BYD Europe anticipates that its ‘game-changing’ new Blade Battery marks the start of a new era of safety and performance for the electric vehicle (EV) industry in Europe.

With the uptake for EVs across the continent beginning to gather pace, the Blade Battery’s ultra-safe credentials sets it apart from conventional Lithium Iron-Phosphate battery technology and, BYD believes, gives it a significant USP in the EV sector.

The BYD Blade Battery

BYD’s new Blade Battery headlines the recently-revealed specification for the company’s new seven-seat 2021-model BYD Tang SUV – the first car powered by BYD’s latest battery technology for the Norwegian market. The BYD Tang completed a successful market introduction in Norway in 2020 with BYD confident that the new Blade Battery will provide a compelling motive for customers purchasing 2021-models. Production of the 2021 BYD Tang model for Norway will commence in the second quarter of 2021, with the first cars expected to hit Norwegian roads in late summer.

New design takes Blade Battery to next level

The revolutionary new Blade Battery offers new safety levels for the EV industry today. Following an exhaustive development programme, the Blade Battery returned truly impressive, class-leading test results; a stringent nail-penetration test confirmed the Blade Battery’s surface temperature reached a remarkably low 30º - 60º C while emitting no smoke or fire.

Further tests subjected the Blade Battery to a 300º C furnace test and a 260% overcharging test, neither of which resulted in fire or explosive response. The results provide evidence that the Blade Battery dramatically out-performs traditional ternary lithium batteries and Lithium Iron-Phosphate technologies.

The Blade Battery’s single-cell design boasts notably compact dimensions of just 96cm long, 9cm wide and 1.35cm high. These single cells are then placed in an array and inserted into a battery pack in a blade-type arrangement. BYD engineers have also decreased the cubic volume of the battery installation by 50%, thus creating additional space for vehicle stowage or other ancillary equipment.

This compact design, coupled with class-leading safety credentials, offer a marked competitive edge for BYD and, moreover, a step-change for the entire EV industry.

The implementation of hundreds of robots form the bedrock for efficient and stable production

Top performance

Aside from its clear safety advantages, BYD’s Blade Battery also delivers on power output. For longevity, the Blade Battery tops 1.2 million km after 3,000 cycles of charging / discharging, while headline performance figures for the Blade Battery-powered BYD Tang include a single-charge range of 505km (NEDC) and acceleration from 0-100 km/h in just 4.6-seconds. The BYD Tang’s Blade Battery installation recharges from 30% to 80% of full capacity in an impressively short 30-minutes, with DC power output of 110kW.

The combination of safety, long life-cycle and extensive single-charge range capability, places the BYD Blade Battery in a class of its own.

‘Intelligent’ Chongqing production facility

The Blade Battery is produced at BYD’s ultra-modern ‘intelligent’ production facility in Chongqing, China, where the 10 billion yuan (1.3 billion EU) site delivers an annual production capacity of 20GWh. Strict standards of cleanliness are matched only by those found in comparable LCD production facilities, with moisture levels precisely regulated alongside a constantly maintained temperature of 25º C.

BYD’s Blade Battery Factory in Chongqing

Our new Blade Battery is a game-changer for the EV industry,” said BYD Europe Managing Director, Isbrand Ho, “our highly skilled team of engineers have worked tirelessly to deliver even higher levels of safety – and this is a crucial factor for passenger car buyers. The Blade Battery,” he said, “is the culmination of over 25-years of experience in rechargeable battery innovation, combining the latest technologies with the latest in creative thinking and production techniques.”

The factory’s fully-automatic and highly precise production system