CATL makes its 620-mile EV battery official with 10 minutes charge to 430 miles range

The long-awaited 620-mile (1000km) battery from the world's biggest EV battery manufacturer is finally official and CATL has other pleasant surprises in store than simply beating Tesla's 4680 technology in terms of energy density. Granted, CATL's so-called Kirin battery does offer 13% higher capacity than Tesla's 4680 cells with the same size and chemistry, but it is also superior in other ways.

CATL says that its direct cell-to-pack technology that eschews the module design has achieved the world's highest volume utilization for an electric vehicle battery. The whopping 72% of the total pack size are individual battery cells that can hit an energy density of up to 255 Wh/kg, giving the battery "a range of over 1,000 km in a breeze."

That's an easy 620-mile range for the electric vehicles of CATL's future clients that will sign up for the Kirin battery, but the pack also has a superior large-surface liquid cooling technology which "increases the heat transfer area by four times, cuts thermal control time in half, and supports a hot start in 5 minutes and fast charging in 10 minutes."

CATL says that its record-beating Kirin battery will enter mass production for the first clients like Li Auto in 2023, but we'll probably have the chance to see it in action on various prototype models sooner. Li Auto has been teasing an EV that can be topped up with 400km range in 10 minutes for a while now and after CATL's announcement it became clear what battery technology it will use to be able to hit those numbers.

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