At the recent 10th Global New Energy Vehicle Assembly Conference, Yanhuo, President of China Passenger Vehicle Solutions Division of CATL, officially announced the company’s long-term strategic plan. The focus will be on formally launching in 2025 and highly integrated with CTC battery technology. Around 2028, it will be upgraded to the fifth-generation intelligent CTC electric chassis system.

It is understood that CTC is the abbreviation of CelltoChassis, which can be understood as a further extension of CTP (CelltoPack). The core is to eliminate the module and packaging process, and directly integrate the battery core into the car chassis to achieve a higher degree of integration.

According to Zeng Yuqun, chairman of CATL, the CTC technology will not only rearrange the batteries, but also include three electrical systems, including motors, electronic controls, and on-board high voltages such as DC/DC and OBC. In the future, CTC technology will further optimize power distribution and reduce energy consumption through intelligent power domain controllers.

Zeng Yuqun emphasized that CTC technology in the CATL era will enable the cost of new energy vehicles to directly compete with fuel vehicles, with more riding space and better chassis passing. In terms of battery life, CTC technology can minimize the weight and space of battery life by eliminating castings, so that the cruising range of electric vehicles can reach at least 800 kilometers.

In October last year, at the Fifth International Application Summit, Lin Yongshou, President of the Passenger Car Solutions Department of CATL extended the number to 1,000 kilometers and reduced the power consumption to 12 degrees per 100 kilometers, while helping the vehicle to reduce its weight by 8%. And reduce the cost of the power system by at least 20%.

Cost reduction is still an important issue. CTP leads the wave of innovative battery structure

At present, cost is still an important bottleneck restricting the widespread use of electric vehicles in China. With the decline in battery costs, how to further reduce the cost of battery systems has become an important issue facing battery manufacturers. Among them, innovative battery structure has gradually become an important means for many battery companies to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

The Ningde City Times launched the first-generation CTP battery technology for passenger cars in 2019, that is to say, the cells are directly integrated into the battery, the volume utilization rate is increased by 15%-20%, and the number of parts is reduced by 40%. The efficiency is increased by 50%, the system cost is reduced by 10%, and the cooling performance is increased by 10%. At present, it has successfully entered the domestic hot-selling pure electric models such as Tesla Model3 and Weilai.

According to Xiang Yanhuo, CATL is currently planning the second-generation platform CTP battery system, and plans to put it on the market in 2022-2023, and will launch the third-generation serialized CTP battery system for the full range of models from A00 to D.

In addition to CATL, leading domestic power battery companies such as Honeycomb Energy and BYD have also joined the CTP R&D team. The latter’s popular “blade battery” is essentially a fully modular representation of the CTP technology route. On this basis, CTC has achieved further modularization from the battery pack to the chassis, which is one of the important ways to reduce battery costs after CTP.

The further promotion of CTP has been favored by Tesla and national policies

It is worth mentioning that in last year’s high-profile Tesla battery, the Musk five batteries proposed by CTC are a “black” science and technology. The CTC technology of the analysis industry will effectively reduce the overall weight and reduce the intermediate process, which is expected to be shortened. The manufacturing process takes about 10% of the time and creates new space to put more batteries, increasing the cruising range by about 14%.

At the same time, CTC technology is also one of the key power battery technologies promoted at the policy level. In November last year, the State Council issued the “New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)”, which emphasized the strengthening of automotive integration technology innovation, and proposed the development of a new generation of modular high-performance automotive platforms, integrated design of pure electric vehicle chassis, and multi-energy power System integration technology.

GF Securities Chen Zikun’s team reported on November 3, 2020, that as automakers have launched electrification plans and electric platforms, new energy vehicles have entered the era of partial modularity. Different electric platforms have their own design features, but models produced on the same platform often have similar or even the same chassis structure and battery space, which greatly promotes the development of component standardization and modularization.

On this basis, CTC technology leads the industry trend of battery and body integration. From standardized modules, battery packs to chassis, extension core technologies continue to expand. By deepening cooperation with automakers and further participating in the automotive R&D process, battery companies are also increasingly motivated in the industry chain.

True commercial production stability is the biggest constraint

However, regarding the short-term business prospects of CTC, I have previously stated that the analysis of the organization is not optimistic. The industry think tank Gaogong Lithium analyzed in the article “CTC Technology Application Scenarios” published on September 26, 2020, and the completion of the so-called CTC design requires the following prerequisites:

1) Automobile companies dominate the production of battery cells to pure electric vehicles, and arrange production according to a certain amount, such as 500,000 production capacity, the smallest unit is around 80kwh (40GWh); 2) The design must be based on popular models. 3) Sufficient stability: It is not easy to change from the material system to the cell size.

At the same time, CTC technology means that the entire 18650 lithium battery needs to be carried out on a bottom support component, and all components are directly integrated with the body after manufacturing. In order to solve the problem of structural fixation and sealing, the floor under the car body will be used as a top cover seal, making the entire battery pack a difficult-to-transport component. Therefore, the stability of orders is very important for automobile companies.

From this perspective, Gao Hongli believes that CTC technology is more of a natural evolutionary process, rather than trying to reduce costs or a means of multi-plug batteries. So far, the biggest benefits are weight reduction, more space, and loss of flexibility, all of which need to be arranged and optimized around the vehicle. This directly brings about changes in the internal organizational structure and division of labor.