New BYD e6 comes with a BYD Blade Battery
The BYD e6 is an electric car aimed for taxi services that has been in production since 2009. It always had cobalt-free LFP (LiFePO4) batteries.
Unfortunately, even with some upgrades since its debut, the BYD e6 always remained a sluggish, heavy and inefficient vehicle. However, now with a facelift it becomes lighter with more range and higher efficiency.
The BYD e6 currently has a 82 kWh battery that weights 700 kg (117 Wh/kg), while the BYD Han EV has a 77 kWh battery that weighs roughly 550 kg (140 Wh/kg).
While the BYD Blade Battery can have different capacities, it seems that the new BYD e6 adopts the same 77 kWh pack of the BYD Han EV. If true it gets a battery that’s 150 kg lighter.
However, BYD seems to have improved the weight by a larger amount, which suggests the use of lighter materials in many vehicle parts.
Current BYD e6: 2.420 kg
New BYD e6: 1.930 kg (490 kg lighter)
Being 490 kg lighter and more efficient compensates the battery capacity reduction from 82 to 77 kWh. Actually, the BYD e6 is expected to have its NEDC range increased from 400 to 500 km (249 to 311 miles).
In a more realistic test cycle such as the WLTP, the range would be around 375 km (233 miles) and the consumption around 23 kWh/100 km. Not great, but pretty acceptable for a large electric vehicle.
The power of the motor also increased from 90 to 100 kW and seems to be more efficient.
New BYD e6 specs
- Length: 4.695 mm
- Wheelbase: 2.800 mm
- Width: 1.810 mm
- Height: 1.670 mm
- Weight: 1.930 kg
- Motor: 100 kW
- Range (NEDC): 500 km / 311 miles (not confirmed)
- Battery capacity: 77 kWh (not confirmed)
New BYD e6 with BYD Blade Battery rear
With the fast introduction of its BYD Blade Battery to multiples electric car models, BYD is showing us how fast an automaker can adopt new battery technologies if it really wants electric cars to succeed.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have Toyota that in its Prius PHEV is still using old 25 Ah PHEV2 cells (available since 2013) from Panasonic, when this same battery cell maker already has available a substitute with twice the capacity (51 Ah) that Toyota could use. There’s no excuses to keep using outdated technology, unless it helps the narrative that the future is “self-charging” hybrids…
Anyway, I think that by next year all electric cars from BYD will have a module-less Blade Battery, even the smaller ones such as the e1 and e2.
Thanks Leo B for the heads up.
More info:
http://www.chinaautonews.com.cn/show-15-22397-1.html
https://sg.byd.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/e6_brochure_2018.pdf
Unrelated, but MIIT just released the new list with recommended NEV vehicles. Lots of buses and trucks, but in between them also the BYD Tang blade battery (search for BYD6490SBEV4 and BYD6490SBEV5) and the Ora Haomao LFP (CC7000BJ01CBEV).
http://www.miit.gov.cn/n1146295/n1652858/n1652930/n4509607/c8094091/part/8094130.pdf
Isn’t the ORA Haomao (ES11) supposed to have NCM battery cells from SVOLT?
http://chinaautoweb.com/car-models/ora-haomao/
It listed as (google translate):
Great Wall Motor Co., Ltd. Euler brand CC7000BJ01CBEV pure electric car.
External dimension length (mm): 4235
External dimension width (mm): 1825
External dimension height (mm): 1596
Gross weight (kg): 1885
Curb weight (kg): 1510
Maximum speed (km/h): 150
Maximum speed in 30 minutes (km/h): 150
Driving mileage (km, working condition method): 401
Energy density of battery system (Wh/kg): 141.30
Electricity consumption per hundred kilometers under working conditions (Y) 13.00
Type of energy storage device: lithium iron phosphate battery
Drive motor type: permanent magnet synchronous motor
Drive motor peak power/speed/torque (kW/r/min/N.m): 105/16000/210
Oh, I see now, the first registered version of this car was CC7000BJ02ABEV and that one does have a “ternary” NCM battery.
What do you think Leo?
Will it come with two battery packs? One NCM and other LFP?
I don’t know for sure. Sometimes cars are registered in many different configurations and only some of them appear on sites like autohome. At least Great Wall now has permission to produce and sell both types.
It might even be a regional diversification. Some dealerships sell one version, other dealerships the other. Not uncommon in China. Some brands have several sales channels/organisations. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Ok, thanks Leo.
At least this model is already listed at ORA’s website.
https://www.oraev.com/es11.html
It looks super cool.
https://pushevs.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2020/09/ORA-Haomao-ES11.jpg
Yeah, it’s a very nice design. It they would bring it to Europe and sell it for €25.000, it would be a big hit. Even at €30.000 they would steal sales from e-208/Corsa-e/Fiat 500e.
I agree on both points, nice design, and it would sell well in Europe at those prices. MG’s ZS EV is doing well at a similar price range.
Good article, thanks Pedro and Leo. Electrifying taxi fleets will make a big difference in emissions and local air quality, so I hope BYD is able to sell the e6 and the D1 in a lot of markets outside China as well.
Also, on a completely different topic, is anyone else still trying to process what we saw from Tesla’s battery day presentation? It was way more than I thought it was going to be.
Still curious about A few things like whether they’ll make their own LFP cells in the new format, since many of the improvements are outside the cathode and can be applied there, whether they’ll pass any of these innovations on to their 3rd party suppliers, Whether they will indeed solve their issues with the dry roll technology, whether the new 80mm cell size will fit into the Model 3 and Y if they remove the modules and go to Cell To Car design, and whether they will reduce prices with these battery savings or put all the extra money into continued expansion?
Hi Marcel.
I still have mixed feelings about that presentation.
It had a lot of great promises that could revolutionize the industry (simplify the manufacturing process), but little to offer today.
That CTS (cell-to-structure) battery doesn’t make any sense to me. It seems like Tesla just wanted to show the next step of CTP batteries, but it’s a step in the wrong direction. That CTS battery would make electric cars disposable. How the hell are we going to replace a battery if it stops working properly? Maybe I understood that part wrong and need to see the presentation again.
If the CTS battery is like I think it is, it reminds Apple’s disposable products… planned obsolescence at its core. When people compare Tesla to Apple I really don’t see it as a compliment. Apple is a lousy company.
I would prefer to see Tesla becoming more like an open-source company that has sustainable (long-lasting, reparable and upgradable) products.
Couldn’t the reasoning be that the pack outlast the lifetime of the car and doesn’t need to be repairable?
With all the cells glued together, the only way of replacing would be to replace the entire pack anyway. Maybe it’s still possible to do that, but it’s not clear from the presentation.
Sometimes a battery pack might get some cells that age a lot faster than others and this is only detected over time.
That’s why I really like the BYD Blade Battery, it’s like a server rack. Extremely easy to replace a battery cell.
https://pushevs.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2020/04/BYD-Blade-battery-with-CTP-technology.jpg
Ideally you measure the SOH (State of Health) of each cell and if there are some cells with very different values from the average, you replace them. These old cells could then be installed in a ESS (Energy Storage System) that also uses the CTP approach.
I agree, the BYD pack looks very nice. But still, replacing a cell will take some labour and the cost of the new cell. So when will it profitable to do?
With the new cells a Model 3 LR will still have 800 or so cells, so if one fails your range will drop by less then a kilometer. In BYD’s case it might be a little more, because they use very large cells.
If you can’t replace the entire pack on Tesla’s new ‘structural battery’ design, that’s certainly a disadvantage. But not being able to replace single cells, I guess that’s a legit design decision you can take when it benefits you in other areas.
That’s my main problem with the new CTS battery. I got the impression that we can’t replace the entire pack. I need to see the presentation again with more attention.
Nonetheless, having the ability to replace a single cell is important, especially because soon we’ll have high-voltage cells (5 V) that enable us to make battery packs with only 70 cells (all in series).
Hi, I have some remarks to this Tesla / BYD pack approach discusion. First of all it will be great to get the BYD Blade patents with figures to read in English. I must say that I do not study BYD approach a lot but still I found something.
1/ it seems that presented >1m long BYD Blade “cell” is not a single cell, but it is a module where at least two cells are connected in series. I saw a patent figure where this was shown. I think it is still complicated to manufacture single cell with more than ca 600 mm length. Also if I count the cells in your figure, there are only ca 54 “Blade modules” but you definitelly need at least 108s LFP cells in total.
2/ pouch and even prismatic formats are prone to puff up and so there is common practice that both are held compressed in solid modules. Only cylindrical format does not suffer by this feature. I suppose that the “Blade modules” are also not enough solid to avoid their puff up. So even if they are not somehow tied/compessed together in the pack (which i think they are), their expansion in time will be a crucial complication when you consider their removal/replacing. Maybe they solved it somehow but still i think it will not be a productive activity.
That would definitely be an issue if the cells are glued directly to the car frame. Currently in Model 3 and Y packs you can’t replace a single cell either, as they’re all glued into the modules with the fire retardant foam. I remember seeing Munro having to use a chisel or a pry bar to get a cell out when he was disassembling it.
For me the CTS aspect was the least interesting part of the presentation. Maybe They have some kind of solvent that melts the foam so you can remove cells? Or the cells are assembled into a pack with a thinner shell, since gluing the cells to the shell makes the pack very strong, and then that pack becomes the structural member in the frame? The Model S pack is super strong, but all the strength comes from the shell. This method would allow a very strong pack, but a big reduction in material.
The gains from the tabless cell and the increased silicon in the anode and dry electrode process can be applied to LFP batteries as well, and make a huge difference to manufacturing cost and energy use and capital expenditure, so those are a big deal.
I was expecting maybe a 20% decrease in cost and a 20% increase in density, so a 50+% decrease in cost, and a 50% increase in range seem huge. This really enables the more affordable EV and a massive increase in sales, and more importantly for everyone, enables the Semi to come to production.
That said, I think the biggest thing in the presentation is the massive reduction in cost of building their battery factories, combined with the combination of advancements that give them a clear pathway to 1TWh of battery production, with a really rapid ramp up.
I hope they will licence some of their patents to the other battery makers so these innovations can spread across the whole industry. In any case, the other battery makers will have to really up their game to keep up.
I think Tesla are assuming that their cell testing steps (stuff the Dahn’s group has become good at) are going to give very low probability of early cell failure, so they are not worried about faulty packs needing replacement. I agree with you that this seem optimistic, and potentially somewhat wasteful, but let’s see.
I was quite underwhelmed by the presentation – good for them to be trying to improve all aspects of the design/production, but none of this was unexpected. Surprising they won’t get to significant volume on their “game changing cells for almost 2 years. Mainly because many of the technologies are still in early stages, and not nearly perfected/integrated. This is, for example, a full 2 years after seeing Maxwell’s DBE tech and after 18 months of owning it outright.
This kind of “future product (or technology) will be better/cheaper” announcement, plus the $25k future car announcement, somewhat risks Osborning their current cars (and/or packs) for some portion of their buyers (“I’m gonna wait for the cheaper one with the newer battery tech” kind~of~thing).
Good that they are including LFP as one pillar, and that they say that many of the technology improvements can also be applied to LFP cathodes. But IMO they still don’t give LFP enough attention for its super low cost potential and “already good enough” performance. They talk about desperately wanting to make mass market EVs, their efforts seem to be focused on having the most fancy/attention-grabbing technology (which may not be the most cost effective to power the transition).
Announcing the Plaid Model S and then effectively saying it is now delayed over 12 months (it was due to go on sale summer or fall 2020) is also ridiculous. Just trying to keep up with Lucid and updated Taycan on paper. It is possible that Drew Baglino could be put in charge of the day to day (Like Gwynne Shotwell is at SpaceX), and Elon take a back seat and just focus on some fun engineering hobby areas (Mars?) and public appearances. All of the battery team seemed more keen on LFP than Elon => this suggests to me they are more focussed on mass market pricing revolution than he is.
At this rate they are looking headed to play a BMW-type-role in the automotive landscape – premium and good technology, but not moving the needle on mass market volumes. Chinese makers and the Renault-Nissans, PSAs or VAGs of this world are probably feeling happy to be left to take the largest slice of the EV market.
However – I suppose it is possible that Tesla are trying to be strategic/play a hand here to get mineral and cell suppliers working harder. Or at least they think that that is what they are doing. Not sure it will work. China’s LFP makers & their partnered automaker brands aren’t going to ask Tesla’s permission to disrupt the global passenger EV mass market.
I disagree a bit of the Osbourne effect…. In fact I think people thought there would be huge announcements for “ready to order” cars changes and that might in fact lead to that osburne effect for 1-3 months… but wait for a car for (possibly) 2 years (elon time?)?! Everyone knows that if they wait for 6 months or 1 year for a mobile phone, it will be much better for the same price… but this is always happening in technological items…it’s constant improvements… In EV technology, I believe these improvements will continue strongly not only in the battery side, but also in the efficiency of other crucial components (powertrain efficiency, energy consumption of accessories such as A/C). Bjorn the other day made a simple change (expensive one) to the car that if properly adapted, could improve efficiency, the change of rims with much lower weight thus reducing unsprung weight a lot… like this, many other parts of the cars can be improved…for sure…
Furthermore, legacy automakers believe with time and constant shifting of consummers to eletric, will have to bet more on R&D on EV’s and just not buying of-the-shelf solutions from supply-chain companies such as Bosch, Continental that just want to monetize their past investments (which sometimes are a bit outdated)…
Just my 2 cents..
Agreed Max.
I was also underwhelmed by Tesla’s presentation. I was hoping that Tesla would at least give us some useful figures, such as the cost per kWh and energy density (Wh/kg and Wh/L), but no, only percentages for products that could be 2 years away.
I still think that the best presentations we got this year were for the CTP cobalt-free batteries from Chinese companies (BYD and SVOLT). They gave us a lot of important figures, not just percentages.
Exactly as you say. Elon said they would be able to cut the cost by 50% but did not say what it is. He also said that in the last years cost reductions plateaued which might imply that they failed to reach 100usd/kWh cost by 2020.
Good point on the plateau statement, and what it might imply.
Thanks Pedro. I agree that more detailed figures would have been preferable – like we see from BYD and SVOLT.
There may be a simple explanation for this. Tesla probably negotiate the lowest cost cell contracts (being the highest volume). They could – understandably – be reluctant to broadcast current cell costing info. They might even be legally prevented from giving out this info by their suppliers (Pana,LG, CATL). Musk has said nothing concrete about cell/pack cost since June 2018 (when he talked of $100/kWh pack level by end of 2020… a price which may already have included/forecast some of the techniques we saw on Tuesday).
Despite the concerns I mentioned above, I’m increasingly thinking that Tesla’s downplaying of LFP is simply a strategic poker stance to encourage the nickel supply chain to keep flowing and strongly growing. Nickel – in huge volumes – is ALSO crucial for Tesla, since e.g. the Long Range Semi truck will absolutely need nickel-based cells to outcompete diesel (and potentially FCEVs). Same for other frontier applications to displace liquid fuels – I am very sure Musk with do an electric flight demonstrator (at least) at some point. LFP (even LFMP) wouldn’t be the optimal chemistry for these kinds of applications, even if it clearly is very well suited for mass market LDVs. If Tesla were to say openly that their highest volume vehicles will steadily transition to LFP, this could upset the Nickel supply chain/investments (which are absolutely necessary). Elon perhaps is playing this game, whereas Drew and the others are perhaps being less strategic/poker.
EIther way – they will have to quickly produce ‘good enough’ vehicles at *much* lower price points if they really want to be the mass market volume leaders. The others automakers I mentioned previously won’t wait for them. We need the BYDs, SVOLTS and CATLs to keep the industry moving forwards.
Keep up the great work Pedro, always a pleasure.
These discussions are always the most insightful of any related site. Thank you.
On the ‘good enough’ front, if MG can offer the new e5 estate for £28k (£25k including incentive) with 52kWh battery, it really doesn’t feel like much more ‘progress’ is needed (although I’d ideally like 25kWh more battery and 100kW charging to be my perfect specs).
If MG can offer these specs at that price (well below Zoe and Leaf I believe), why wouldn’t others in the near future?
I fully agree – I wrote about this – https://twitter.com/Dr_Maximilian/status/1307894002398539776
There’s another way to look at the presentation. A while ago there was a news message on electrive, that said LG Chem was spending about 2.2 billion (dollars or euro’s, I forgot) on increasing their global capacity from 70 to 100 GWh this year.
Tesla says they want to increase their own capacity from 0 to 3000 GWh in 10 years. They also said the new cells and the manufacturing process require 69% less upfront investment cost.
If you put the two things together, you could say Tesla has found a way to save 150 billion (dollars/euros) in the next 10 years.
The presentation focused on cost reduction and lowering the ecological footprint. You could say it was a bit boring and it didn’t give hard numbers about the cells, but it did address the two main arguments BEV-opponents always use in every discussion. So maybe it was aimed at a wider audience than just the Tesla-crowd.
I do not know what Tesla want to say about presented parameters of the new 4680 cell. Because the 5x more energy means that this cell will actually have lower volumetric energy density than its predecessor 2170 because the new format has ca 5.5x bigger volume, the same with the 6x more power which is only 8% improvement against 2170. We can expect some improvement in gravimetric density but I think that it will be not much better than 300 Wh/kg.
Thanks for sharing your insights Pajda.
On the positive side, as Max already pointed out, Tesla said that innovations like the new form factor and silicon anode can be introduced to multiple cathode chemistries.
We might see Tesla producing the 4680 cells with LFP, LNMO and NCA/NCM/NCMA cathodes.
https://pushevs.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2020/09/Teslas-diversified-cathode-approach.jpg
Exactly what I wanted to point out. Different chemistries are supposedly going to be used for different purposes. This makes a lot of sense since you do not need the same mixture in high performance vehicle, or family car, or long range hauler, or stationary home utility battery. I think home batteries will feature the cheapest and least demanding cells that do not need fancy cooling while Roadster and Semi, and Pickup will probably have the most advanced (and most expansive) version of cells. Model 3, Y 25K model will utilise Medium version of it.
In the Q&A section, answering a question about using the cells in other areas like marine applications and aviation, Musk says something like “I guess our new cells will reach 400 Wh/kg as well”. Maybe the word ‘eventually’ was in that sentence.
So like many here I was a bit disappointed Tesla didn’t reveal any meaningful specifications about the new cells and it’s pretty much a guessing game what the percentages all mean, but at least there’s some hope it might turn out okay.
My understanding of Elon answer on this particular question was clear: “We are not even close to 400 Wh/kg on cell level with current tech”. Yes I was disappointed too, they presented that they are finally close to “true silicon anode” which theoretically promises a huge gain in energy density, but my feeling is that the only visible gain in near future will be reducing the costs, probably tied with even worse cycle life than actual Tesla/Panasonic 2170 production (which is actually relatively bad and today totally outperformed by Samsung-SDI and LG Chem production in this particular parameter in 21700 format). So I am missing “absolute” energy density gain on cell level, like breaking at least 800 Wh/l. It seems to me that all near future Tesla “absolute” energy density gains will be based on better packaking efficiency, which is actually related to mechanical engineering not the battery chemistry.
Excellent. What does e6 stand for, is it a 6-seater (2 rows of 3 passengers each) or just a #.
Complete redesign with new type of battery and stiff steel is the way to go. In a crossover buying china and the world, e6 is the type of vehicle. 375 km WLTP is decent range.
490 kg lighter is significant. BYD is upping the game against rivals.
BYD has the e1, e2, e3, e5 and e6. The e1 is the smallest and the e6 is the largest.
They also registered a Han EV with the different front end design of the Han Plugin hybrid as “e9”.
https://www.autohome.com.cn/news/202008/1027622.html
Thanks Leo. I didn’t know that.
For the record, “registered (with MIIT)” does not equal “in production” or “on sale”. There are registered cars that never entered production and there are lots of registered cars that are produced, but only available to certain customers, like government agencies or fleet owners, or are export only.
Also the “e9” name comes from the photos BYD supplied to MIIT. It doesn’t mean that the car, when produced, will carry that name.
BYD has registered blade battery versions of the e2 and e3 in the latest batch of new cars.
http://www.miit.gov.cn/datainfo/viewCar?carId=302341
http://www.miit.gov.cn/datainfo/viewCar?carId=302477
http://www.miit.gov.cn/datainfo/viewCar?carId=302544
http://www.miit.gov.cn/datainfo/viewCar?carId=302812
Thanks Leo.
I was already writing an article on that topic but couldn’t find the cars on MIIT’s website to complete it.
May I bring in expenditures / prices?
If this year the pack price of Tesla batteries (LFP or NMC – not the same) will not reach 100 USD/kWh, can we estimate others to 150 USD/kWh?
In a 40 000 USD car a 70 kWh battery would cost some 10 000 USD, cca 25% of the total value. That is a lot, compared to 7 000 USD promised, i.e.17,5%.
How much is added by a proper Battery Thermal Management System in mass and in price?
Would it be fair to add them to the specific values of batteries? Do they offer real differentiation either in weight or price?
Nissan gave in, and the Arriya will have liquid cooled batteries – and CCS…
Total price of battery usually (sometimes on a pack level, but sometimes on a module or even cell level) already costs-in price of BMS. You have to check if this xUSD/kwh is on a pack level or cell level.
Thanks Rok, but my question refers to Battery THERMAL Management, especially liquid cooling systems: their relative mass and price.
With larger batteries air cooling is not enough, and that threatens the lifetime above 80% of original usefull capacity, i.e. less than 20% capacity loss.
When car makers refer to battery capacity warranty, is this level of degradation the threshold?
Buying a car is long term investment. batteris have a great chunk in value and one has to collect or estimate some characteristics to differentiate between producers and models