Gotion High Tech, a battery startup from China, unveiled its new L600 lithium-manganese-iron-phosphate (LMFP) Astroinno battery at its annual technology conference in Hefei, Anhui Province, claiming it will enable a range of 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) on a single charge.
With mass production set to begin in 2024, the new Astroinno pack is said to have already passed all the necessary safety tests and that it can potentially last for up to 4,000 charge-discharge cycles, which equates to roughly 2.4 million miles (4 million kilometers), thus exceeding the average lifespan of a car.
According to The Independent, the company spent 10 years developing the cells in-house to make them commercially viable and overcome previous issues with this type of battery, which have suffered low conductivity, low compaction density, and manganese dissolution at high temperatures, meaning they were too inefficient and heavy to be used successfully in EVs.
Gotion, which has an office in Fremont, California, says that with the help of new electrolyte additives, co-precipitation, doping encapsulation, and new granulation technology, the L600 Astroinno battery no longer suffers from the problems of Manganese leaching at high temperatures.
The pack is wrapped in a sandwich structure with double-sided liquid cooling and a minimalist design approach, which reduces the number of structural parts by 45 percent and lowers the weight of the structural components by 32 percent, compared to previous iterations.
"Astroinno L600 LMFP cell achieves 240 Wh/kg in gravimetric energy density and 525Wh/L for volumetric energy density. It can achieve more than 4,000 cycles at room temperature and 1800 cycles at high temperature, easily achieves 18 minutes of fast charging, and passes all safety tests. Because of the high energy density of Astroinno battery, we can also achieve a range of 1,000km without relying on NCM material," said Cheng Qian, the executive president of Gotion Global.
Comparatively, the silicon anode lithium-ion cells made by Amprius have an energy density of 450 Wh/kg, while Tesla’s 4860-type cells, which use a graphite anode, offer an estimated energy density of 272-296 Wh/kg.
Volkswagen is already one of Gotion’s customers, but the Chinese battery manufacturer hasn’t disclosed what vehicle will be the first to receive its new L600 cells. In related news, the maker of the Astroinno is planning a $2.3 billion battery factory in Michigan’s Green Charter Township, so it will be interesting to see how things unfold.
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