Inpow Battery: How Did the Battery of GAC Group Come Into Being?

Much like the discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel holds a significant place in human civilization.

In 3000 B.C., the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids by using rolling logs to transport giant stones. Not too long after, trolleys with wooden wheels emerged in Mesopotamia. For thousands of years, wheels have been powering civilization, trade, and cultural exchanges. Over the course of history, wheels have evolved from using human and animal power to fossil fuels.

Now, small power batteries play a pivotal role in the development of electric vehicles (EVs).

Powered by Passion In Motion Without Hesitation

EVs actually have a longer history than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.

The first ICE vehicle was constructed in Germany in 1885. Predating this invention by more than half a century, however, was the first EV, built by American blacksmith Thomas Davenport in 1834. While this was only a small model car with non-rechargeable primary batteries, it was nonetheless a groundbreaking innovation that marked the start of the colorful history of EVs.

EVs began losing their market position to ICE vehicles in the 1920s due to limitations related to raw materials, consistency, density, and other battery factors. Recent technological breakthroughs have since driven the rapid development of EVs, but the power batteries at the heart of these vehicles remain a major concern for consumers due to issues like driving range, charge cycles, and safety.

As the wheels of history continue to spin, new technological breakthroughs continue to change the way we travel and live. One such breakthrough was made recently by Inpow Battery, a subsidiary of GAC Group.

In December 2023, Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC Group) officially launched the Inpow P58 microcrystalline super-energy battery—a full-stack lithium iron phosphate power battery that breaks new ground in automotive battery technology.

With a service life of 1.5 million kilometers, 4,000 charge-discharge cycles, an energy density of 195 Wh/kg, and a nail penetration temperature rise of less than 1°C (a high standard of safety), the compact Inpow battery delivers on all fronts. Just 10 minutes of charging enables a driving range of 500 kilometers.

Great products come from great production lines.

These P58 microcrystalline super-energy batteries are manufactured at GAC Group's Inpow Battery Intelligent Ecological Plant, where a battery cell production line offers an annual capacity of up to 6 GWh—50% higher than the industry average. The plant also incorporates multi-layered production process control and innovations in manufacturing technologies.

Battery production is more complex and time-consuming than vehicle manufacturing. It takes at least 25 days to turn raw powdered materials into finished battery cells.

The more complex the manufacturing process, the more critical quality inspection is. This is especially true for power batteries, the most crucial EV components. There are stringent requirements on the stability and safety of key elements like foil, electrode plates, separators, and electrolytes. Quality inspection is both the last line of defense and the heart of the production process.

In Inpow Battery's vast factory, countless robotic arms and automated equipment like vision inspection devices work in unison across more than 3,400 quality inspection stations with 600 CCD optical inspection cameras. These devices tirelessly capture inspection images day and night, finding every tiny flaw and potential defect.

This strict quality inspection process integrated into the production system is what ensures the stable, high performance of Inpow batteries and the EVs they power.

Cutting-Edge Tech Powers Sharp-Eyed Guardians on the Factory Floor

Inpow Battery faced a number of challenges in the construction of its quality inspection platform.

Vast amounts of images and data and inefficient quality inspection were the most daunting problems.

The company's industrial quality inspection system encompasses processes like coating, slitting, die cutting, cutting and stacking, and assembly.

The cutting and stacking process alone involves 18 machines and 108 lower computers, equipped with a total of 216 cameras. Each lower computer is equipped with a machine vision inspection system, which is used to determine whether photographed elements are qualified. More than 20 million CCD images totaling over 10 TB of data are generated each day.

In the past, data could only be stored locally on the machine. However, storage capacity was extremely limited. Data could be retained for a maximum of 30 days. As a result, newly generated data would overwrite older records, leading to the loss of important data history needed for backtracking.

In addition, industrial computers run 24/7 and continuously generate large volumes of image data. Most of the data consists of 300 KB JPG thumbnails, while some are 5 MB RAW images. However, insufficient local machine storage bandwidth and IOPS performance would result in high latency and the risk of data not being saved on time. This would hinder overall operational efficiency.

In accordance with regulations, quality inspection data needs to be retained for at least three months, and backtracking is frequently performed in the first month. During the backtracking process, the quality inspection team retrieved information in batches based on the product barcode and previewed it online. Each barcode was associated with more than 130 images, so the process was like finding a needle in a haystack. This was a major efficiency issue for the quality inspection team.

The legacy digital infrastructure was in urgent need of an upgrade. Through tests, the Inpow Battery factory finally settled on Huawei OceanStor Pacific scale-out storage to build a brand-new industrial quality inspection data lake.

The industry-leading OceanStor Pacific storage solution delivers superior performance and larger capacity than competitors.

With its all-flash storage media and adaptation to hybrid workloads, the storage solution can easily handle 24/7 data uploading by the quality inspection system. The fully symmetric scale-out architecture enables smooth cluster expansion to storage in the exabytes and linear performance growth. This meets the future needs of a 36 GWh or even 100 GWh production line. In addition, the storage solution's unique seamless multi-protocol interworking supports data sharing between service processes and applications. This enables the use of AI model training to support quality inspection

For data retrieval, the Huawei DME data management engine enables retrieval from 50 billion files within seconds. The engine supports retrieval by more than 15 categories, such as file name, time, size, type, and fuzzy search. As a result, search times are reduced from hours to seconds.

Using the intelligent scheduling platform of DME, users can customize space utilization policies for data from different sources. For example, quality inspection data of certain sealed components can be stored for half a month and then deleted to free up storage space, while quality inspection data of components such as bare cells and soft connections can be stored and archived for 12 or even 36 months. This ensures data availability and efficient storage space utilization.

Powering these sharp-eyed guardians is Huawei OceanStor Pacific scale-out storage, which encompasses massive amounts of data and provides comprehensive support to every aspect of the production pipeline.

Thousands of years after the invention of the wheel, the transformative power of EVs has permeated every aspect of life, from how we travel to how we live. Inpow Battery is at the forefront of a technological evolution, one that is cementing the place of EVs in history.

Driven by excellence and powered by passion, the era of EV batteries has a bright road ahead.