The China EV100 Forum 2024 was held at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing from March 15 to March 17, 2024. Yang Hanbing, Managing Director of Contemporary Amperex Intelligent Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (“CATL Intelligent Tech” for short), delivered a keynote speech titled “Revolutionizing Vehicle Manufacturing Services through Skateboard Chassis: Unleashing Multi-Scenario and Personalized Creativity”. The speech focused on the future development trends of new energy vehicles and the transformative value of the skateboard chassis.

In the current era of “Moore's Law” for vehicles with heightened competition, the skateboard chassis stands out as a potential game-changer.

As the automotive industry experiences intensified competition and undergoes a wave of intelligent advancements, it is transitioning into the “Moore's Law” era where updating vehicle models every 1-2 years has become an undeniable trend.  Simultaneously, the fundamental nature of automobiles has shifted from technology-driven transportation tools to mobile living spaces driven by consumer needs.

In this dynamic landscape, CATL Intelligent Tech has developed the Integrated Intelligent Chassis based on CTC technology with a focus on high efficiency, lightweight design, and enhanced safety. Its most distinctive feature lies in the decoupling of the upper and lower bodies. With this decoupling, the chassis assumes the roles of energy (specifically the battery), motion and movement, functioning as an independently movable carrier. Meanwhile, the upper body focuses on meeting consumer demands for optimization of shape design and user experience (including smart driving, smart cockpit, and smart vehicle-cloud collaboration).

The advantages of the Integrated Intelligent Chassis can be categorized into three key dimensions:

Firstly, it offers enhanced efficiency through parallel development of upper and lower bodies, significantly reducing the vehicle development cycle.

Secondly, it provides cost savings by transforming the integrated intelligent chassis into a standardized and platform-based component, enabling great cost advantages through industry sharing of chassis architecture. This leads to reduced initial model development costs and shared chassis R&D expenses among multiple models and vehicle manufacturers.

Lastly, it offers creative freedom by decoupling the upper and lower bodies, thereby reducing the correlation between safety and shape design. With the chassis capable of bearing over 80% of collision load, automotive designers and product managers can explore greater creative freedom in shape design and intelligent function development.

The Integrated Intelligent Chassis enhances core technical capabilities and serves as a secure, reliable, and efficient mobile energy carrier.

Through the decoupling of the upper and lower bodies, the skateboard chassis acts as an independently movable mobile energy carrier, enabling OEM customers to concentrate on user experience, segmented scenarios, and intelligence, thereby establishing distinctive brand advantages. Yang Hanbing said, “For OEM customers and the mobile travel industry, the skateboard chassis helps to save more time, resources, manpower, etc., delivering scenario defined vehicles in the era of intelligence and creating unique advantages in the new energy vehicle sector.”

Leveraging CATL's extremely innovative technologies, the Integrated Intelligent Chassis has achieved global leadership in vehicle power consumption, low-temperature endurance, fast charging with long-range power battery systems, and passive safety protection performance after three years of technical research and two years of efforts toward commercial implementation. For instance, it achieves power consumption as low as 11 kilowatt hours per 100 kilometers and a low endurance attenuation rate of 33% in low-temperature winter conditions. Notably, a passenger vehicle model can travel over 1,000 kilometers with just 115 kilowatt hours of electricity. The chassis is lightweight due to significant enhancements in the efficiency of battery, e-Drive, and motor controller systems.

As of March 2024, the second round of testing for the vehicle models powered by Integrated Intelligent Chassis in winter has been successfully completed, with the first model to be mass-produced in the latter half of 2024. “We are committed to advancing technology for swift mass production while entrusting the essence and creativity of the vehicle to OEMs who have a profound understanding of users, scenarios, and customer needs. Our expertise lies in batteries, energy efficiency, and electric chassis safety.”

CATL Intelligent Tech is collaborating with industry experts and authoritative organizations to standardize technologies and interfaces for large-scale commercial implementation of the skateboard chassis in the passenger vehicle sector. We sincerely invite industry partners to join us in this initiative.