Na recente 10ª Conferência de Montagem de Veículos de Nova Energia Global, Yanhuo, presidente da Divisão de Soluções para Veículos de Passageiros da China da CATL, anunciou oficialmente o plano estratégico de longo prazo da empresa. O foco será no lançamento formal em 2025 e altamente integrado com a tecnologia de bateria CTC. Por volta de 2028, ele será atualizado para o sistema de chassi elétrico CTC inteligente de quinta geração.

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.

De acordo com Zeng Yuqun, presidente da CATL, a tecnologia CTC não apenas reorganizará as baterias, mas também incluirá três sistemas elétricos, incluindo motores, controles eletrônicos e altas tensões a bordo, como DC / DC e OBC. No futuro, a tecnologia CTC otimizará ainda mais a distribuição de energia e reduzirá o consumo de energia por meio de controladores de domínio de energia inteligentes.

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%.

A redução de custos ainda é uma questão importante. CTP lidera a onda de estrutura de bateria inovadora

No momento, o custo ainda é um gargalo importante que restringe o uso generalizado de veículos elétricos na China. Com a queda nos custos da bateria, como reduzir ainda mais o custo dos sistemas de bateria se tornou uma questão importante para os fabricantes de baterias. Entre eles, a estrutura de bateria inovadora gradualmente se tornou um meio importante para muitas empresas de bateria reduzirem custos e melhorarem a eficiência.

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.

De acordo com Xiang Yanhuo, a CATL está atualmente planejando o sistema de bateria CTP de plataforma de segunda geração e planeja colocá-lo no mercado em 2022-2023, e lançará o sistema de bateria CTP serializado de terceira geração para toda a gama de modelos do A00 para 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.

Com base nisso, a tecnologia CTC lidera a tendência da indústria de integração de bateria e carroceria. De módulos padronizados, baterias a chassis, as tecnologias de núcleo de extensão continuam a se expandir. Ao aprofundar a cooperação com as montadoras e participar ainda mais do processo de P&D automotivo, as empresas de baterias também estão cada vez mais motivadas na cadeia da indústria.

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.

Ao mesmo tempo, a tecnologia CTC significa que toda a bateria de lítio 18650 precisa ser realizada em um componente de suporte inferior e todos os componentes são integrados diretamente ao corpo após a fabricação. Para resolver o problema de fixação e vedação estrutural, o piso sob a carroceria do carro será usado como uma vedação da tampa superior, tornando toda a bateria um componente de difícil transporte. Portanto, a estabilidade das encomendas é muito importante para as montadoras.

A partir dessa perspectiva, Gao Hongli acredita que a tecnologia CTC é mais um processo evolutivo natural, ao invés de tentar reduzir custos ou um meio de baterias multi-plug. Até agora, os maiores benefícios são a redução de peso, mais espaço e perda de flexibilidade, que precisam ser organizados e otimizados em torno do veículo. Isso traz mudanças diretas na estrutura organizacional interna e na divisão do trabalho.