A new variant of lithium battery with an extraordinary useful life set to go into mass production in 2024

Further to last month’s insight on the rapid evolution of battery technology, another Chinese battery manufacturer has announced a leap forward.

Chinese-based Gotion High-Tech announced its Astroinno battery will go into mass production in 2024. The battery not only has cell energy density of 240Wh/kg (relative to the industry average at c.160Wh/kg) but is configured in a pack which can travel up to 1,000km on a single charge and has an extraordinary expected useful life of 4,000 full cycles prior to degradation at typical use (or 1,500 cycles on 18-minute fast charging).

This is a step change because present variants of lithium-ion batteries do not have long useful lives (typically eight to 12 years), especially when used with fast charging. The Astroinno battery’s minimum useful life is 1.5 million km which is c.10x currently available technology and relative to internal combustion engines estimated at 300-350 thousand km.

Once again, this highlights how quickly battery technology is advancing. On this trajectory, electric vehicles are set to easily overcome obstacles such as range anxiety, charging time and useful life. The mass adoption of electric vehicles (and batteries) is clearly underway and represents a range of investment opportunities.

T8 Energy Vision has unique exposures to various battery and energy storage technologies and their supply chains on the basis that we believe they represent an extraordinary investment opportunity at this relatively early stage of their evolution.