According to the Cailian Press (CLS.CN), at the ChinaEV100 Forum, WELION New Energy’s chief scientist and founder Li Hong revealed that WELION is cooperating with NIO Automobile and plans to launch a hybrid solid-liquid electrolyte battery with a range of 1,000 kilometers on a single charge, it plans to be firstly used on NIO ET7. The battery pack reaches 150 kWh, and the energy density is 360Wh/kg. The solid-state battery is expected to start mass production at the end of this year or the first half of next year.
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As early as January 9 last year, NIO announced plans to launch a solid-state battery that supports a range of 1,000 kilometers and an energy density of 360Wh/kg. Later, the CEO of NIO explained that the battery is not completely solid, but still contains liquid. According to NIO, the battery will be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2022.
“Hybrid solid-liquid electrolyte battery” is a mixed solid-liquid hybrid battery, which is a battery form between liquid lithium battery and all-solid-state lithium battery. The difference between it and an all-solid-state lithium battery is that the mixed solid-liquid hybrid battery contains a certain amount of liquid electrolyte, while all-solid-state lithium batteries contain only solid electrolytes and do not contain any liquid electrolytes. Considering the many practical difficulties faced by the large-scale mass production of solid-state batteries, and the urgent demand for high-safety, high-energy-density power batteries for new energy vehicles, as a compromise solution, the industry regards mixed solid-liquid hybrid batteries as a transitional solution for the development of solid-state batteries.
Beijing Welion New Energy Technology was established in 2016 and is headquartered in Beijing. It has three major production bases in Fangshan in Beijing, Liyang in Jiangsu, and Huzhou in Zhejiang. The company focuses on the R&D and production of hybrid solid-liquid electrolyte lithium-ion batteries and all-solid-state lithium batteries. Welion’s early business focused on the 3C consumer electronics field, and then entered the NIO supply chain and became its semi-solid battery supplier.
It is reported that NIO’s semi-solid battery solution is provided by Welion in Beijing. This is also the first time that NIO has introduced a second battery supplier since the cooperation between NIO and CATL. In the battery installation capacity ranking of CATL, NIO is the second largest passenger car customer after Tesla.
On November 26 last year, Xiaomi and Huawei jointly invested in Welion New Energy, a battery supplier of NIO, at a cost of about 500 million yuan.