A look at the CATL Shenxing Pro battery pack technology. Are CATL going to run out of names as they hype the Shenxing technology and mature the design?
- 2023: Shenxing – LFP chemistry with a 4C charge rate and all bundled into the CTP pack design
- 2024: Shenxing Plus – 205 Wh/kg energy density and can add 600 km range in 10 minutes and give 1000 km total range.
- 2025: Shenxing Pro – LFP CTP
The claims are significant [1]:
- Long Life
- 758 km WLTP range and a record-breaking 12-year / 1,000,000 km lifespan, driving breakthroughs in battery lifespan and range performance
- 9% degradation after the first 200,000 km
- Fast Charging
- 478 km WLTP range in just 10 minutes
- 410 km of range in 20 minutes at –20°C
- 10-year / 240,000 km warranty
- No Propagation – NP 3.0 technology
- enables sustained high-voltage supply for over an hour post-thermal runaway
- supports L3 and L4 autonomous driving
- Wave Cells
- cooling systems and fixation to be applied from any direction
- increases battery pack stiffness by 25% – doubles durability
- Cell-to-Body
- 76% volumetric efficiency
We can dig a bit deeper into each of these.
Long Life
The long life looks fabulous at the high level for an electric vehicle. Less impressive though when we compare this to LFP cells that are now able to cycle 6,000 to 12,000 times.
- 758 km WLTP range and a record-breaking 12-year / 1,000,000 km lifespan, driving breakthroughs in battery lifespan and range performance
- 1,000,000km / 758km = 1,320 cycles
- including degradation down to 70% SOH: 1,000,000km / (758km x 70%) = 1,885 cycles
- 9% degradation after the first 200,000 km
This post has been built based on the support of and sponsorship from: Resonate Testing Ltd, Quarto Technical Services, Eatron Technologies and About:Energy
Fast Charging
My simple calculation shows that the fast charging is 63% SoC in 10 minutes.
- 478 km WLTP range in just 10 minutes
- 478km / 758km = 63% of the battery SoC
- 410 km of range in 20 minutes at –20°C
- 410km / 758km = 54%
- 10-year / 240,000 km warranty
Not perhaps as impressive as the BYD 1MW charging.
Charging at the Speed of a Petrol Pump
Let us look at this based on the 400km added in 5 minutes claim from BYD for their latest electric vehicle and charging system.
No Propagation
This is an area where CATL are making huge claims.
- enables sustained high-voltage supply for over an hour post-thermal runaway
- supports L3 and L4 autonomous driving
Looking at the CATL patents in this area we see a comprehensive collection from cell, BMS and pack:
- Cell
- Patent CN223124000U [3] describes the pressure relief valve area and relative material thickness, ensuring that the cell case doesn’t rupture during failure.
- BMS
- Patent WO2025167603A1 [5] offers a neural network based thermal runaway risk prediction for each battery pack in the energy storage battery system.
- Pack
- Patent CN120031877A [4] describes the use of point cloud data to enhance the production quality of the battery pack.
These patents just show a flavour for those being posted by CATL and at this point we don’t know exactly what this pack is using. However, the depth and breadth of the CATL patents in this area show the technical knowledge base that they have developed in thermal propagation and battery safety.
Wave Cells
The cell has a raised shoulder design. Thus allowing the top outer areas of the cell to be cooled or restrained mechanically.
In a battery pack this would allow cooling plates to be bonded to this area. Clearance would be required for the busbars and cell venting. However, this does open up the opportunity to cool the top and bottom of the cell and structurally hold them.
The BYD Blade cell already allows the cells to be bonded and cooled on the top and bottom. This appears to be CATL’s answer to the BYD patents.
The CATL patent [2] shows a slight variation on this design, the patent description translated reads:
……..the raised portion protruding toward a side away from the electrode assembly along the second direction; a first electrode terminal provided on the raised portion…..
Thank you to Power9 Tech for supporting us in finding the patents and sharing their knowledge.
Cell-to-Body
The claim on the overall efficiency is perhaps best compared to other battery packs (data from battery pack database).
Volumetric efficiency:
- CATL Shenxing Pro = 76%
- BYD Seal = 70.2%
- Zeekr 001 140kWh = 50.6%
Based on the data in our database the CATL Shenxing Pro is the highest volumetric efficiency design to date.
References
- CATL Launches Shenxing Pro, Europe’s Optimal Solution for E-Mobility at IAA Mobility 2025, CATL
- Battery monomer, battery, power utilization device and energy storage device, CN 223052344 U
- Battery cell, battery device and electricity utilization device, CN223124000U
- Battery pack appearance defect detection method, device, equipment, medium and program product, CN120031877A
- Thermal runaway risk prediction method and apparatus, device, and storage medium, WO2025167603A1
It would be interested to see if this design of the battery cell with raised shoulders mean they switched from winding to stacking or Z fold of internal layers. Winding is cheapest to produce but has lowest internal volumetric efficiency.