In fact, in order to solve the pain points such as long-life electric vehicles, the super fast rechargeable battery of large cylinder has always been regarded by head battery enterprises as a "ticket" to enter the new cycle of the industry ". Meanwhile, under the background that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a new policy to guide the transformation and upgrading of lithium battery capacity, extra large cylinder super fast rechargeable battery research and development and commercialization have become one of the important ways for many battery enterprises to upgrade. The agency predicts that in 2024, it is expected to achieve a certain scale of mass production of large cylindrical super fast rechargeable battery.

High specific energy battery 6C ultra-fast charging requirements are clear

"Long-term strategic investment based on laws is the core", Zhao Weijun, president of Vision power China, said in last December that 6C large cylindrical batteries with energy density over 300Wh/kg were launched, realizing super charging under high energy density is a "Future development demand and direction that can be determined".

According to incomplete statistics, in terms of car companies, Tesla, BMW, GM, Volvo, Lantu, Jianghuai, Porsche, Weilai, etc. have publicly announced the use or consideration of large cylindrical batteries.

Not only that, the track also attracts new players to enter the game. Recently, Yunshan power (Ningbo) Co., Ltd. announced the completion of Angel wheel and Pre-A round of financing. The funds obtained will be mainly used for the construction of its first 46 series large cylinder production line exceeding rechargeable battery. According to introduction, this product can realize 6C charge and discharge under working conditions.

It is worth noting that this little-known enterprise has emerged as a capital in these two rounds of investment subjects. It is understood that the legal representative of the latter main company is Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi Technology, so it is not difficult to see Xiaomi's expectation for the future of large cylinder exceeding rechargeable battery.

On the other hand, large cylindrical electricityThe pool capacity competition also kicked off.

On May 13 this year, market information showed that the reconstruction project of large cylindrical battery trial production line of Huizhou Yiwei Lithium Energy trial production center was filed and approved. The project plans to build two large cylindrical modules and pack product R & D trial production lines with an annual capacity of 62 million sets.

According to the data, the order of yiweineng large cylindrical battery is extremely sufficient. In the announcement of the company in November 2023, it was revealed that its three-yuan large cylindrical battery has achieved a total of about 486GWh of customers' intentional demand in the next five years.

Vision Power's zero-carbon battery factory located in South Carolina, USA has been started in June 2023, with an annual planned capacity of 30GWh. It is expected to provide BMW with 46 series large cylindrical batteries from 2026, it is reported that the supply will have ultra-fast charging performance.

Lanjun new energy is located in Jiashan's large cylindrical battery project. It is expected that the third phase of the project will be fully completed in 2024, and the annual production capacity will be 77GWh in the future. In November 2023, Sinochem showed that in the fourth quarter of 2024, it would realize the mass production of 46 series 6C cylindrical batteries with high charging rate.

At present, Ningde era, Yiwei Lithium Energy, BYD, Vision power, Guoxuan Gaoke, Zhengli Xinneng, LISUN battery, Bick battery, Ruipu Lanjun, Lanjun new energy, head Battery companies such as China innovation airlines have already laid out large cylindrical battery tracks. Before the release of production capacity, how to give full play to the advantages of large cylindrical batteries through the application of new technologies and materials has become the key to competition among enterprises.

Large cylindrical battery integrates high safety/Long Endurance/super fast charge/low cost

from the perspective of market demand, the requirements of new energy passenger cars for power batteries are constantly improving, and they need to meet the conditions of high safety, long endurance, ultra-fast charging, low cost and so on at the same time.

However, through structural innovation and application of new materials, large cylindrical batteries canTaking into account the high safety, high capacity and fast charging performance of the battery, so as to meet the needs of long endurance and fast energy supplement of passenger cars at the same time, and further improve the market competitiveness of the whole vehicle through the battery manufacturing process.

From the perspective of structural design, compared with other mainstream battery forms at present, large cylindrical batteries reduce the difficulty of thermal management of batteries due to their advantages of uniform structural stress, good heat dissipation performance, and a decrease in the number of cell, technologies such as relief pressure valve and integrated structural components are superimposed to enhance the structural strength and safety of battery pack. The full pole ear technology is adopted to shorten the moving distance of electronic current in the battery, thus greatly improving the charging speed.

From the application of new materials, the battery system of silicon-based negative electrode with high nickel ternary material has become one of the main development trends of high-end power batteries. Data show that large cylindrical batteries can better adapt to new materials with higher energy density such as high nickel positive electrode and silicon-based negative electrode.

Taking silicon-based negative electrode as an example, its theoretical gram capacity is 4200mAh/g, which is 10 times that of graphite. However, it is well known in the industry that the expansion rate of silicon-based negative electrode material is relatively large. During the charging and discharging process of the battery for many times, the pole piece is easy to be damaged, resulting in a reduction in the number of battery cycles.

Industry insiders pointed out that the cell pole pieces of the large cylindrical battery are evenly stressed, and the material is relatively not easily damaged when it expands. Based on the above characteristics, industry analysis believes that although the development of large cylindrical batteries is relatively slow than expected, the industry is generally optimistic that they will become one of the main technical routes of batteries and is competing to launch new products.

Product Competition enabled

at present, large cylindrical batteries of enterprises such as Yiwei Lithium Energy have been loaded. Many battery enterprises have released large cylindrical ultra-fast rechargeable battery products, with mainstream cell energy density exceeding 280Wh/kg, supporting ultra-fast charging of 4C or above.

On January 31 this year, Jianghuai Ruifeng RF8, equipped with yiweineng large cylindrical battery, was officially launched. In addition, Changan Qiyuan also has models matched with yiweineng large cylindrical battery.

The Xingchen battery recently launched by Guoxuan Gaoke is a 46-cylinder product with ternary system. According To introduction, it uses its second generation silicon carbon material and extremely fast electrolyte, and adopts gradient electrode and brand-new structural parts in design, the cell mass energy density and volume energy density can reach 285Wh/kg and 775Wh/L respectively, and the long cycle life of 2500 weeks can be realized at the same time. Match 4C fast charge, from 10% to 70% in 9 minutes.

Cheng Jian, president of Guoxuan Gaoke Asia Pacific business and director of international engineering research institute, recently revealed to battery China that Xingchen battery will be produced by the seventh generation factory of Guoxuan Gaoke, and the manufacturing cost will be reduced by 50% compared with the regular production line, mass production is expected to be achieved in the fourth quarter of this year.

On April this year, Zhengli Xinneng combined the standardized 46 series cylinder cell with semi-solid battery technology, and launched Zhengli Qi long battery system. The energy density of the system exceeded 245Wh/kg, and the whole package of electricity reached 170kWh, it can support the application of ultra-fast charging technology for large pure electric MPV models with full electric endurance of over 1,000 kilometers, charging for 10 minutes and increasing endurance of 500 kilometers.

LISUN battery has also launched its first generation of 46 series large cylindrical battery with an energy density of 280Wh/kg, supporting 15-minute fast charging, and battery pack can meet the demand of 1000 kilometers of passenger cars.

Cut into the field of large cylinder, Lan Jun New Energy launched BTL large cylinder battery based on "Chen Xing" technology. According to reports, its cell main material adopts AAS coating method, which improves the gas production problem of the battery and improves the safety guarantee; It also has two advantages of high capacity and fast charging, cell the energy density can reach 280Wh/kg, and the fast charging time can be controlled within 15 minutes.

Industry insiders believe that high specific energy and 4C-6C ultra-fast charging performance will become the catalyst for commercialization of large cylindrical batteries; With the process improvement of various enterprises and the running of production lines, the quality rate of large cylindrical batteries is expected to continue to increase, the cost will also decrease accordingly, and other car companies are also expected to introduce large cylindrical batteries. With the gradual release of the production capacity of head enterprises, large cylindrical batteries are expected to increase shipments in 2024 and move towards the stage of large-scale mass production. The agency predicts that from 2024 to 2027, the global shipments of large cylindrical batteries will increase by more than 30 times.

What needs to be mentioned is that in order to accelerate the industrialization process of large cylindrical batteries, all links in the industrial chain such as new materials and new equipment still need to work together to reach the inflection point of large-scale mass production faster.