BYD Blade Battery Image source: Publicly available images
The new energy vehicle market has recently experienced a boom. Data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) shows that in February this year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 124,000 and 110,000 units respectively, representing year-on-year increases of 7.2 times and 5.8 times. This month marks the eighth consecutive month that new energy vehicle production and sales have broken historical records.
Despite the soaring prices, the safety of new energy vehicles has not been forgotten.
Undeniably, as a new phenomenon, the development of new energy vehicles has room for technological improvement. At the same time, it also bears the pressure brought about by public attention as a disruptor of the industry.
Especially in terms of batteries, as the heart of electric vehicles, batteries not only bear the heavy responsibility of the electric vehicle's range performance, but are also an important variable affecting the electric vehicle's safety.
Since BYD marketed its blade battery technology to the public last March, battery safety has been under intense scrutiny. The debate over the merits of lithium iron phosphate and ternary lithium batteries has also been a frequent topic of discussion.
In fact, according to big data, the probability and number of spontaneous combustion accidents involving pure electric new energy vehicles are far less than those involving traditional fuel vehicles.
According to statistics from GGII (Gaogong Industry Research Institute), approximately 20 spontaneous combustion incidents involving new energy vehicles occurred in China during the first half of 2020. However, the number of spontaneous combustion incidents involving traditional gasoline-powered vehicles in the same period was several times, or even dozens of times, higher.
The spontaneous combustion rate of pure electric vehicles in my country's new energy vehicle industry is 0.0032%, which is close to the 0.003% spontaneous combustion rate in the United States. Meanwhile, the spontaneous combustion rate of traditional gasoline vehicles in my country is 0.015%. In other words, the ratio of spontaneous combustion rates for gasoline vehicles to those for pure electric vehicles is very close to 5:1.
There have been frequent comments from industry professionals regarding the difference in the probability of spontaneous combustion between electric vehicles and traditional gasoline-powered vehicles.
However, as a new phenomenon, the safety of new energy vehicles is clearly of greater concern to the industry and is more likely to arouse consumers' sensitivity to product safety.
Recently, following the emergence of BYD's blade battery technology, GAC Aion's cartridge battery has also successfully passed the needle penetration test, bringing the competition between ternary lithium and lithium iron phosphate battery technologies into the public eye.
Image source: Publicly available images of GAC Aion magazine battery.
More importantly, the technology related to the safety of new energy batteries has made another step forward.
The so-called needle penetration test, also known as the needle penetration thermal diffusion test, involves inserting a needle into a single cell of the battery pack with external force to observe whether the thermal diffusion occurs inside the battery pack, or whether the battery pack smokes, spontaneously combusts, or catches fire, thereby testing the safety of the entire battery pack.
The nail penetration test of the entire battery pack officially announced by GAC Aion can also be seen as a counterattack in terms of the safety of ternary lithium battery packs.
Following the introduction of magazine batteries, battery safety has once again become a topic of public concern. The specific technical routes and application prospects of ternary lithium batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries, as well as the differences between blade batteries and magazine batteries, have become issues worth exploring.
