BYD Auto launched the BYD Atto 3 in Malaysia last year but what is BYD?
Is BYD one of the biggest car brands we’ve never heard of?
BYD was one of two mass-market car brands from China to enter the Malaysian car market in 2022. It is the first all-new manufacturer to come in in over 10 years. The other brand, Ora, is from Great Wall Motors which also produces Haval.
In 2021, BYD was the fourth largest producer of electric cars, both fully-electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, in the world. The manufacturer, BYD Auto has been around for about 20 years and has achieved some success in that time producing passenger cars, buses, trucks, electric bicycles, forklifts, and rechargeable batteries. The company hasn’t produced petrol engine cars since March 2022.
BYD also has an electric battery division, FinDreams Battery, which is the world’s third largest producer of electric vehicle batteries. FinDreams had a global market share of 12% in the first half of 2022. The batteries for Tesla as well as Daimler are from FinDreams, and of course, they’re also in BYD vehicles.
The Blade Battery in the Atto 3 is BYD’s proprietary lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery technology. LFP batteries are not new technology. They are cheaper to produce than Nickel Manganese Cobalt-based (NMC) lithium-ion batteries but NMC batteries are more energy dense so more efficient for range. You need less NMC batteries to store the equivalent amount of energy in an LFP battery.
However, BYD has overcome the issue of LFP battery cell density. In the Blade Battery, singular cells are arranged in an array then inserted into a battery pack. This optimises the battery pack structure, improving the space utilisation of the battery pack by over 50% compared to conventional lithium iron phosphate block batteries. This gives the BYD Blade Battery the same range as an NMC lithium-ion pack
Other advantages of LFP over NMC are safety. LFP batteries produce less heat and are less vulnerable to catching fire. They also have a longer lifespan. The Blade Battery also underwent a nail penetration safety test: it didn’t emit smoke or catch fire. Furthermore, the surface temperature was between 30ºC and 60ºC. Other LFC batteries reached between 200ºc and 400ºC while NMC batteries went up to 500ºC and burned violently. The Blade Batteries were also crushed, bent, heated in a furnace to 300°C and overcharged by 260 per cent but the battery pack did not catch fire.
For lifespan, BYD claims the Blade Battery pack has a life span of 3,000+ charge cycles, or the equivalent of driving 1.2million kilometres without needing to replace the battery. In contrast, a Tesla battery is usually replaced after around 320,000 to 480,000 kilometres. This is why Tesla is installing Blade Batteries in their latest cars.
