At its CATL Tech Day Event, CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited) unveiled its latest breakthrough in battery technology – the Shenxing 3rd Generation Battery, capable of reaching full charge in just six minutes.

Ultra-fast charging performance

The new battery demonstrates faster charging speeds than BYD’s Blade Battery 2.0:

• 10% to 35%: 1 minute
• 10% to 80%: 3 minutes 44 seconds
• 10% to 98%: 6 minutes 27 seconds
• At -30°C to 98%: 9 minutes

Technical specifications

The Shenxing 3rd Gen battery achieves the world’s lowest internal resistance for ultra-fast charging at just 0.25 milliohms – 50% lower than the industry average.

Key technological innovations include:

1. Cell Shoulder Cooling Technology: Improves cooling efficiency by an additional 20%
2. Precise Temperature Measurement Technology: Enables accurate multi-point temperature monitoring for each cell
3. Self-Heating Technology: Uses pulse rapid heating to solve low-temperature ultra-fast charging challenges

Durability and low-temperature solutions

After 1,000 ultra-fast charging cycles, the battery maintains a State of Health (SoH) above 90%.

Addressing the long-standing challenge of winter charging, CATL introduced its self-heating pulse technology. Unlike industry solutions that rely on:

• Traditional heating elements (raising the temperature by only 1°C per minute)
• Energy storage cabinet-equipped charging piles

CATL’s approach enables low-temperature ultra-fast charging without requiring specialised charging infrastructure, relying on the following two technologies:

Battery self-heating technology

With pulse rapid heating for fast temperature rise, enabling high-speed charging in low temperatures on any charging pile.

Integrated ultra-charge and swap solution

The company also introduced an integrated ultra-charging and battery swap solution, offering users flexibility even in extreme conditions – at -30°C, vehicles can achieve 98% charge in 9 minutes or opt for battery swapping.

At the event, CATL also unveiled its third-generation Qilin ternary lithium battery, which features the same charging speed.

According to CABIA data, CATL ranks first in the power battery market this year with a 48.3% market share, followed by BYD in second place with 17%, and CALB in third with 5.9%. According to CPCA, CATL’s share surpassed 50% already in Q1 2026.

Editor’s comment

Just last month, BYD launched its second-generation Blade battery, boasting that it can “charge in five minutes and top off in nine.” It takes 5 minutes to charge the battery SoC from 10% to 70%, and nine minutes to go from 10% to 97%. As the world’s largest battery manufacturer (whether in LFP or NCM), CATL clearly wasn’t going to take this lying down from BYD, which led to the release of their third-generation Shenxing battery.

Shenxing is an LFP battery, which BYD also has. However, the ultra-fast charging NCM battery that CATL introduced is something BYD doesn’t have yet.