177: Chapter 177 Breakthrough in Ternary Lithium Battery Technology!

After the meeting, Liu Wei did not return to his office, but instead slipped into his car in the parking lot.

He opened his contact list, found a number saved as "Boss Zhang," hesitated for a moment, and then dialed it.

"Hello, Boss Zhang."

"Manager Liu, what a rare guest." An oily voice came from the other end of the line, with the faint sound of mahjong tiles clashing in the background, "Are you looking to order Nickel Cobalt Manganese Acid Lithium again? The price lately has been..."

"The price is negotiable." Liu Wei interrupted him, his tone low, "I want to ask you something. Do you also have a partnership with Fanmi Technology?"

Boss Zhang was silent for a few seconds, his tone becoming guarded: "Manager Liu, why are you asking about this? Fanmi is Fanmi, and you at Tesla are Tesla. Everyone does their own business..."

"Don't try to play dumb with me!" Liu Wei emphasized, "I know you've supplied them with ternary materials. Are you still working with them recently?"

Boss Zhang sighed: "To tell you the truth, I stopped working with them a long time ago! It's not that I didn't want to, but they found their own alternatives. I heard they set up a lithium mine over in Jiangxi and even built a cathode material factory. They have a one-stop process from mining to refining, and their prices are 30% lower than mine."

Liu Wei's hand holding the phone trembled violently: "What did you say? They built their own material factory?"

"Indeed." Boss Zhang's voice carried a sense of emotion, "I only found out about it a while ago. That factory has been in production for half a year. It's said that it originally supplied their mobile phone batteries, but now it seems... they had planned to build cars all along."

Boss Zhang's voice echoed in the car. Liu Wei sat blankly in the driver's seat, his back instantly soaked with cold sweat.

They built a material factory half a year ago?

That means, before the fanmi 2 was even released, Fanmi was already laying out plans for a new energy vehicle?

This realization made him feel cold all over.

He had always thought that Fanmi was just acting on a whim, but he hadn't expected the other party's chessboard to be laid out so extensively.

From mobile phone batteries to car batteries, from chips to the entire vehicle, this industrial chain was interlinked; it had clearly been planned long ago.

"I underestimated them too much..." Liu Wei muttered to himself, suddenly feeling that Zhu Danyang's worries were not without reason.

Fanmi wasn't just a dark horse; it was clearly a beast that had been lurking for a long time, and now it was finally baring its fangs.

"I understand!" Liu Wei took a deep breath, then said in a deep voice: "How much ternary material do you have? Let's settle on a price, I want it all!"

"There are two tons left!" Boss Zhang's voice rang out again.

"What? That little?" Liu Wei was stunned for a moment.

"The rest has already been booked. For the whole year, only two tons were reserved each month, which is why I told you the price was expensive just now~"

"The entire year's stock has been booked???" Liu Wei instinctively felt that something was wrong.

"Did Fanmi book it?" He asked tentatively.

"No, they don't look down on this small amount of stock I have..."

"Then who is it?" Liu Wei's tone grew heavier.

"Sorry, customer information needs to be kept confidential!" Boss Zhang chuckled and continued, "So, how about it? I can only give you one ton per month. If you want it, we can talk about the price, but it will definitely be more expensive than before..."

"..." Liu Wei fell into silence.

One ton of goods? He's treating me like a beggar!

Once Tesla's production workshop is built, this little bit of raw material won't be enough at all.

And the price has gone up!! It's bloody hell!

Who on earth booked so much material?

It's not Fanmi... who else is researching ternary batteries?

How is Fanmi Company's luck so good? It's as if heaven itself is helping them?

Without raw materials, the rollout of Tesla's new car and the factory construction will definitely be delayed. I need to find new material suppliers.

"I don't believe it. Is Fanmi Company's feng shui really that good?"

He muttered... A thought suddenly popped into his mind.

...

Inside the Fanmi New Energy Laboratory, the atmosphere was completely different.

Zhou Guangming stared intensely at the jumping numbers on the testing instrument, his breathing almost stopping.

The large red characters "180Wh/kg" on the screen burned his eyes like a ball of fire.

"Test it again!" His voice trembled with gravity, "Use test channel three, and follow the national standard procedures strictly!"

Chen Ming nodded heavily and then operated the equipment skillfully. Only the humming of the running equipment remained in the laboratory.

Zhou Fan stood to the side with a faint smile on his face, his fingertips sliding over the mouse as he reviewed the previous experimental data.

"Engineer Zhou, there's no need to be so nervous, right?" He couldn't help but speak up, "We've already tested it three times, and they were all around 180, with a margin of error of no more than 2Wh/kg."

"I'll test it one more time, just once!" Zhou Guangming didn't even turn his head, his eyes fixed on the testing screen, "This is a ternary lithium battery. Do you know what it means to break through 180 in energy density? It's a full 50% higher than the batteries Tesla uses now! And we're using domestic equipment, with all raw materials sourced domestically..."

"If we add our battery management technology, the range will definitely increase significantly!!"

The more he spoke, the more excited he became, his voice trembling slightly.

For this breakthrough, he and his team had stayed up for three whole months, failed over two hundred times, and at their most frantic, they hadn't stepped out of the laboratory for half a month straight.

Without testing it a few more times, he really couldn't be sure that they had actually made such a breakthrough.

The appearance of this battery could absolutely revolutionize the range of current new energy electric vehicles. At the current stage, the theoretical range of Tesla's Roadster is around 400 kilometers, but in actual use, reaching 300 is already pretty good.

Once this battery hits the market, combined with Fanmi's battery management technology, it is truly possible to increase the actual range to over 400, with a displayed range of over 480!

"It's out!" Chen Ming's excited voice suddenly rang out, "The test data is about the same as before, 181.3 Wh/kg! Cycle life is 2,000 cycles, and the high-temperature stability test passed!"

Everyone in the laboratory could no longer hold back, and a deafening cheer erupted instantly.

Some hugged each other in excitement, waving their fists fiercely.

Some exhaled deeply, sat straight down on the floor, crying and laughing.

Zhou Guangming even snatched the test report, looking at it over and over, his hands trembling uncontrollably.

"General Manager Zhou... we really did it..." He looked up, gazing at Zhou Fan with complex emotions, his tone full of admiration.

He knew very well that this project had been going on for several months and had reached a very critical bottleneck. The reason they were able to achieve this breakthrough was largely due to Zhou Fan's guidance; the core technological breakthroughs were all proposed and straightened out by Zhou Fan...

Zhou Fan nodded with a smile and picked up the report: "I said it before, once the approach is correct, the rest is just a matter of time."

The optimization plan he had proposed initially was actually very simple—doping the cathode material with trace amounts of niobium to form a stable crystal structure, which both increased the migration rate of lithium ions and solved the safety issues of high-nickel materials.

This approach stemmed from his research on mobile phone battery materials, and of course, from his experience in the future; now, it seems the results are quite significant.

"But..." Zhou Guangming suddenly thought of something, and his brows furrowed again.

"There's one more problem..."