Zoomi Life

The Chinese company BYD, which we’ve covered before with their new BYD F3DM plug-in hybrid car, is making other moves to become the world’s leader in electric vehicle technology.

Already well-known for their battery technology, especially the Ni-MH batteries used in cell phones and laptops, BYD has announced that they will be releasing two new electric car drive trains featuring their new Fe-battery technology.

The F3e technology (full-electric drive train) allows for a top speed of over 150km/h and 0-100km/h acceleration of 13.5 seconds.  The battery technology allows for an average 300km range per charge with a battery life cycle of about 600,000km. All extremely impressive.  The drive train itself is great, but not what’s special here.  It’s the batteries that go with it.

These Fe batteries are low cost, produce no pollution, and are fully recyclable. They deliver voltage that’s twice as high as an equivalent-sized Ni-MH and cost less than comparable li-ion and similar batteries.

On another front, BYD has made investments into range-extended vehicle research, which includes their BYD DM (dual-mode) vehicle–an offshoot of the F3DM. It’s not a traditional gasoline-electric hybrid and BYD is being very closed-mouthed about the new technology.  They claim to have over 500 engineers working on the system and that it will revolutionize and change how hybrid vehicles are envisioned.

Probably a fair amount of marketing hype there, but it’s worth noting that they’ve been working on three fronts since entering the automotive industry: their standard battery tech, newer battery and EV tech, and now hybrid-EV tech as well.

Source: BYD