Editing by Greg Gao

SES, a lithium metal battery manufacturer from Singapore, released the Apollo hybrid lithium metal battery with a capacity of 107 Ah, claiming it the industry's highest capacity. It also announced to build a large battery factory in Jiading, Shanghai.

Founded in 2012, SES (formerly known as SolidEnergy Systems) is a global leader in developing and initial production of high-performance hybrid lithium-metal rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles and other applications.

The announcement came at the SES's Battery World online event on November 4. The unveiled Apollo battery weighs only 0.982 Kg, with its energy density at 417 Wh/kg and 935 Wh/L. According to SES, the battery has demonstrated the high capacity and energy density in the discharge tests at room temperature of 10 hours, 3 hours, and 1 hour separately.

The announced factory in Jiading, Shanghai's automotive manufacturing base, will cover a total area of 30,000 square meters. It could be the world's largest lithium metal battery factory when it is completed in 2023 with a 1GWh planned production capacity.

Despite its impressive performance, Hu Qichao, SES's founder & CEO, said that Apollo batteries still need further testing and optimization.

Electric vehicles work under complex environments and temperatures with the need for stable performance. They call for the power battery to provide high energy density in a wide range of temperatures and power. According to currently available data, the hybrid lithium metal batteries' performance is far better than that of solid-state batteries.

Hu Qichao also introduced SES's three parallel development tracks: Hermes, a new material development platform; Apollo, a production process development capability for large capacity EV batteries; and Avatar, an artificial intelligence-powered safety software used to monitor battery health.

It also has strong capabilities in battery cell materials, cell and module design, AI-powered algorithms, and lithium-metal recycling.

According to its website, SES is backed by top global automotive OEMs, financial investors, cell manufacturers, equipment manufacturers, and raw material suppliers, including GM, Hyundai, GEELY(吉利汽车)。

SES plans to launch EV lithium metal battery samples next year and start commercial mass production in 2025.