CATL announces 1.5 million km battery

From The Driven

The world’s largest battery maker CATL has announced a new electric vehicle battery pack with a 1.5-million kilometre, 15-year warranty. For reference the average Australian passenger car drives less than 15,000 km per year so a 1.5 million km battery would last about 100 years worth of average driving.

The company has joined forces with Yutong Heavy Industries, who will be using the long life battery packs in their buses and heavy vehicles. Yutong, one of China’s largest bus manufacturers, began its first 10-year strategic partnership with CATL in 2012.

According to CnEVPost, CATL and Yutong signed a new 10-year strategic cooperation framework agreement in 2022.

The new lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery will be able to cater to different market segments, including buses, light trucks and heavy trucks, and will be used in future products from Yutong Bus and Yutong Heavy Industries.

According to Don Imrie, who works in the electric bus industry and was interviewed by The Driven in 2023, the average metropolitan bus travels around 300 km per shift which means a 1.5 million km warranty would last around 13 years worth bus shifts driving every day of the year.

The long-life battery will also have zero degradation in the first 1,000 cycles, Yutong said. This effectively means a battery with 500 km of range would have zero capacity degradation for the first half million kilometres.

The new 1.5 million km warranty is the latest in series of breakthroughs coming from CATL. Last year the company announced it would begin mass production of a new “condensed” battery with 500 Wh/kg, almost double the energy density of the batteries currently used in Tesla vehicles.

The higher energy density batteries and longer lifecycles are the perfect solution for heavy vehicles such as buses and trucks which do a lot of kilometres and need to carry heavy payloads.

On top of the improved energy density and lifespan, CATL has also significantly reduced production costs over the past 12 months. In January the CATL announced it would reduce the cost per kWh of its lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells by a stunning 50 per cent by mid 2024.

The rate at which CATL is reducing battery costs has surprised even technology analysts like Tony Seba, who 10 years ago predicted such low costs would only be reached in 2027.

It has been generally agreed for a decade, that when EV batteries fell to $100/kWh, the up-front cost disadvantage of EVs relative to ICEVs (petrol/diesel cars) would disappear.  Battery packs costing $50/kWh will mean that EVs will be not just cheaper to run (it's been that way for a while) but cheaper to buy too.  Which means in turn (a) that within the next 20 years, or less, emissions from land transport, currently ~20% of total emissions will end, and (b) that oil demand will plummet.

One final point:  Tony Seba was right.  Legacy auto executives didn't listen to him, and as a result are having to scurry to politicians to get protection from imported EVs, because they were too feckless and arrogant to move into EVs when it became obvious, a decade ago, that EVs were going to end up dominating the market.  He's made similar predictions about precision fermentation.  He's likely to be right here, too.   And that has massive implications for emissions and for farming.