Gotion LMFP battery delivers 1000km range

GOTION High Tech, one of the world’s top EV battery manufacturers, has announced that a ‘breakthrough’ lithium-iron-manganese-phosphate (LMFP) battery is almost production ready, and says the unit can deliver a driving range of up to 1000km from a single charge.

Until now, only more expensive nickel-cobalt (NCM) batteries have provided that kind of range.

The Astroinno L600 LMFP battery will provide cheaper, smaller, and even more powerful battery packs for electric vehicles by building upon the LFP chemical formula familiar to batteries already in use by some manufacturers, including BYD and Tesla.

Adding manganese to the mix enables greater weight energy density within similar packaging confines, bumping the typical Watt-hour to kilogram (Wh/kg) ratio for single cell from 190Wh/kg to 240Wh/kg.

Gotion High Tech says the battery will cost around five per cent less than a conventional LFP battery pack to produce in terms of dollars per kilowatt hour, making it around 25 per cent cheaper than a comparable NCM battery.

“In recent years, lithium iron phosphate technology has regained the recognition of the market, with market share continuing to increase,” explained Gotion High Tech executive president for international business, Dr Cheng Qian.

“Meanwhile, the energy density growth of mass produced LFP batteries has encountered bottlenecks and further improvement requires an upgrade of the chemical system, so LFP batteries doped with manganese were developed.

“Our Astroinno L600 LMFP battery cell, which has passed all safety tests, has a weight energy density of 240Wh/kg, a volume energy density of 525Wh/L, a cycle of 4000 times at room temperature, and a cycle life of 1800 times at high temperatures.

“The volumetric cell-to-pack ratio has reached 76 per cent after adopting the L600 cell, and the system energy density has reached 190Wh/kg, surpassing the pack energy density of current mass produced NCM cells.

“It is due to the high energy density of the Astroinno battery that we can enable a range of 1000km without relying on NCM materials.”

In real-world terms the high cycle numbers mean the battery should be able to offer up to two million kilometres of driving life, or around 130 years’ worth of average driving based on average per annum usage of 15,000km.

Dr Cheng said the ‘breakthrough’ is the result of a decade of in-house research on LMFP materials.

Gotion High Tech, which is Chinese-owned and US-based, has seemingly solved the challenges of manganese dissolution at high temperatures, low conductivity and low compaction density typically associated with the formula by using a combination of coprecipitation doping encapsulation, new granulation technology and new electrolyte additives.

Further, advances in the design of the pack itself have allowed Gotion High Tech to reduce the number of structural elements by 45 per cent, lower weight by 32 per cent, and reduce the length of wiring used within the pack from 303 metres to just 80.

The Astroinno battery pack uses thermal insulation materials than can withstand temperatures up to 1200°C and provides four layers of rapid heat exhausting channels.

Gotion High Tech says the unit has passed all penetration, hot box, overcharge, over-discharge, thermal runaway, crush, and short circuit tests based on the latest standards.

Production of the unit is expected to commence in early 2024.