EV Battery With 2 Million Km Lifespan Now Ready for Production

Chinese battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) says it is now ready to manufacture a product capable of powering an electric vehicle for two million kilometres over a lifespan of 16 years.

Most EV manufacturers today cover their batteries for just eight years or 160,000 kilometres.

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CATL chairman Zeng Yuqun made the claim during an interview with Bloomberg. While he didn’t reveal the companies this super battery is intended for, nor the kind of range we should expect, we know that CATL signed a two-year deal to supply batteries for Chinese-built Tesla Model 3 cars in February.

BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo are other clients of CATL, which plans to start producing lithium-ion batteries at a new factory in Germany next year.

In mid-May, Reuters reported that Tesla is aiming to introduce a new low-cost, long-life battery in the Model 3 beginning in China later in 2020 or early in 2021. It’s expected to bring the cost of EVs down to the same level as comparable gasoline-powered models.

The report mentioned something about the battery being able to last 1.6 million kilometres thanks to a design developed with CATL as well as a number of battery experts and scientists including researchers at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

We also learned that improved versions of the battery, with greater energy density and storage capacity, will eventually make their way into additional Tesla vehicles in other markets including, of course, North America.