Since the release of the first 150kWh solid-state battery by NIO in January this year, and said that the NIO ET7 sedan equipped with the battery will have a range of more than 1,000 kilometers, the attention of solid-state batteries has risen sharply. Near the end of the year, this technology, which is regarded as the development direction of the next generation of power batteries, has brushed a wave of existence, and the relevant layout enterprises have not only frequently won the favor of capital, but also made substantial progress on their mass production road.
A number of solid-state battery companies have refinanced
According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 40 car companies and power battery companies dedicated to the research and development and application of solid-state battery technology in the world, many of which are highly sought after by capital. Recently, domestic Huineng Technology, Weilan New Energy, and foreign Factorial Energy have been exposed to have once again received a large amount of financing.
On October 29, Huineng Technology announced the completion of a new round of financing of US$326 million (about 2.085 billion yuan) from Primavera Capital, Danfeng Capital and SoftBank China. Tianyan's investigation shows that this is the 5th round of financing obtained by Huineng Technology.
Huineng Technology said that the financing will be mainly used for the mass production and construction of Huineng solid-state lithium batteries and global expansion planning, aiming to promote the company's expansion and construction in Asia, Europe and the United States between 2023 and 2025 to meet the demand of mainstream car manufacturers for local manufacturing and local supply of high-quality power batteries, thereby accelerating the provision of solid-state battery solutions for its strategic partners in new energy vehicles.
It is understood that Huineng Technology was established in 2006, and since 2013, it has successively launched three solid-state lithium batteries and achieved commercial mass production in the field of consumer electronics. In recent years, Huineng has begun to accelerate its key layout in the field of new energy vehicles.
In 2019, Huineng Technology signed a strategic cooperation agreement with new car companies such as Weilai Automobile and Aiways. In 2020, Huineng Technology signed a framework agreement with FAW. According to Yang Sifeng, founder and CEO of Huineng Technology, in addition to FAW, there are also a number of national car companies and joint ventures that have signed framework agreements with the company. "Although it is exemplary, these cars will be truly put into the market, and the scale of each car company is about 3,000-5,000 units."
On November 26, the news that Xiaomi Group, Huawei and other strategic institutions will invest in Weilan New Energy was released. According to sources, Huawei, Xiaomi Group and Shunwei Capital have signed a decision to invest in Weilan New Energy in August this year, with a project valuation of 5 billion yuan and Weilan New Energy receiving an investment of about 500 million yuan.
As the only industrialization platform for solid-state battery technology in the Clean Energy Laboratory of the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Weilan New Energy is one of the earliest enterprises in China to realize the mass production of solid-state batteries. In August last year, Weilan New Energy's solid-state battery industry demonstration base in Liyang, Jiangsu Province, has built a 200 million-watt-hour mixed solid-liquid solid-state power battery demonstration production line. The energy density of its solid-state battery products can reach 270Wh/kg, and it has taken the lead in large-scale applications in industrial unmanned aerial vehicles and special fields.
Foreign, there are foreign media reports a few days ago, Daimler and Stallantis have said that they will make strategic investment in solid-state battery manufacturer Factorial Energy, and Current Institution Energy is seeking to commercialize its battery technology. A month earlier, Hyundai and Kia had also signed a partnership agreement with Institution Energy to jointly develop and test battery technology for electric vehicles.
Factorial's solid-state technology has reportedly made breakthroughs that address key challenges that are holding consumers back from adopting electric vehicles at scale: range and safety, and the first battery prototypes may be tested as early as next year. After reaching a strategic cooperation with Factorial Energy, Mercedes-Benz officially said: "The prototype battery will be tested as early as next year, and the solid-state battery technology will be integrated into the car within five years." And Stellantis plans to launch the first solid-state battery technology electric vehicle in 2026.
In addition to the above enterprises, domestic and foreign solid-state battery companies such as Qingtao Energy, Ganfeng Lithium Battery, SolidPower, Quantum Scape, and 24M have previously received large amounts of financing. The sense of smell of capital has always been the most sensitive, and the reason why solid-state battery companies are favored must have their superiority.
Increasing energy density and ensuring safety has always been the core of the development of power battery technology. However, for the liquid lithium-ion batteries of the mainstream products of the current car power batteries, high energy density and high safety are like fish and bear paws, and it is almost impossible to have both.
According to the target proposed in China's "Energy-saving and New Energy Vehicle Technology Roadmap", the energy density target of pure electric vehicle power batteries is 400Wh/kg by 2025 and 500Wh/kg in 2030. However, subject to the existing architecture and key materials, the energy density of liquid lithium-ion batteries is generally between 240-260Wh/Kg, and it is extremely difficult to break through 300Wh/kg. It is undeniable that after nearly a decade of rapid development, liquid lithium-ion batteries have made some progress in improving energy density, but at the same time, there are many hidden safety risks.
From the perspective of the process of thermal runaway of the battery, the decomposition of SEI and the interaction between the positive and negative electrodes of the electrodes are the key factors leading to thermal runaway. Therefore, there is an analysis that lithium-ion batteries can not be intrinsically safe, and the more their electrolyte is used, the more dangerous it is, and if you want to improve this situation, you need to import solid electrolytes. "The advent of solid-state batteries breaks through the limitations of high energy density and high safety." A senior analyst at the Gaz Automotive Research Institute said. Compared with liquid lithium-ion batteries, solid-state batteries use solid electrolytes instead of liquid electrolytes and separators, which have the advantages of non-flammability, non-corrosion, non-volatile, and non-leakage. At the same time, the solid-state battery with lithium metal as the negative electrode is matched with a high-voltage cathode material, which can further improve the energy density.
Semi-solid-state batteries are about to be mass-produced, and all-solid-state will take 5-10 years
Compared with the current mainstream liquid lithium-ion power battery technology, the advantages of solid-state batteries in safety and energy density are beyond doubt, so it is considered to be an important development direction for the next generation of power batteries. However, if the technology wants to achieve industrialization, it still faces many problems to be solved, such as the low ion conductivity of the solid electrolyte and the increase in the impedance of the solid-solid contact interface.
Considering the many practical difficulties faced by large-scale mass production of solid-state batteries, as well as the urgent need for high-safety, high-energy density power batteries for new energy vehicles, as a compromise solution, the industry will take solid-liquid hybrid batteries as a transition plan for the development of solid-state batteries.
As the name suggests, a solid-liquid hybrid battery is a battery form between a liquid lithium battery and an all-solid-state lithium battery, that is, a semi-solid-state lithium battery. The difference between it and the all-solid-state lithium battery is that the solid-liquid hybrid battery contains a certain amount of liquid electrolyte, while the all-solid-state lithium battery only contains the solid-state electrolyte and does not contain any liquid electrolyte.
In the industry's view, in the case that the all-solid-state lithium battery technology has not yet achieved a breakthrough, the mixed solid-liquid battery is expected to be compatible with most of the materials, equipment and processes of the liquid lithium battery, and comprehensively balance the performance of safety, energy density, power density, cycle life, high and low temperature, etc., and can take the lead in commercialization. And the recent moves of car companies and the planning progress of battery suppliers indicate that the mass production process of semi-solid-state batteries has accelerated.
In the "Announcement of Road Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Products" (Batch 351) recently announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Gaz Auto paid attention to the first supporting debut of mixed solid-liquid electrolyte lithium batteries. According to the announcement information, the energy storage device type of a pure electric car declared by Dongfeng Motor is "mixed solid-liquid electrolyte lithium-ion battery", and the production enterprise is "Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium Battery Technology Co., Ltd.", which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ganfeng Lithium.
Judging from the declaration chart and corresponding models of the product, the pure electric car is dongfeng fengshen E70. According to the declaration schedule, the model is expected to be delivered before the Spring Festival, which means that the semi-solid-state battery is about to enter the mass production and loading stage.
It is understood that in July this year, Ganfeng Lithium signed a contract with the technical center of Dongfeng Company to jointly carry out the demonstration operation project of Ganfeng solid-state battery. On December 10, the first batch of Dongfeng E70 equipped with Ganfeng mixed solid-liquid lithium-ion batteries will be tested in Xinyu, Jiangxi, and will be put into trial operation in Xinyu before the Spring Festival.
For the hybrid solid-liquid lithium-ion battery carried by Dongfeng E70, the relevant person in charge of Ganfeng Lithium Industry said that the company has realized the installation of mixed solid-liquid lithium-ion batteries based on flexible solid-state separators, which can be tested by abuse that is higher than the most stringent national standards on the basis of excellent electrochemical properties. The person in charge also said that the hybrid solid-liquid lithium-ion battery has high efficiency in grouping, and the module adopts aluminum alloy frame plus high-precision seam laser welding technology, which reduces redundant structural design and improves the overall grouping rate to more than 86%, leading the average level of the soft pack module industry. At the same time, the company is developing a second-generation all-solid-state battery with an energy density of more than 360Wh/kg.
The Weilai ET7 mentioned at the beginning of another article is scheduled to open delivery on March 28 next year, and from the current technological progress, its previously advertised 150kWh solid-state battery is also a solid-liquid hybrid form, but there are many opinions about the battery supplier.
The first thing that comes to mind is Huineng Technology, which signed a cooperation agreement with NIO as early as 2019. According to the planning of Huineng Technology, it plans to achieve mass production of EV solid-state batteries in 2022, and in terms of production capacity layout, Huineng Technology plans to complete the demonstration line of 1GWh in 2021, while promoting the construction of solid-state battery industrial parks, and provides several state-owned OEMs through the demonstration line of 2GWh from 2022 to the first batch of solid-state battery mass production vehicles, and strives to reach 50GWh production capacity in 2026.
Weilan New Energy, which has recently received investment from Huawei and Xiaomi, has been accused of being a "solid-state battery supplier of Weilai Automobile", and Li Yongwei, deputy general manager of the company, said in an interview with the media in the middle of this year that Weilan New Energy's hybrid solid-state batteries will soon be installed in batches. Weilan New Energy is building a 2GWh large-scale solid-liquid hybrid solid-state power battery production line, mainly producing 350-360Wh/kg new energy vehicle power batteries.
Recently, Li Jin, chairman of Guoxuan Hi-Tech, publicly stated that the company's semi-solid-state battery layout has made important progress, and revealed that the company has achieved a cruising range of more than 1,000 kilometers for the semi-solid-state battery supporting domestic high-end pure electric vehicles, which is twice as much as its first-generation model. After the news was announced, the industry speculated that it may also be Weilai ET7. So, who is the mysterious supplier behind ET7? I believe that with the delivery of new cars, it will soon be revealed.
In addition, Beiqi Blue Valley, which has been laying out in the field of solid-state batteries for a long time, said on the investor interactive platform on December 13 that the company has completed the development of the second generation of solid-state batteries, the test verification of battery system benches and the verification of the complete vehicle (ARCFOXT) mounting. At the same time, the company's planned third-generation solid-state battery technology plan matches the new model of the Jihu brand, and develops a solid-state battery with high safety (no fire) and high energy density (cell energy density of 360Wh/kg), which is currently in the process of model project approval.
It can be expected that with the launch of the Dongfeng E70 model equipped with Ganfeng lithium battery on the market at the end of this year, and the official delivery of the NIO ET7 in March next year, the industrialization wave of semi-solid-state batteries is bound to accelerate. For all-solid-state batteries, the industry generally believes that it will take 5-10 years. Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that the real large-scale commercial application of solid-state batteries will be in 2025 to 2030. At present, the upper limit of the specific energy of lithium-ion batteries is about 300Wh/kg, and in 2025, the first generation of all-solid-state batteries will be roughly equivalent to the specific energy of existing liquid electrolyte lithium-ion batteries. After 2030, there will be a second generation of all-solid-state batteries using new positive and negative electrode materials, and the specific energy will be increased to 500Wh/kg.
![Mercedes-Benz and Huineng Technology cooperate to develop the next generation of electric vehicle solid-state batteries[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)