BYD Company Limited (“BYD” or the “Company”, NYSE: BYDDF)’s power battery bases in Xi’an with the annual capacity of 20GWh has put into production in December 2021, only eight month after its announcement in April 2021, to cope with the rapidly increasing demand for blade batteries and its super hybrid DM-i. Previously, BYD will build 15GWh power battery manufacturing base in Fuzhou, Jiangxi and participated in a new phosphate mining company to To ensure battery supply.
The blade battery was first launched in March 2020 with the determination to solve safety issues and increase the utilisation of batteries. When testing under a nail penetration, a conventional lithium iron phosphate block battery does not openly emit smoke or fire which makes its surface temperature reach 200 to 400°C.
On the other hand, the blade battery emits neither flames nor smoke so that the surface temperature only reaches 30 to 60°C. Moreover, the blade battery has a new battery pack structure that have the singular cells arranged first and then inserted into the pack.
By doing so, the utilisation of battery packs is increased and optimised by over 50% compared to conventional lithium iron phosphate block batteries.
Photo Credit: sina.com
BYD’s power battery base in Xi’an has built 5 new factory buildings which takes up about 200 acres. It also renovated another 6 factory buildings that covered an area of about 500 acres. The new blade battery base in Xi’an can manufacture lithium iron phosphate block battery related products for BYD’s DM-i hybrid cars.
The total investment of Xi’an’s new blade battery base is 12 billion RMB. After the base is put into production, the output is expected to be 22 billion RMB with 5,000 new job vacancies available.
In addition to the improvement in the battery, BYD and autonomous driving start-up Momenta established a $15.7 million joint venture to deploy autonomous driving capabilities.
