to this simplistic view of China only being able to copy or that copying is easy, and totally underestimate economic pressures.
- beardyw 3y agoThere seems to be no indication of the power demands of charging at this rate. I don't have the figures to do the maths but I suspect a normal household supply could not support this. Anyone?
- jgilias 3y agoBut you don’t need to have a 10 minute charger at home. At home overnight charging is completely fine.
- donny2018 3y agoI'm not an engineer but I attempted to do some napkin math in my comment in a previous topic about this CATL battery. I'll copy/paste: Assuming 400km worth of charge needs maybe 60 kw/h of energy, to deliver that amount of energy in 10 minutes would require at least 360kw charger. Charging just a few cars simultaneously will require megawatts of power. I wonder what are the implications in terms of city infrastructure or investment costs to building charging stations for that.
- davedx 3y agoV3 Superchargers are 250 kW per car with 1MW power cabinets. The issue at the moment is that grids in a lot of places in the world can't keep up with the connection requests, and this is indeed mainly due to not being able to upgrade transmission capacity fast enough.
- seydor 3y agomore china dependence
- jacquesm 3y agoWhat does 'superconducting electrolyte' even mean?
- josu 3y agoI found the concept of Grice's Maxims the other day, and it feels very relevant. Everyone is getting triggered because this fails the maxim of relation. >Grice's four maxims of conversation, called the Gricean maxims—quantity, quality, relation, and manner. >Be relevant — i.e., one should ensure that all the information they provide is relevant to the current exchange; therefore omitting any irrelevant information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle
- nunez 3y agoWhat are the chances that the new Model 3 coming out is using this?