LFP energy density improvement is again the main theme

Since last year, LFP has been on fire until now, and has been pushing back the trend of lithium ternary, in large part because people began to pay attention to cost and safety rather than pure energy density (mileage). But the fact is that the improvement of energy density (mileage) has always been a key factor in the progress of the new energy industry.

Why is China fixated on energy density? As already mentioned, mileage anxiety is a major constraint to the mass rollout of new energy vehicles. Although mainstream EVs now have a range of around 500km (with a discount for actual use), the gap is still relatively large compared to fuel cars.

If the real range of electric vehicles reaches 800km, or even crosses 1000km, the mileage anxiety of car owners will be greatly reduced. The most successful car company in the commercialisation of new energy vehicles, Tesla, has been improving its range for nearly a decade, which is an indication of the importance of energy density.

So how can the energy density of batteries continue to improve? It's all about innovation at the material system and structure level.

First of all, the material system innovation, for LFP, by the LFP material theoretical specific capacity (170mAh/g) limit, the battery unit energy density has less and less room for improvement. On the contrary, ternary lithium materials are in the rapid iteration of technology, from NCM333 to NCM523 to NCM811, its energy density is gradually improved, NCM811 energy density compared to the current mainstream NCM523, energy density can be increased by about 18%.

In fact, the ternary lithium cathode material is a combination of lithium cobaltate (LiCoO2), lithium nickelate (LiNiO2) and lithium manganate (LiMnO2) the advantages of three cathode materials, its electrochemical performance and physical properties with the three transition metal elements change the ratio of different, can be continuously optimized.

For the structure level innovation, the current battery structure level optimization has been simple to seek simplicity, like CTP technology and blade battery, its battery pack can save the parts are saved, the future only CTC technology (no module), energy density is increasingly small space to improve. These are destined to LFP in the long-range battery is difficult to build, so this new policy is named to let the ternary lithium battery to high nickel development.