Chinese electric vehicle (EV) maker Nio (NYSE: NIO) will unveil a 150kWh battery pack on Nio Day on January 9 that will move away from the industry's mainstream liquid lithium battery technology and instead use solid-state battery technology, 36kr said, citing multiple industry sources.

"The 150kWh pack is being released this year and will be used in vehicles as early as next year," the report quoted sources as saying.

One potential partner for Nio's 150kWh solid-state battery is Jiangsu Kunshan-based ChingTao Energy, information confirmed by a ChingTao insider, 36kr said.

Compared to traditional lithium batteries, solid-state batteries are considered the ideal battery technology for electric vehicles. It offers significant improvements in energy density, charging efficiency and safety, and is a new technological breakthrough for the industry.

Traditional lithium batteries use liquid electrolytes, which have disadvantages such as low charging efficiency and poor thermal stability. More importantly, the energy density of liquid lithium batteries is slow to increase, and its energy density limit is considered to be only 300Wh/kg, which limits the range improvement of electric vehicles.

Solid-state batteries, however, can easily break through this ceiling to 400-500Wh/kg, and also solve the problems of poor stability and low charging efficiency.

In a public presentation last October, QingTao General Manager Li Zheng mentioned that the company's solid-state battery technology is based on the oxide technology route and that it is already working with BAIC and Hozon Auto, for installed vehicle testing.

He said at the time that the energy density of the single battery can reach 300Wh/kg, and the product to be installed in 2021 is expected to reach 350Wh/kg, "and now we have started the stage of producing Class A samples".

Even if the energy density is only 350Wh/kg after mass production, it is still difficult to achieve the current liquid lithium battery, said an industry source quoted in the above report.

CATL's NCM811 battery energy density can reach 270Wh/kg, which is already considered the highest energy density battery for mass production in China, the source said.

Nio, which uses battery swap mode, has an urgent need to improve the energy density of batteries. "In order to ensure that the battery pack can be circulated, the battery swap system adopted by Nio has a uniform limit on the size of the battery pack. With a fixed volume, the battery energy density can only be increased rapidly to improve vehicle range," 36kr quoted an unnamed EV company executive as saying.

Previously, Nio has been using CATL's power batteries, and the two companies have worked together to launch three battery packs of 70kWh, 84kWh and 100kWh electricity.

With sales soaring this year, Nio has become CATL's largest automotive industry customer. But on the 150kWh solid-state battery product, the two sides may no longer work together, the report said.

A longtime CATL industry observer said CATL has devoted its resources to liquid lithium batteries and has no energy to push solid-state battery products to the ground, "The orders are for liquid lithium batteries, so naturally there is no incentive to push for a new technology system."

(Source: cnEVpost)

Early last month, Nikkei reported that Toyota hopes to become the first manufacturer in the world to mass-produce a car with solid-state batteries, and will launch a prototype next year to begin market sales at the beginning of this decade.

The report said that Toyota is currently developing a solid-state battery car that has more than twice the range of a car with a conventional lithium-ion battery under the same conditions. Even for the most compact models, there is no need to sacrifice interior space by laying out more batteries.

The report said that for cars with solid-state batteries, a full charge takes only about 10 minutes, a reduction of at least two-thirds compared to conventional electric cars.