At this week’s Auto Shanghai, CATL introduced a brand new battery expertise that it says affords enough power density to allow the electrification of passenger plane.

CATL says its new condensed battery will provide particular power (power saved per unit of weight) of as much as 500 Wh/kg, in addition to “a excessive stage of security,” and that it “can obtain mass manufacturing of condensed battery in a brief time frame.”

“CATL’s condensed battery leverages extremely conductive biomimetic condensed-state electrolytes to assemble a micron-level self-adaptive internet construction that may regulate the interactive forces among the many chains, thus enhancing the conductive efficiency of the cells and in flip the effectivity of lithium-ion transport whereas boosting stability of the microstructure,” says the corporate.

Condensed battery additionally “integrates a spread of revolutionary applied sciences, together with ultra-high power density cathode supplies, revolutionary anode supplies, separators, and manufacturing processes, providing wonderful cost and discharge efficiency in addition to good security efficiency.”

A selected power of 500 Wh/kg can be a large leap ahead—for comparability, Tesla’s 4680 cell, thought of top-of-the-line available on the market, delivers an estimated 272-296 Wh/kg. Such efficiency may allow a lot of functions at present thought of troublesome or impractical for lithium-ion batteries, together with aviation.

The pedantic pundit feels compelled to make clear that, whereas CATL follows the frequent observe of utilizing the time period power density to confer with power per unit of weight, the proper technical time period for that is particular power. (Density is outlined by way of quantity, so power density correctly refers to power per unit of quantity.) In observe, the 2 specs are carefully associated—a cell with excessive power density goes to have excessive particular power, and vice versa.

Each attributes are of supreme significance to plane designers, as each weight and area are main constraints in aviation.

CATL says it’s “cooperating with companions within the improvement of electrical passenger plane, and practising aviation-level requirements and testing in accordance with aviation-grade security and high quality necessities.” The corporate additionally expects to place an automotive-grade model of condensed batteries into mass manufacturing this yr.

Supply: CATL