Experts See Diverse Battery Demands Ahead of 2026 World Power Battery Conference

New-energy vehicles are the primary carrier for the large-scale application of power batteries. In a dialogue, Shi Jianpeng cited data showing domestic new-energy vehicle sales have climbed from several thousand units in 2013 to the million-vehicle level, with power battery technology playing a foundational role. Meng Xiangfeng noted that onboard batteries are transitioning toward long-life and high-reliability stages, with some early commercial taxis achieving nearly 700,000 km without battery replacement. He added that further improving energy density on the vehicle side helps reduce overall vehicle weight, thereby improving energy consumption, tire wear, and braking distance.

As application scenarios extend to the low-altitude economy, battery requirements change substantially. Feng Shuai, citing the actual operating conditions of manned autonomous aerial vehicles, said traditional cars typically discharge power smoothly over several hours, while aircraft need to complete high-rate energy output in a short period, with discharge rates often reaching 8C or even 10C during takeoff and landing. This instantaneous high-power output increases internal battery heat. Given that aircraft are highly sensitive to overall weight and cannot be fitted with complex liquid-cooling components, batteries must have low internal resistance to strike a precise engineering balance among energy density, power density, thermal management, and overall weight.

Applications in embodied intelligence feature pulsed discharge. Gu Jie said humanoid robots' physical movements include running, jumping, and load-bearing operations, and such dynamic mechanical interactions require multi-joint drive motors to obtain sufficient peak current in a very short time, testing the battery system's transient response capability. Facing these cross-sector challenges, breakthroughs in underlying material systems are being prioritized. Meng Xiangfeng revealed that companies have developed products for extreme conditions when expanding application boundaries, such as sodium batteries maintaining about 90% discharge efficiency at minus 40 degrees Celsius and condensed-matter batteries meeting the high-energy-density needs of the low-altitude economy. Shi Jianpeng said solid-state batteries are the next major breakthrough, and the industry chain must solve common material challenges such as high solid-solid contact resistance and difficulty suppressing silicon-carbon anode expansion.

As underlying technology evolves, safety verification standards adapted to new business forms have become an important prerequisite for the large-scale commercial adoption of power batteries. Feng Shuai, citing a manned aircraft weighing over 600 kg, noted that to handle in-flight emergencies, aircraft cannot simply use the single large-capacity battery pack design of cars and typically need two to three independent battery systems as underlying redundancy. In addition, aircraft need full-lifecycle system monitoring, with temperature, pressure differential, and other data transmitted in real time via communication to command and dispatch centers to help determine remaining flight time and ensure passenger safety. This urgently requires the supply chain to develop an aviation verification system distinct from automotive-grade standards.

He stressed that the underlying battery standard framework must align with the Civil Aviation Administration of China's type certification requirements for aircraft to provide a compliance basis for large-scale manufacturing.

Thanks to the accumulation of the new-energy vehicle industry chain over the past decade or more, the commercialization iteration speed of emerging sectors is accelerating. Gu Jie said that innovations by complete-vehicle manufacturers in the low-altitude economy and humanoid robot fields will ultimately feed back into the new-energy vehicle business in terms of data models and system integration, creating industrial synergies. Facing broader commercial applications in the future, Meng Xiangfeng added that beyond R&D collaboration, the industry chain also needs to establish a sound service ecosystem at the back end, including after-sales service systems for various scenarios, resource recycling of battery materials, and promotion of more efficient battery-swapping models in sectors such as marine and commercial vehicles. Through the full integration of technological breakthroughs, standard establishment, and ecosystem development, the power battery industry can achieve high-quality commercial deployment across multiple scenarios.