By ZHOU Xiaoyang

Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio unleashed its big beast battery for next year on January 9. The new tech is such a gamechanger that other lithium battery makers have looked on aghast as their stocks flickered and dimmed.

"It has both solid electrodes and electrolytes," MO Ke, president of RealLi Research told Jiemian News. The solid battery is safer and carries a heavier energy density.

With mass production of such batteries is in sight, ordinary lithium batteries will become quickly obsolete. However, what Nio has on offer is a semi-solid-state battery, nothing “brand new” in the industry. Semi-solid batteries use about half the liquid electrolyte of mainstream competitors.

Nio founder LI Bin admits that the current release is not entirely solid, and that mass production of truly solid batteries is still a long way off.

On January 11, Li said that the company that Nio is currently working with is the pacesetters in the industry. Insiders reckon that to be Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL).

Mo believes semi-solid or quasi-solid will never hold much more power than they now do, but are considerably safer. They will gradually be industrialized and are expected to take four to five years to be used in all vehicles.