A New Trend in the Lithium Battery Industry - 4680 Batteries in 2023 Are Expected to Usher in an Outbreak

Lithium battery safety issues need to be solved
Under the background that the replacement trend of new energy vehicles to traditional fuel vehicles is basically determined, lithium batteries are the main power batteries used by electric vehicles at present with their advantages of high energy density, high discharge power and long cycle life. However, in recent years, safety accidents caused by thermal runaway of lithium batteries have occasionally occurred, posing a threat to the life and property safety of consumers.

In order to deal with the safety of lithium batteries and promote the healthy development of strategic emerging industries such as new energy vehicles in China, China has announced the mandatory national standard of "Safety Requirements for power batteries for electric Vehicles", which has been implemented since 2021 and requires strict safety testing of lithium batteries before leaving the factory, including 6 battery cell and 15 battery system safety tests. To ensure the safe use of lithium batteries.
With the implementation of mandatory standards, the safety threshold of lithium batteries has been significantly improved, and the degree of guarantee of battery safety will be increasingly paid attention to by manufacturers, end users and government regulators, and how lithium battery companies will minimize the safety problem of lithium batteries is a challenge facing lithium batteries and related industries.
Lithium battery a variety of technical routes coexist
In recent years, the commercial application of lithium batteries has developed rapidly, and in order to cope with the increasing requirements of lithium batteries in the terminal application market such as new energy vehicles, emerging technologies of lithium batteries have emerged, showing the coexistence of a variety of technical routes. At present, the technical route differences of lithium batteries are mainly reflected in the positive electrode material system and packaging form.
First, there are differences in the technical route of positive electrode materials for lithium batteries.
Cathode material is an important part of lithium battery, and its characteristics have an important impact on the energy density, cycle life and safety performance of the battery. The technical route mainly includes ternary materials, lithium manganate, lithium iron phosphate, lithium cobalt oxide and so on. Battery precision structural parts and materials with their strong versatility can be widely used as packaging or conductive materials for lithium batteries, generally not affected by the technical route of positive electrode materials.
Second, there are differences in the packaging forms of lithium batteries.
The packaging form refers to the packaging structure of a single lithium battery, and different packaging forms correspond to different processes, and also correspond to different forms of battery precision structural parts. At present, the technical route of lithium battery packaging form mainly includes three forms of cylinder, square and soft package, and the characteristics of lithium battery in each package form are compared as follows:



At present, the cylinder, square and soft pack three types of lithium battery characteristics have their advantages and disadvantages, in the global market is a "three parts of the world" competition pattern, have a large market development space.
In September 2020, the 46800 large cylinder battery solution was launched. Compared with the traditional small cylinder battery, the large cylinder battery technology can reduce the number of batteries in the battery pack and the corresponding number of structural parts, improve the energy density, simplify the battery management system, reduce manufacturing costs, and to a greater extent make up for the disadvantage of the cylindrical battery battery management system requirements than the square battery.
From the current progress, in January 2022, it has achieved self-production of 1 million 4680 large cylinder batteries, and the product yield has reached the mass production level. In September 2022, it announced the use of 46 series cylindrical cells in its new models from 2025, and the first partners were locked into Ningde Times and Yi Wei Lithium Energy. Other well-known battery manufacturers at home and abroad are also steadily advancing the 4680 cylinder battery layout.
It can be seen that 4680 batteries are expected to usher in explosive growth around 2023, when the application of cylindrical lithium batteries in the field of new energy vehicles will be rapidly improved.