BEIJING, June 23 (TMTPOST)— Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL), the world’s largest electric vehicle (EV) battery company, seems to give Tesla’s Chinese rival Li Auto Inc Seems a major boost as soon as next year.

Source: Visual China

“See you next year,” Li Auto chairman and CEO Li Xiang said at a social media posted and forwarded an auto industry commentator’s note for CATL’s latest battery Qilin, backed a third generation of its CTP (cell-to-pack) technology. Released on Thursday, Qinlin boasts a record-breaking volume utilization efficiency of 72% and an energy density of up to 255 Watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg). More notably, it achieves the highest integration level in the world so far, capable of delivering a range of over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) on a single charge, and with the same chemical system and the same pack size, it can deliver 13% more power than the 4680 battery, which is equipped with EV from CATL’s key customer Tesla.

Li’s post, though not specifying the battery brand, soon stirred speculations in the market. Some of people in the industry deemed it an implication of Li Auto’s application for Qilin in the near term, since the note Li forwarded commented that CATL’s CTP3.0 battery has one more important feature besides highest integration level: a fast charging rate of 400 cycles of 15-minute (4C). “Now that CATL’s 4C fast charging came, we can imagine what will comes next, given the recent plans some of companies worked to adopt the 800-volt vehicles ,” the note suggested Li Auto and other EV makers that sought to shift to high-voltage architecture EVs are certainly in favor of Qilin. Li’s post also indicated Li Auto would like to use Qilin in its all-electric model as the company planned to launch its first all-electric model in 2023, coinciding with the year that CATL is scheduled to start mass production of the battery.

Li Auto has decided to use Qinlin in its future new energy vehicles, a CATL insider later Thursday confirmed to Shanghai Securities News, the national financial newspaper owned by Xinhua News Agency.

Earlier this week, Li Auto unveiled its second model Li L9, a six-seat, full-size flagship SUV which delivers a CLTC range of 1,315 kilometers and a WLTC range of 1,100 kilometers. With the same size as the flagship SUVs from Mercedes-Benz and BMW, L9 comes with a starting retail price of RMB459,800 (US$68,650), less than half of similar SUVs’ from two German luxury auto giants.

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