520km from a 5-minute charge: Chinese battery giant revs up EVs

The second battery also would provide backup in case one has trouble. That has become more important as self-driving features, which require uninterrupted electricity, become more common.

Ouyang Chuying, co-president for research and development at CATL, said that auxiliary batteries without graphite would be available in cars in two to three years and possibly sooner. He declined to say which carmakers might be the first to use them.

But taking out the graphite has a downside, which is why CATL will remove it only for the auxiliary batteries. Batteries without graphite recharge more slowly, and cannot be recharged as many times as conventional EV batteries before they need to be replaced.

The auxiliary batteries are meant to be used less frequently, on longer drives after the main battery is exhausted.

CATL, which is based in the city of Ningde, Fujian, China, also said it had made more progress in the speed of charging main batteries. The company said its new system would allow an electric vehicle to be charged enough in five minutes to drive 520 kilometres.

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BYD and Huawei, a Chinese electronics giant that plays an ever-larger role in vehicle parts manufacturing, have also announced five-minute charging systems, known as supercharging.

CATL also said it would start selling sodium-ion batteries, which can retain more than 90 per cent of their charge even at a temperature of 40 degrees below zero, for use in cars and trucks with internal combustion engines.

Ouyang said that the electricity of these sodium batteries would be compatible with the electrical systems of existing gasoline-powered cars, but the new batteries might not fit in the same space.

CATL said that its first customer for sodium-ion batteries would be freight trucks from First Auto Works, a vehicle manufacturer in Changchun, in China’s far north-east, where temperatures frequently fall well below zero. Developing sodium-ion batteries has been a priority for the Chinese electric car industry because the country’s northern provinces, bordering Mongolia and Russia’s Siberia, have bitterly cold temperatures in winter.

CATL showed a video of its sodium-ion batteries undergoing stress tests, such as being punctured with a nail or power drill or even cut in half with a power saw, without catching fire or exploding. Just five years ago, CATL had argued that nail tests were unrealistic and that batteries should not be expected to withstand them.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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