From HEV to Ultra-fast Charging: Sunwoda's Breakthrough Path in Battery Technology
In 2026, carmakers are ramping up fierce competition in charging speed.
Recently, a number of automakers including BYD and Zeekr have successively rolled out their own ultra-fast charging solutions, achieving an energy replenishment speed of over 1000kW — it takes less than 5 minutes to charge from 20% to 80%.
Many industry insiders predict that after the early-stage priorities of battery safety and charging network density, energy replenishment efficiency has become another key factor restricting the popularization of electric vehicles. Some people also say that this is likely to be the last factor restricting the mass adoption of electric vehicles.
At the same time, at both technical and commercial levels, the improvement of energy replenishment speed also represents the culmination of many challenges in automotive electrification. From the underlying batteries, to vehicle development, to the construction of charging infrastructure, almost no link is dispensable.
Today, the power battery industry chain is fully prepared to embrace the popularization of ultra-fast charging for new energy vehicles.
"Energy replenishment efficiency, the last barrier to the popularization of electric vehicles"
"The past year 2025 was a year of 'eliminating the old and ushering in the new' for the power battery industry." Dr. He Xuan, Assistant to President and General Manager of Product Line of Sunwoda Power, commented on the current power battery industry in a recent exclusive interview with 36Kr.
In his view, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles exceeding 50% is a key milestone in the industry. In the early stage, the public, automakers and power battery enterprises all paid more attention to range or energy density. Now, with the gradual popularization of new energy vehicles, the charging speed of batteries, all-scenario safety and all-round performance have begun to receive more attention.
Looking back at the history of electric vehicles, the earliest challenge for electric vehicles was energy density. Before lithium batteries emerged, lead-acid batteries had too low energy density to meet the speed requirements of modern cars. The concept of "electric vehicle" was long tied to low-speed "electric bicycles" and shuttle "electric sightseeing cars". It was not until the early 21st century, when high-energy-density lithium batteries were applied to electric vehicles, that this problem was solved.
Lithium batteries made electric vehicles possible, but also brought new challenges — safety. This is closely related to the physicochemical properties of lithium batteries. Lithium is located in the upper left corner of the periodic table of elements and is the metal with the strongest reducibility. Compared with common secondary batteries such as lead-acid batteries and nickel-metal hydride batteries in the past, lithium batteries are more prone to thermal runaway and have a greater spread risk. Especially under abusive conditions such as high temperature and mechanical collision, the risk of lithium batteries is further amplified.
In the early stage of the development of new energy passenger vehicles, energy density and battery safety became the two core indicators of the power battery industry. The pursuit of energy density by automakers, transmitted to the public, has formed the pursuit of cruising range. For passenger vehicles where every inch of space in the cabin is precious, energy density is directly linked to cruising range. This anxiety about cruising range and safety even triggered a binary opposition between the ternary lithium and lithium iron phosphate technical routes in terms of policy and public opinion.
After 2020, with the continuous evolution of power battery technology, the opposition between the ternary lithium and lithium iron phosphate technical routes began to ease. The safety of ternary lithium batteries has been significantly improved, and then relying on higher energy density and stronger performance, it has become the mainstream in the mid-to-high-end market. The energy density shortboard of lithium iron phosphate has also been rapidly compensated by China's power battery industry chain, and with longer service life and lower cost, it has achieved outstanding performance in the low-to-mid-end market.
However, in recent years, the power battery industry has not stopped its pace of evolution. At present, with the continuous improvement of power batteries in safety, cost, energy density and other aspects, as well as the gradual improvement of the charging network, the safety and energy replenishment convenience of new energy vehicles have been greatly improved, but except for the battery swapping mode, the charging speed of new energy vehicles is still far slower than that of traditional fuel vehicles.
Industry insiders sigh that in the era of fuel vehicles, no one cared about the size of the fuel tank. But in the era of electric vehicles, cruising range has become the core configuration that distinguishes high and low trims. If new energy vehicles can achieve "the same energy replenishment speed as fuel vehicles", their penetration rate will be greatly increased.
"The same refueling speed as fuel vehicles is first determined by batteries"
Achieving the same energy replenishment speed as fuel vehicles is a great vision that requires the joint efforts of automakers, power battery suppliers and charging service providers. The first step of this vision is inseparable from the underlying support of batteries.
In the field of power batteries, the charge-discharge rate, energy density and safety of batteries are often regarded as an "impossible triangle" — at the cell level, generally speaking, the higher the charge-discharge rate of the battery, the more severe its heat generation. Heat generation not only affects battery life, but also increases the risk of thermal runaway. Manufacturers can add safety designs in all aspects such as cell materials, process flow, thermal management and active safety design to improve battery safety, but this often sacrifices energy density. Therefore, developing a practical and safe flash-charging battery is extremely difficult.
How to improve the charge-discharge rate of the battery while ensuring the safety, service life and energy density of the battery, so as to obtain stronger performance and faster charging speed? The answer usually focuses on two directions: on the one hand, reduce the internal resistance of the battery to fundamentally reduce battery heat generation; on the other hand, optimize battery thermal management to improve the cooling performance of the battery, so that the heat generated by the battery can be dissipated faster, and combined with various active safety designs to avoid thermal runaway of the battery.
To achieve these two points, each power battery enterprise has different problem-solving ideas. Sunwoda has also given its own answer:
Taking the ultra-fast charging battery of Sunwoda equipped on Li Auto i6 as an example, at the material end, it comprehensively reduces material impedance through the compounding of nanoscale and microscale lithium iron phosphate materials, combined with high-conductivity carbon layer design and low-resistance high-conductivity diaphragm technology; at the structural end, it adopts the lamination process and full-tab structure, which significantly reduces the internal resistance of structural parts. The combination of the two reduces the internal resistance of its cell to 0.36mΩ, lowering the temperature rise during ultra-fast charging by 6°C; during ultra-fast charging, the battery pack can adopt direct cooling and direct heating technology for precise temperature control, and the coolant can directly enter the cold plate, increasing the heat dissipation efficiency by more than 10%.
At the same time, Sunwoda has built a four-layer safety system for its ultra-fast charging batteries, covering intrinsic safety, passive safety, active safety, and safety under full life cycle/extreme harsh working conditions. Intrinsic safety prevents lithium precipitation, controls temperature rise and enhances heat dissipation, for example, a 15C ultra-high rate redundant design is adopted to eliminate the risk of lithium precipitation from the root;
In addition to the two "mandatory questions" of reducing internal resistance and improving heat dissipation, Sunwoda has also completed an "additional question" — Sunwoda cooperates with automakers and partners, building a "vehicle-pile-cloud" integrated safety system that can capture the early signs of lithium precipitation in the battery pack at the millisecond level, and adjust the current in real time to guide lithium ions, avoiding the formation of lithium dendrites that may pierce the diaphragm and cause short circuit. A variety of safety strategies enable Sunwoda's ultra-fast charging batteries to achieve both high charge-discharge rate and safety.
"From HEV to ultra-fast charging, the re-evolution of power batteries"
Looking back at history, Sunwoda is one of the earliest enterprises in China's power battery industry to lay out ultra-fast charging batteries.
In the power battery industry, the most well-known label of Sunwoda is HEV battery. Ultra-fast charging batteries and HEV share the same technical foundation. Moreover, the HEV batteries that Sunwoda is best at are not ordinary HEV batteries, but HEV batteries with high charge-discharge rate. In other words, Sunwoda has sufficient technical reserves in the field of ultra-fast charging.
In 2018, Sunwoda was selected by Nissan, and jointly developed the dedicated battery for e-Power with Nissan. As an oil-electric hybrid technology, e-Power is neither the early Japanese-style light hybrid solution, nor obviously different from the current mainstream plug-in hybrid and extended-range solutions in China. In the e-Power system, 100% of the vehicle's driving power comes from electric drive, and the engine is only used for power generation and does not drive the wheels. At the same time, e-Power is not an extended-range solution, it does not support plug-in charging, and is fully powered by a "small battery" of about 2kWh.
Achieving pure electric drive only with a 2kWh "small battery" means that the battery requires an extremely high charge-discharge rate. It is understood that the charge-discharge rate of early e-Power batteries is around 30C, which far exceeds that of BEV models in terms of indicators. Today, Sunwoda's HEV products have achieved 70C flash charging and 80C flash discharging. Public data shows that Sunwoda has ranked first in China's HEV lithium battery sales for five consecutive years, with cumulative shipments exceeding 2 million units.
He Xuan said that inside Sunwoda, the Nissan e-Power project is called the "Huangpu Military Academy". It not only helped Sunwoda establish the technical foundation of high-power and high-reliability batteries, but also helped Sunwoda cultivate a large number of technical and management talents. These technology and talent reserves have yielded tangible returns in the era of the outbreak of ultra-fast charging batteries.
In 2022, Sunwoda launched the first generation of BEV ultra-fast charging batteries for the pure electric market. In 2024, Sunwoda launched the 3.0 flash charging battery, supporting a 6C peak charging rate. In 2025, Sunwoda released the 4.0 flash charging battery, with a peak charging rate of 15C, and increased the charging current to 1800A for the first time; it can achieve a maximum energy replenishment of 150km+ in 1 minute and 450km in 5 minutes. At present, Sunwoda has reserved a full range of products from 4C to 10C+ (phosphate series / ternary series / mixed blend, etc.), covering all market segments such as BEV/PHEV/EREV/HEV.
In fact, the changes brought by ultra-fast charging will not be limited to the passenger vehicle sector. In recent years, with the in-depth advancement of electrification transformation, new energy has ushered in a new round of outbreak in the field of freight commercial vehicles such as highways, ports and mines. Dedicated power batteries for heavy trucks have also become the focus of the industry.
In 2025, Sunwoda ushered in an outbreak in the commercial vehicle market. It is predicted that in 2026, Sunwoda will achieve 3-5 times growth in the field of commercial vehicle power batteries. Sunwoda has also strengthened battery R&D for the freight market. At present, Sunwoda's 268Ah large-capacity lithium iron phosphate cell has realized 15-minute fast charging (10%-80% SOC).
In terms of future product layout, the upcoming "Sunwoda Gen3 Ultra-fast Charging Battery for Commercial Vehicles" adopts multi-tab overcurrent technology, which reduces the ohmic internal resistance by 12%, and uses cladding cooling for the heat source, so that the maximum temperature rise during 10min ultra-fast charging is ≤60°C, which inhibits the heat generation of the cell during operation. With the support of many cutting-edge technologies, Sunwoda's third-generation commercial vehicle batteries can greatly shorten vehicle waiting time and improve the operational efficiency of commercial scenarios.
At the same time, "Sunwoda Gen3 Long-life Battery for Commercial Vehicles" introduces pre-lithiation technology and long-life platform system, achieving more than 10000 cycles of service life, providing more warranty support for commercial users to cope with different operation scenarios.
"Solid-state batteries, global expansion, humanoid robots: the power battery industry is looking for the second growth curve"
In 2026, with the popularization of ultra-fast charging batteries and the follow-up of automakers and charging networks, China's new energy vehicle industry is expected to usher in a revolution in energy replenishment efficiency.
In He Xuan's view, in the next 2 years, mainstream new energy vehicle products in the 100,000-200,000 RMB market segment will be generally equipped with 5-6C ultra-fast charging batteries. For products priced at 200,000 RMB and above, ultra-fast charging solutions above 10C will become one of the core configurations that bring product premium.
The improvement of charging speed brought by ultra-fast charging is expected to attract more fuel vehicle owners to switch to new energy vehicles, and can also become the core driving force for some new energy vehicle owners to replace their cars. There is no doubt that this will become a new opportunity for power battery manufacturers.
In recent years, with the intensification of competition in the power battery industry, industry leaders are all looking for new breakthroughs. Whether it is technology iteration or industry change, it may bring new variables to the battery industry.
Taking the technological upgrade brought by solid-state batteries as an example, at present, Sunwoda has completed the verification of two generations of products in the semi-solid state field and has mass production capacity, with a power density of 360Wh/kg. In October 2025, Sunwoda released the polymer all-solid-state battery "Sunwoda · Bi Xiao", with an energy density exceeding 400Wh/kg, and announced that it will put into operation a 0.2GWh pilot production line.
However, in He Xuan's view, solid-state batteries may not bring disruptive changes to the power battery and new energy vehicle sectors in the short term. He believes that liquid batteries still have room for improvement in charge-discharge rate, energy density, safety performance and other aspects. When the vehicle cruising range reaches 1000km, further improvement of cruising range may hardly be converted into product competitiveness; it is estimated that by 2030, the penetration rate of solid-state batteries in the new energy vehicle sector will still be less than 20%, which is only applicable to some high-end models; however, in the fields of consumer electronics, low-altitude aircraft and humanoid robots, solid/semi-solid batteries will have more development space thanks to higher energy and power density.
In recent years, humanoid robots have become the focus of public discussion, and China has become a highland of the humanoid robot industry chain. Different from automotive power batteries, humanoid robots have higher requirements for energy density, power density, structural applicability and strength. Some products may need customized special-shaped batteries due to space layout reasons. Therefore, compared with automotive power batteries, the battery form of humanoid robots needs to be closer to the extreme thinness and lightness of consumer batteries. In this field, Sunwoda has also launched solutions based on pouch cells and cylindrical cells respectively.
Compared with solid-state batteries and humanoid robot batteries, the booming global expansion of China's new energy vehicle industry has brought more possibilities for the second growth curve to power battery manufacturers. At present, Sunwoda has built production bases in India, Vietnam, Hungary, Morocco, Thailand and other places to serve partners in China and overseas. Replicating more of China's power battery industry models overseas to promote the green transformation of the global mobility and transportation sectors is becoming the new mission of Chinese power battery enterprises represented by Sunwoda.