The Chinese company BYD is noticeably inferior to the market leader in electric vehicle batteries CATL, but remains the second largest manufacturer in the world. In the next half of the year, it expects to offer customers the second generation of Blade batteries, which will combine high charge storage density with moderate cost and high charging speeds.
Image source: BYD
The CarNewsChina resource managed to find out that the production cost of Blade 2.0 batteries will be 15% lower than its predecessors. At the same time, the charge storage density will be increased to 210 Wh/kg, and the discharge rate rating of the younger version will reach 16C. The latter characteristic means that within an hour a conditional battery can be completely discharged 16 times. In other words, theoretically, a full discharge should take no more than four minutes, but in practice various kinds of restrictions appear that will increase this time several times. The full charge time is determined in a similar way. For example, an 8C battery can theoretically be fully charged in 7.5 minutes, but in reality the current varies throughout the charging cycle, so the actual charge time is significantly longer.
Importantly, Blade 2.0 batteries will continue to use a combination of lithium and iron phosphate, which gives them not only a relatively low cost, but also a longer service life and higher fire safety compared to options containing nickel and manganese. The older version of the Blade 2.0 battery will combine a charge storage density of 210 Wh/kg with an 8C discharge rating and a 3C charge rating. In other words, they will be able to accept more charge per unit mass, but will do so more slowly than cheaper versions with reduced charge storage density. BYD hopes to reduce the cost of the older version of the Blade 2.0 battery with a charge storage density of up to 210 Wh/kg by 15% compared to the existing one.
Blade 2.0 batteries will also be available in a shorter version, which will combine a 16C discharge rating with an 8C discharge rating and a charge storage density of 160 Wh/kg. This is slightly higher than the 150 Wh/kg offered by the first generation Blade batteries. The younger version of the Blade 2.0 battery will not differ significantly in cost from its predecessor.
By comparison, Tesla’s advanced 4680 batteries provide charge storage densities of 244 to 296 Wh/kg, but have more expensive chemistry. If we consider the charge storage density of LFP batteries that are equipped with Tesla electric vehicles, then at the packaging level it reaches 166 Wh/kg, and this option is supplied by CATL, a company competing with BYD. With a reasonable pricing policy, many automakers may be interested in new BYD batteries, and no less important is the opportunity to reduce the cost of BYD’s own electric vehicles by switching to it.
According to analysts at Goldman Sachs Research, by 2026 the cost of traction batteries will decrease by 50%. For example, by the end of this year, the cost of storing 1 kWh of energy will drop to $111, and by 2026 it will drop to $80 per 1 kWh. The first generation BYD Blade traction batteries had a charge storage density of 140 Wh/kg, which later increased to 150 Wh/kg. Since then, CATL has released several generations of its LFP batteries, so BYD’s products are in desperate need of a performance upgrade, not to mention cost reduction. Blade Generation 2.0 batteries achieve both goals.