BYD to Redefine Safety of EV Batteries with New Blade Battery BYD h

BYD has officially launched the Blade Battery, a battery that the renowned car maker says will alleviate concern about the safety of batteries used in electric vehicles.

In view of the present situation, the battery was presented to the world at an online event named “The Blade Battery – Unsheathed to Safeguard the World”, by Wang Chuanfu, the company’s Chairman and President. Speaking at the event, he said that the new Blade Battery reflected BYD’s drive to tackle issues related to battery safety while also redefining safety standards for the entire industry.

Generally, a nail penetration test is considered as the toughest test that can be conducted to test the thermal runaway of batteries. At the launch event, BYD showcased a video that depicted the Blade Battery successfully clearing this difficult test. Professor Ouyang Minggao, Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor at Tsinghua University said that BYD’s Blade Battery offered  obvious advantages in terms of battery safety and energy density.

BYD had developed the Blade Battery over the past several years. The design involves arranging the singular cells together in an array and then inserting them into a battery pack. Thanks to its optimized battery pack structure, the Blade Battery’s space utilization is 50 percent higher when compared to conventional lithium iron phosphate block batteries.

The Blade Battery fared extremely well in the nail penetration test, emitting neither smoke nor fire after being penetrated. Its surface temperature only reached 30 to 60°C. When faced with the same conditions, a ternary lithium battery exceeded 500 degrees C and burned violently. A conventional lithium iron phosphate block battery did not openly burst into fare or emit smoke, but nevertheless its surface temperature did reach dangerous temperatures of 200 to 400°C. This test revealed that EVs fitted with the Blade Battery would be far less vulnerable to catching fire – even when they are severely damaged.

The Blade Battery also successfully cleared other extreme test conditions, like being crushed, bent, being heated in a furnace to 300 degrees C and being overcharged by 260 percent. None of these tests led to a fire or explosion.

He Long, Vice President of BYD and Chairman of FinDreams Battery Co., Ltd., said that the Blade battery offered four distinct advantages when compared to conventional batteries including slow heat release and low heat generation, a high starting temperature for exothermic reactions, less likelihood of catching fire and its ability to not release oxygen during breakdowns.

With electric vehicles becoming more popular in the past few years, automotive manufacturers are competing with each other to develop and sell vehicles which offer more driving range, thus driving battery manufacturers to pursue increasingly unrealistic targets in terms of energy density. This has come at the expense of safety considerations when it comes to the development of power batteries. With the development of the Blade Battery, BYD’s aim was to bring the focus back to battery safety back, thus redirecting the focus of the entire industry.

“Today, many vehicle brands are in discussion with us about partnerships based on the technology of the Blade Battery,” said He Long. He added that BYD is prepared to share the technology and work with global partners to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for all industry players.

The Han EV, which is BYD’s flagship sedan is scheduled to be launched in June, and will be fitted with the Blade Battery. The new model will be the flagship of BYD’s Dynasty Family, and will offer customers a  cruising range of 605 kilometers and the capability to go from 0 to 100km/h in just 3.9 seconds.