This Battery Just LEAP-FROGGED Solid State - CATL Qilin Condensed State

This is the CL Sheiling condensed

electrolyte battery. It is not a solid

state battery, but it accomplishes a lot

of the key benefits we've been after for

so long. And it does so not with a solid

electrolyte like a ceramic like others

have tried, but with a novel approach, a

condensed electrolyte. It's like a gel.

It's neither liquid or solid. And by

doing so, they get a lot of the key

benefits. It's a much safer battery even

if it was punctured. And it produces

much higher energy density. They claim

350 W hours per kilogram. So in this

episode, we flew out to Beijing to

partner with CL to give you a firsthand

look at why this could be an absolute

game changer, how they've done it, and

why sometimes approaching problems with

a different perspective can yield some

answers. I'm Ricky and this is Tuba Da

Vinci.

So what exactly is condensed state?

Well, every lithium-ion battery on the

road today uses a liquid electrolyte, a

lithium salt dissolved in flammable

organic solvents. And that liquid is

what carries lithium ions back and forth

between the two electrodes every time

you charge and discharge.

It also is what catches fire when a cell

is punctured. Now, a true solid state

battery replaces the liquid electrolyte

with a solid one, usually a brittle

ceramic. And that's where the

manufacturing nightmares begin. CL's

answer sits right between the two

worlds. Not a flowing liquid and not a

rigid solid, but a condensed phase. The

electrolyte behaves like a high

viscosity polymer gel engineered so that

ion still moves freely as if it was in a

liquid, but nothing inside the cell can

actually flow. It goes in as a liquid on

the assembly line and only hardens into

a gel once the cell is sealed, locked in

place by a polymer network. It can't

pour out and it cannot leak. And most

importantly, it cannot flow across the

separator if the cell were ever

punctured, which is one of the great

promises of a solid state battery,

right? The safety. Now, here's the

headline number. A Sheiling condensed

cell delivers 350 W hours per kilogram

and a volutric energy density of 760 W

hours per liter. A new world record for

a mass-roduced battery. My EV at home,

my Tesla Model S with this pack would go

over 420 mi compared to the 310 mi it

does today with the same weight. Now,

one of the things we nerd about with

batteries is this number, the

gravimetric energy density. That is the

350 W hours per kilogram. And that is

amazing. But let's not forget about the

volutric energy density. And this 760 W

hours per liter is also record-breaking.

that introduces the ability to do some

unique things when it comes to car

design. Remember that in an EV, this

platform battery module is what you

build the car around. This is what

determines what the car looks like. If

you need a really long range car, you

need space to put those batteries. This

is the shielding battery here on the

inside. And this is what a high nickel

NMC battery would look like of the same

amount of energy. And this is what a LFP

lithium iron phosphate battery would

look like for the same energy. Look at

how much smaller the pack becomes. This

means a couple of things. This means you

can get longer range on a smaller car.

Or you could get more battery capacity,

more energy on bigger cars like third

row SUVs or pickup trucks or commercial

trucks. You could actually get the kind

of range that you need. They state that

a 650 kW battery pack is good for,500

km. That's pretty amazing. That's longer

rings than most gasoline tanks could

even offer. Look at the height

comparison as well. These cells would

actually be shorter. Why does that

matter? Well, leg room in a sedan,

right? You'd be sitting with your feet

lower on the floor, and it has a lower

center of gravity, better handling, all

that enabled by higher volumetric energy

densities. Now, let's talk about the

specifics of how they reach 350 W hours

per kilogram. On the cathode, they use a

high nickel cathode. CL stacks three

stabilizing technologies on top of each

other. High entropy doping, which bakes

multiple elements into the crystal

lattice to resist the structural fatigue

that normally ages a high nickel cathode

over hundreds or thousands of cycles. a

zero contact angle coating, which is

chemistry speak for a protective layer

that wraps around every particle surface

with no gaps, which shuts down the

likelihood of side reactions from the

electrolyte. And then there's nano

riveting, which is kind of what it

sounds like. Nanocale mechanical

interlocks that hold the cathode

particles together against the stress of

repeated charging. On the anode side,

they use a low expansion silicon carbon

anode. Now, introducing silicon into the

anode isn't new. Many companies do this.

But the percent, how much silicon is

used is always controlled, and it's

because pure silicon swells up to 300

times its original size when charging

and discharging, which would be no good

for a cell. So clearly, the

breakthroughs here allow them to

introduce more silicon, which means

higher energy densities, more room to

store lithium ions while keeping the

swelling in check. CATL engineered the

anti-swelling behavior both at the

individual particle level and across the

entire electrode to cage that 300%

swelling which is what normally tears at

the thin protective film inside the cell

called the SEI or the solid electrolyte

interface that keeps the electrode from

side reacting with the anode. That

combination of cathode and anode

engineering is where the extra 50 W

hours per kilogram come from. Now

running a very high nickel cathode and a

siliconrich anode together in a

conventional liquid electrolyte cell

would be like a fight against physics.

The cathode runs hot. The anode

breathes. The electrolyte degrades in

the middle of both. The condensed

electrolyte is what makes this pairing

stable at scale. The polymer network

holds its shape as the silicon swells

and contracts and the absence of free

liquid lowers it thermal risk of running

the cathode at the edge of its stable

window. So the three pieces high nickel

cathode, silicon carbide anode and

condensed electrolyte are not three

separate improvements stacked next to

each other. They are a single tightly

coupled system where none of them work

at scale without the others.

Now CL has actually built a second line

of defense underneath. Every cell

carries a composite current collector.

It's the metal fo that the electrode

sits on. So this composite current

collector is designed to melt to act as

kind of like a circuit breaker in your

house to prevent contact and stop the

activity of the battery cells. So these

breakthroughs in the cathode and anode

get us the 50watt hours per kilogram

compared to the traditional

non-condensed form. Then the final 20

watt hours per kilogram comes from the

packaging, the aerospace grade titanium

alloy enclosure. Now titanium is really

really nice. It's incredibly strong and

lightweight, but it's expensive. But

here, by comparing it to a traditional

aluminum enclosure, they're able to drop

the thickness 60%, the weight 30%, and

the strength is twice as strong. So the

280 on the Sheiling traditional pack,

plus 20 plus 50 gets us to 350. Pretty

amazing.

This battery wasn't actually originally

designed for cars. It was designed for

airplanes. The 500watth per kilogram

aerospace program this battery builds on

has already completed maidenflight

validation on a 4-tonon aircraft. This

is flying hardware tested to aviation

grade standards and safety regimes that