4680 cylindrical battery will unify the rivers and lakes

The battery leader CATL has been a little flustered recently.

Why panic?

Think about it, when did the landlord and Lao Cai panic the most?

Answer: when there is a revolution.

So at present, Ningde is the old wealth of the landlord, and it is the 4680 cylindrical battery revolution.

Many people know that lithium batteries are classified by cathode materials, but they do not know enough about the classification of packaging methods.

There are three major packages for lithium batteries: square, soft pack, and cylinder.

Each method has advantages and disadvantages.

The specific differences need to be explained in detail, which takes a lot of space. I will skip them here. You can look at the figure below to understand the basic differences.

The soft case is actually a mobile phone battery.

Using a superimposed manufacturing method, the volume is thinner than the other two types, and the energy density is the highest.

In fact, the overall performance of the soft package is the best, but the fatal point is that the maturity of the manufacturing process is low and the cost is high.

The key technologies are in the hands of Japanese and Korean companies, and the customization of soft packs has led to a decline in production standards and consistency.

Therefore, soft packs are not widely used in power batteries.

Square is currently the most widely used, and is currently used by more than 90% of electric cars except Tesla.

The Ningde era was a square boss.

The biggest advantage of the square may be that the process is simple, the BMS requirements are low, and there is a scale effect.

That is, if there are enough suppliers, for car companies, it can effectively reduce the procurement cost.

The cylinder is mainly Tesla, as to why Tesla loves the cylinder only.

In fact, it is also path dependent.

You know, the prototype of Tesla's battery pack is JB and Marc, Tesla's No. 1 technical staff.

After testing 300 types of batteries with the best quality on the market that year, 7,000 batteries were used, and the solution was 69 parallel, 9 series and 11 parallel.

You know, it was 2003, and the most easily available battery on the market was the 1865 cylinder, which was easily standardized and produced with the lowest cost.

It is precisely because of the large number of batteries that Tesla's BMS technology is very advanced in order to achieve precise control of each battery.

However, it is precisely this advancement that has led to latecomers having insufficient reserves in BMS technology and unwilling to adopt a cylindrical solution and switch to a square embrace.

The column got up early and was lonely.

Therefore, the current battery packaging battle is a battle between conservative square forces and progressive cylindrical forces.

So what kind of progress is the cylinder?

It should be known that at this stage, power batteries mainly have the following factors restricting the development of new energy vehicles:

high cost

slow charging

short battery life

Security risks

Although major battery factories have introduced new ones, they have made continuous progress in balancing the above four factors.

But in the opinion of the webmaster, they are all tinkering by conservative forces. In the words of a chip factory, they are:

"Squeeze Toothpaste"

Tesla couldn't stand it any longer, and directly stepped on the toothpaste with his foot.

In September 2020, Tesla released the 4680 battery, which has 6 times the energy of the previous battery cell, increased cruising range by 16%, and reduced cost by 56%.

Of course, if only in terms of energy and cost, the 4680 may not be revolutionary.

When 1865 upgraded 2170 to achieve energy and cost, the revolution of 4680 is reflected in the power density improvement brought by full-pole technology.

To put it simply, the all-pole tab reduces the internal resistance of the cell and enables fast charging.

According to the University of London study, the 4680 battery charges from 10% to 80% in just 15 minutes, while the 2170 battery takes 25 minutes to charge to 70%.

The 4680 optimizes 40% charging performance.

Therefore, the 4680 is the first to achieve the co-optimization of battery life, charging and cost