Contemporary Amperex Technology Company Limited (CATL) is currently the world’s leading manufacturer of electric vehicle batteries, with a 37% market share. Almost every major automaker, from Ford to Tesla, uses CATL batteries.
In April 2023, CATL announced its “densified battery,” which has an incredible 500 Wh/kg, twice the energy density of almost anything else on the market. For comparison, a typical lead-acid car battery can have over 50 Wh/kg, while lithium-ion EV batteries like those in the Tesla Model 3 can have up to about 265 Wh/kg.
CATL
The company says the compact battery was designed with safety and weight in mind – particularly to meet the needs of aviation and increase the range of clean aircraft.
Three months after this announcement, CATL established an aviation division in cooperation with the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC), a Chinese state-owned aviation company.
And since then, things have moved very quickly. On Tuesday, CATL announced that it had conducted a successful test flight of a 4-ton battery-powered aircraft. The battery storage, engine configuration, and any data on flight length, altitude, or speed appear to be closely guarded state secrets at the time of writing, but ChinaDaily reports that CATL aims to complete a commercial electric aircraft with a range of 2,000 to 3,000 km (1,240 to 1,865 miles) by 2027 or 2028.
An 8-ton aircraft is a far cry from a 31-ton Boeing 737 or a 41-ton Airbus A320, but a Learjet 70/75 weighs just over 7 tons and can fly with nine passengers on board. This seems to be the market CATL is initially targeting.
The range figures promised far exceed those of any clean passenger aircraft currently flying. Even futuristic battery-powered electric commercial aircraft concepts like the Elysian E9X promise no more than 1,000 km (621 miles), and even using liquid hydrogen as fuel, we don’t see range promises anywhere near that high. So if CATL can deliver on its promises, this is indeed a massive leap in aviation technology.
Chinese aviation authorities have already shown their willingness to advance futuristic electric air travel by fully certifying eHang’s eVTOL air taxi operations – years before U.S. or European regulators are ready to greenlight similar commercial aircraft in the West.
On the other hand, the more energy per weight a battery carries, the greater the likelihood of thermal runaway, and the more spectacular the consequences if something goes wrong. 500 Wh/kg is a very scary number in this context, so we hope that safety testing will be a top priority as CATL works to bring this remarkable aircraft into service within a few years.
Source: ChinaDaily
