BYD Second Generation Blade Battery Performance Testing Reveals High Charging Temperatures and Impressive Resilience During Fire Safety Demonstration
We’re starting to see the first real world examples of BYD’s second generation of Blade Battery being used in China as the Chinese automotive giant continues to test the limits of megawatt charging. BYD claims that their real world data gathered during the trial was collected when a Fangchengbao Leopard 3 SUV was used as a test mule to determine how the new cells performed under the extreme electrical stress and to ensure the hardware remained stable at these incredible rates.
The 2nd generation Blade Battery reached temperatures as high as 76.4 C at peak during the test, which is a figure that has raised concerns with a lot of people working in the automotive space because it’s well over the 65 C figure typically quoted for lithium iron phosphate cells. Despite the impressive charging rate that would benefit owners massively, this seems to suggest that incredible charging speeds could damage long term health of the vehicle power system.
Industry experts explain that going over 70 C for an extended period can degrade the internal solid electrolyte interphase layer that enables stable movement of the lithium ions in the battery, the solid electrolyte interphase layer normally protect the moving of the ions from being interrupted, if the solid electrolyte interphase layer is worn away after the internal elements overheat too much, the battery could prematurely fail and that will shorten the lifespan of the SUV.
Even though the results from a megawatt charging cycle can appear to be very hot, BYD carried out a secondary demonstration focusing on the fire safety performance. The test engineer caused a short circuit in four individual battery cells in order to simulate and internal failure scenario, however the battery showed no signs of fire or smoke despite having a total of four cells short circuited for a total of twenty four hours.
