CATL is cutting EV battery replacement price 10x with new structural pack repair service

Facing millions of electric vehicles coming out of warranty in the next few years, the world's biggest battery maker aims to lower battery replacement prices to palatable levels from the current tag of half the car's value.

CATL's subsidiary Ning has now launched a structural battery pack repair service that lowers the typical replacement price ten times. According to CATL's analysis, the average battery replacement costs $13,750, or nearly 51% of the typical purchase price of a new electric car in China, its biggest market. For used electric cars, the battery replacement can cost more than the residual value of the vehicle itself.

This is rather unsustainable for the viability of the second-hand EV market and most owners who are faced with such a high replacement cost after the lifespan of their pack may choose to ditch the vehicle altogether.

Structural battery packs or the so-called cell-to-pack (CTP) designs, where the battery cells are part of the structural frame in the chassis of the vehicle, are cheaper for manufacturers to implement. Tesla, for example, introduced the structural battery pack concept with its 4680 batteries used in some Model Y batches. The taller, wider 4680 cells can provide structural support directly instead of being wrapped in an expensive metal housing that, however, makes the whole pack easier to swap out. Teardowns of the Model Y or Cybertruck's structural battery packs, however, showed that they are directly integrated in the frame with the cells used as support and copious amount of hard to remove adhesive between them, spelling the end of cheap battery repairs.

A lot of electric vehicle makers have followed suit and introduced structural packs that lead to very high repairability costs and may result in a moribund second-hand EV market after the battery warranty expires. That is why CATL is now thinking about how to lower the depreciation rate of electric vehicles with various projects spanning from introducing 15-year EV battery warranties, building a network of swap stations, and introducing new repair methods.

Instead of replacing the whole structural pack that can cost more than half of the EV price as new, CATL's Ning aftermarket service has developed methods to repair them that cost between $1,375-$2,750, or up to ten times less than a direct replacement. This will allow CATL to complete the cycle from affordable cell manufacturing to cheap replacements, which, given its status as the world's largest EV battery maker, could do wonders for the used electric car market.

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