Chinese companies Geely and CATL announced early last autumn that they intend to present in the first quarter of 2023 a special version of the electric minivan ZEEKR 009 with a 140 kWh battery from the Qilin series, which will give a large and heavy car the ability to travel 822 km drive without reloading. Only now CATL has started mass production of such batteries, which is why the delivery of electric vehicles based on them will be delayed until the second quarter.
Image Credit: ZEEKR
This publication reports CnEVPost with reference to the Chinese media. It is emphasized that the Qilin series is generally not determined by the chemical composition of the batteries, but by the technology of their placement in the battery, which improves a number of performance characteristics, including a 13% increase in capacity with a constant volume. The Qilin technology achieves charge storage densities of up to 255 Wh/kg with lithium cells based on nickel, cobalt and manganese. There is also a cheaper option Charge storage density of 160 W‧h/kg in use Lithium batteries based on iron phosphate (LFP). Such batteries will be able to top up the charge from 10 to 80% in ten minutes when using productive high-capacity charging stations.
Whether such a change in Qilin’s battery production schedule will result in a delay in the debut of the special version ZEEKR 001, which is planned for the second quarter, is not concrete. This crossover, performed with a Qilin battery, promised to increase the mileage up to 1000 km without recharging. In addition to ZEEKR’s electric vehicles, Li Auto, Neta, Lotus and AITO are willing to use Qilin batteries, although the penultimate is also a Geely subsidiary, like ZEEKR. Since the ZEEKR 009 minivans with “regular” batteries are already on the market, the automaker was somewhat surprised by the presence of a large number of people who wanted to delay the delivery of ordered cars until the versions with the Qilin series battery are available are.
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