CES 2024- SK On Dancing Electric Car Ball

SK On is the only Korean battery manufacturer participating in the CES (World Consumer Electronics Show), which will be held for four days starting on the 9th (local time) at the Las Vegas Convention Center in the United States. At this CES, We Group decorated its exhibition hall in the form of an amusement park called ‘SK Wonderland.’ We On plans to showcase its high technology through the ‘Dancing Car’ corner.

SK On is participating in CES for the second time following last year. This is to showcase high technology and expand global business through contact with various customers. According to SNE Research, We On ranked 5th in electric vehicle battery usage in the global market from January to October last year. Last year, it was ranked first among Fortune’s ‘World’s Most Innovative Companies’. Senior Vice Chairman Choi Jae-won plans to tour the site in person, inspect the latest mobility technology, and hold a series of meetings with major global customers.

‘Dancing Car’ is a corner featuring a video of an ordinary internal combustion engine car transforming into a high-performance electric car and racing, along with a full-scale car model mounted on a robot arm. The 5-minute video will tell a story so that the general public can easily know and understand electric vehicle batteries, and will add visual fun by allowing viewers to see the battery being mounted on the bottom of the electric vehicle using a robot arm.

In the ‘Dancing Car’ video, We On showcases various technologies such as Z-folding, S-PACK, and fast charging, as well as its flagship product, high-performance high nickel battery NCM9+. NCM9+ is We On’s flagship product, a high-performance high-nickel battery that continues to record world firsts and is leading the technology, and received the Innovation Award at CES for two consecutive years until last year. We On was the first in the world to commercialize the NCM622 battery for electric vehicles in 2014 and the NCM811 battery in 2018 for electric vehicles, and in 2019, it developed the world’s first NCM9 battery with a nickel content of 90%.

The NCM9+ battery is completed by incorporating Z-folding technology that maximizes the safety of We On batteries. By stacking the anode and cathode in a zigzag pattern between the separators, it is a technology that complements the shortcomings and safety of high-nickel batteries, which increase the driving distance as the proportion of nickel increases but have poor stability. We On boasts fast and accurate manufacturing technology with its 3rd generation Z-folding technology, which increases productivity by 2.3 times compared to the 1st generation.

In electric vehicles, battery cells are collected into modules, and several modules are gathered together and finally installed in the form of a single pack. The electric vehicle in ‘Dancing Car’ is equipped with an S-PACK made with We On’s Cell To Pack (CTP) technology, which minimizes the number of modules. Ultimately, the goal is to eliminate modules and connect cells directly to the pack. By installing more cells in the module space, the battery’s driving range can be increased and manufacturing costs can be lowered. In particular, S-PACK further strengthens safety by preventing heat from spreading throughout the battery pack even if a fire occurs.

SK On’s fast charging technology is also captured in the video. When the We electric car’s battery discharged after running at full speed, it was shown that it was charged up to 80% in 18 minutes at a charging station. This is an innovation created with We On’s special coating technology. In recognition of this performance, it was the first in the battery industry to receive the Best Innovation Award in the ‘Embedded Technology’ field at CES 2023, and also won the Innovation Award in the ‘Vehicle Technology and Advanced Mobility’ field, winning two awards.