Introduction: In the face of the joint pursuit of CTC technology by leading enterprises in various fields, zero-run cars, as a rising star in the car industry, have become the first car companies to eat crabs.
(Text/Zhang Jiadong Editor/Lou Bing) In 2021, the total sales of new energy passenger cars in China reached 2.988 million units, an increase of 100% year-on-year, and the total sales volume in the automobile market accounted for 13.4%, leaping into the fastest growing market segment. However, also in the same year, with the surge in demand for new energy vehicles, the "chip shortage" and "battery shortage" began to become an important factor hindering the development of car companies in the industry.
In order to change the complicated process of customization and assembly in the battery supply process, and improve the problems of the compression of the interior space caused by the packaging of the battery pack of pure electric vehicles, the demand for battery integration in the entire automotive industry is increasing day by day.
After years of efforts and research and development in the whole industry, battery packaging technology has evolved from the initial traditional technology 1.0 era to the current large-scale use of CTP (moduleless technology) 2.0 era. Nowadays, more and more new energy companies regard CTC technology as the next outlet for battery packaging, and regard it as the key development direction of the future technology route.
In addition to Tesla, which proposed the 4680 Structural Battery program in 2020, including traditional car companies Volkswagen, Volvo, Ford, BYD, power battery leader Ningde Times, LG and other companies, have announced that CTC technology will become the focus of its next stage of research and development.
However, under the joint pursuit of leading enterprises in various fields, the first car companies to eat crabs are zero-run cars in China as a rising star in the car-making industry.
On April 25, Zero Run Technology officially released the first mass-produced CTC battery chassis integration technology in China, and announced that the technology will be the first mass production application on the zero-run C platform electric medium and large car Zero Run C01. The release of CTC technology by Zero Run not only makes it the first company in China to master CTC technology, but also makes Zero Run C01 the world's first mass production model equipped with CTC technology.
"CTC" Leading the 3.0 Era
From a technical point of view, the development of encapsulation technology for power batteries can be divided into three stages.
In the 1.0 era, that is, the era of standardized modules represented by VDA/MEB, the power battery at this stage is first assembled by the cell into a module (Module) and then the module is installed in the battery pack, forming a three-stage assembly mode of "cell - module - battery pack". Finally, the entire battery is packaged into the car body. Although such a package is relatively simple in terms of development, its many parts and components and high system cost are not conducive to the lightweight, space utilization and other functions pursued by pure electric vehicles.
Subsequently, under the CTP (Cell to Pack) technology currently used in the industry, the power battery package has fully entered the 2.0 era. Literally, CTP is to integrate the battery cell directly into the battery pack, by eliminating the intermediate module assembly link, improve the space utilization rate within the unit volume. The application of CTP technology, led by BYD blade batteries, is a representative of the efficient use of the internal structure of the battery pack.
However, although CTP has saved the space utilization in the power battery pack, from the perspective of pursuing the ultimate, the battery still has the possibility of further integration. Musk's analogy at tesla battery day in 2020 said: "Originally the aircraft would put the fuel tank in the wing, but in order to make more use of space, it took off the fuel tank and directly used the wing to store fuel, which can accommodate more fuel." ”
The so-called CTC (Cell to Chassis) technology is to package the battery cell directly on the body chassis, thereby eliminating the assembly of the module and the battery pack, and building an integrated design for the integration of the battery cell and the chassis.
Although the concept is not difficult to understand, song Yining, general manager of the battery product line of Zero Run Technology, said that the high degree of integration and relative modularization required by CTC technology is actually a contradiction.
The battery cell is directly encapsulated in the body chassis, which means that the chassis itself needs to have the characteristics of a complete battery pack, which not only requires sufficient sealing between the body and the battery, but also requires the impact resistance of the chassis and the structural strength of the whole vehicle.
The reason why Zero Run was able to take the lead in launching CTC technology and putting it into the car is because it has tried to make a technological breakthrough in chassis structure since 2016. Through years of exploration, the "CTC double skeleton ring beam structure" came into being, just like the Lego puzzle, the body structure released by zero-run can first fix the battery in the battery tray at the bottom, and then install the battery tray on the chassis, which effectively improves the firmness of the battery and also strengthens the rigidity of the body.
In terms of air tightness, Zero Run adopts innovative structural design and technology to further improve the quality of welding, while also borrowing the basic structure of the chassis, using the body longitudinal beam and beam to form a complete sealing structure.
At the same time, the zero-run C01 body-in-white stiffness using CTC technology reached 33897Nm/deg, which exceeded the torsional stiffness of the traditional steel body design and better guaranteed the safety of the batteries in the car.
In addition to the protection of hardware, Zero Run also combines BMS (battery management system) and cloud platform to establish an AI BMS big data intelligent battery management system to ensure battery safety from the software level.
In the past seven years, the overall number of patents for zero-run cars has reached 1513, and the number of patents for battery technology has reached 135. According to the introduction, the application of zero-run CTC technology can reduce the number of parts for vehicle production by 20%, reduce the cost of structural parts by 15%, and increase the stiffness of the whole vehicle by 25%. "Less is more" is also the core concept proposed by Song Yining at the whole press conference.
It is worth mentioning that the use of CTC technology of automotive products, not only has a stronger passive safety attributes, its battery structure simplification of the unit volume utilization rate and lightweight brought about by the increase in mileage, will also greatly improve the current stage of pure electric vehicle mileage anxiety problem, Song Yining said that zero-run CTC technology can increase the battery layout space by 14.5%.
For consumers, zero-run CTC technology can bring 10mm vertical head space and 10% of the comprehensive working life increase compared with CTP technology.
In addition, zero-run CTC technology also has the characteristics of high adaptation and strong expansion, which can achieve sustainable evolution in the future. The CTC technology can not only be adapted to future levels and types of models across platforms through high integration and modularization, but also has an intelligent and integrated thermal management system, which can be compatible with 800V high-voltage platforms in the future and support 400kW super fast charging.
The courage to eat crabs
If you look at CTC technology from the analogy of practicality, its highly integrated and modular concept can simplify the assembly process and reduce costs, which is essentially the same as the integrated design trend set off by Apple mobile phones. However, under this concept, because the battery is packaged in the body with high sealing, the repair and replacement convenience of the battery cell is discounted compared with CTP technology.
On the other hand, although Zeng Yuqun, chairman of CATL, has said that the integration of CTC technology can effectively reduce the cost of new energy vehicles to a level that directly competes with fuel vehicles. However, for car companies, the promotion of CTC technology has a prerequisite recognized by the industry: high demand for battery cell capacity, design around explosive products, and sufficient demand stability.
Some analysts believe that the risk of choosing CTC is extremely high for OEMs that do not have strong brand technical capabilities to form explosive models. In the final analysis, without convenient space for disassembly, models using CTC technology need sufficient orders and product stability to make up for the cost of integrated research and development. This may also be the fundamental reason why many car companies are discouraged from using the mass production of CTC technology.
However, with the announcement of zero-run CTC technology, Zero-Run also took the lead in applying its research and development results to its new product, Zero-Run C01.
The primary factor that gives zero-run confidence is undoubtedly the rapid growth in the delivery volume of zero-running cars since last year. According to the data, in March this year, the delivery of zero-run cars reached 10,059, breaking through the 10,000 mark for the first time and entering the first camp of new car-making forces. At the same time, zero-run cars have been delivering more than 200% year-on-year for 12 consecutive months.
Behind this, the launch of the first product based on the zero-run C platform, zero-run C11, has become an important driver of zero-run acceleration in the market. In the consumer feedback, the outstanding acceleration performance, vehicle safety, and battery safety have all created a good market reputation in terms of vehicle manufacturing technology and three-electric control capabilities.
On this basis, the zero-run C01, which has been blessed by CTC technology, will further help zero-run to establish an advantage in the market. According to the data released by Zero Run, Zero Run C01 has a body length of 5053 mm and a wheelbase of 2950 mm, and the battery assembly structure is improved by CTC technology, the vertical space of the vehicle is increased by 10 mm, and the battery layout space is increased by 14.5%, making the space layout in the car more flexible and practical.
In addition, the zero-run C01 can also be equipped with a 90kWh power battery pack in Europe, which accelerates by 3 seconds from 100 kilometers to 100 kilometers, and can also achieve the endurance of CLTC 717km. Compared with the medium and large pure electric cars currently on the market, the zero-run C01 has more outstanding parameter performance in terms of mileage, power performance and riding space.
The "Core Theory" of Zero Run
After all, car companies need a core competitiveness of their own.
In the development of electrification, the protagonist who controls the dominance of packaging has always been battery manufacturers. Although in the CTP era, without the number of modules, car companies can have stronger independent research and development rights, but for the chassis that bears the battery pack, car companies still need to innovate according to the battery pack provided by battery manufacturers.
The emergence of CTC technology will completely break the unilateral discourse power of battery manufacturers at the battery supply level. Due to the need for technology research and development to involve more chassis and vehicle structure design, car companies with rich experience in car manufacturing are undoubtedly more advantageous.
However, it is not difficult to see from the ningde era as an upstream supplier participating in the chassis design that the competition for the right to speak between car companies and battery manufacturers has not disappeared with the arrival of CTC.
In addition, for vehicle companies, highly integrated CTC technology is not necessarily the only choice in the industry, just as the matching of the vehicle-electricity separation scheme represented by Weilai and the power exchange mode is more conducive to solving the problem of consumers packing batteries to buy cars and the convenience of maintenance.
For zero-run, after occupying the opportunity of the new road of CTC technology with the global self-research method, how to promote the transformation of the market has become a new problem for zero-running cars and chairman Zhu Jiangming.
Perhaps it is from the Japanese "Two Fields" in the HEV hybrid technology for many years of blockade to learn experience, although early mastery of the electrification of the change code, HEV models have always been trapped in the "Two Fields" monopoly of the situation. In the face of the more practical IMPACT OF THE PEHV market, the fruits that should have blossomed eventually became a stumbling block for the "two fields" in the Chinese market.
Therefore, for how to take the road in the future, Zhu Jiangming gave a refreshing answer: "Zero run will be free and open to CTC technology." Zhu Jiangming believes that new technologies should not be barriers, but a ladder to drive industrial breakthroughs.
Its own mastery of the core technology of the new energy track is to prevent being "stuck neck" by foreign brands or upstream industrial chains, and as a new car manufacturer that has been established for less than 10 years, compared with its own role as a "lone brave" in an unknown market environment, Zhu Jiangming's goal is very clear: "A person can go fast, a group of people can go further."
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