REAL-WORLD SOLUTION: Chery’s Rhino battery will address charging time, durability, and safety issues associated with current EV battery technology.
CHERY GROUP, encompassing brands Chery and Omoda-Jaecoo, has showcased its latest battery technology at the firm’s Auto Battery Night in Wuhu.
The ultra-fast charging battery, dubbed Rhino, is said to be capable of delivering 500km range from just eight minutes charge.
Alongside its fast-charging time and impressive range offering, the Rhino battery is also claimed to support up to 5000 charge cycles, positioning it, Chery says, as a “long-life solution for both private and fleet buyers”.
The Rhino battery is also said to be one of the brand’s safest yet with a “three lines of defence” approach that combines advanced materials, structural protection, and cloud-based battery condition monitoring to deliver “full-spectrum protection”.
Chery says it has subjected the battery to six extreme scenarios through testing, including high and low temperatures, salt exposure, collisions, underbody impacts and water immersion.
The Rhino battery family will span multiple applications, including in battery electric and hybrid models, and future solid-state variants.
The latter was a major focus of Chery’s Auto Battery Night, the manufacturer outlining significant RMB 10 billion ($A2.1b) investment in next-generation battery development and a team of up to 1200 engineers.
Chery says its current solid-state battery prototypes are already achieving energy densities of 400Wh/kg, with a roadmap targeting 600Wh/kg unlocking potential driving ranges of more than 1500km – sufficient to drive from Sydney to Adelaide on a single charge.
