Geely Pushes Solid-State Batteries Toward Pilot Cars With 500 Wh/kg Packs
Geely Holding says its solid-state battery cells have reached 500 Wh/kg, and the group plans to put them into pilot vehicles across its brands next year. The Chinese automaker expects cars running on the new packs to cover more than 1,000 km on a single charge — roughly the same distance a diesel car covers on a full tank — and to last up to 1 million km before retirement.
The announcement, reported this week by Carscoops and CarNewsChina, gives one of the clearest dates yet for solid-state technology leaving the lab. Geely said real-world validation of the cells began this year, and pilot deployment is scheduled for 2027 across Zeekr, Lynk & Co, Volvo, Polestar, Lotus, Smart, Proton, and Farizon.
A Density Jump From Today's Cells
The 500 Wh/kg figure matters because it roughly doubles the energy stored per kilogram compared with the lithium-iron-phosphate cells that dominate today's electric cars. Geely's own "Golden Brick" liquid-electrolyte batteries, already in production, deliver around 250 Wh/kg at the cell level. A pack built from the new solid-state cells stores more energy in the same space, which is how a 1,000 km range becomes possible without a heavier, more expensive battery.
The number refers to the whole pack, not just the cell. Geely's wording suggests the cell itself runs even higher, since the pack includes casing, cooling, and management electronics that add weight without adding storage.
Solid-state construction replaces the liquid electrolyte inside a cell with a solid one. That change removes the flammable liquid that makes lithium-ion cells a fire risk in crashes, and it lets engineers pack more active material into each cell. The trade-off has always been manufacturing cost: solid electrolytes are harder to process at scale than the liquid slurries used in conventional battery plants.
What Geely Is Saying Now
Dow Chemical appears in the supply chain picture. CarNewsChina reports that Dow's key account technical leader for Geely, Bo Tong, disclosed the partnership in materials development, including an adhesive for solid-state cells that stays stable from -40°C to 120°C. Wide temperature tolerance matters for a battery that has to work in a Volvo in northern Sweden and a Proton in tropical Malaysia — both brands sit inside the Geely group.
Geely has been working toward this moment for years. In 2025 it consolidated its scattered battery programs into a single unit, Zhejiang Jiyao Tongxing Energy Technology, which handles cell production and safety-system development. The same unit produced the Aegis Short Blade, a self-made LFP cell that reached 20-ampere-hour engineering samples. A January disclosure said the first complete solid-state pack would be finished in 2026 and installed in a test vehicle for validation. Experimental cells have reportedly topped 400 Wh/kg in the lab, with both sulfide and oxide electrolyte chemistries under evaluation, and the company runs a Solid-State Battery Joint Laboratory in Zhejiang with outside partners.
The Industry Isn't Unified on Timing
Geely's timeline places it alongside the two biggest names in Chinese batteries, though with a different emphasis. CATL chairman Robin Zeng has put his company's solid-state work at level four on the nine-point Technology Readiness Level scale, meaning partial-scale prototypes. CATL chief scientist Wu Kai has said the company is aiming for TRL 7 or 8, the stages where a full-scale prototype is proven in commercial conditions and final product certification begins. BYD has also said it will start trial production of solid-state cells.
Skeptics have reasons to stay cautious. Solid-state batteries have been announced "two years away" for at least a decade, and several highly publicized breakthroughs never survived contact with a production line. The chemistry challenges are real: solid electrolytes can crack, interfacial contact degrades as cells cycle, and the manufacturing equipment for liquid electrolyte plants does not carry over cleanly.
What has changed is the scale of money and engineering pointed at the problem. Chinese automakers and battery makers are now spending at a level that did not exist five years ago, and several companies, including Geely, have moved from laboratory samples to vehicle-level validation. That is the stage where problems become visible and fixable rather than theoretical.
Who Gets the Cells First
Geely said vehicles from within its broader group will receive the batteries starting next year, with Zeekr, Lynk & Co, Volvo, Polestar, Lotus, and Smart named as pilot brands. That list matters: solid-state packs will arrive first in premium models where the cost premium is easier to absorb, before spreading to volume cars.
Range and longevity are the two numbers that sell the technology to buyers. A 1,000 km pack removes range anxiety for almost any trip a passenger car realistically makes, and a 1 million km lifespan means the battery outlives the car around it. Both claims rest on the 500 Wh/kg pack, so the first pilot cars will be watched closely for whether the real numbers match the announced ones.
What It Means for the Wider Market
Solid-state entry at scale would put pressure on the LFP chemistry that now anchors most EV production. LFP won the market because it is cheap, safe, and durable, and automakers like Ford and GM have said their near-term money is going toward cheaper chemistries such as lithium manganese rich rather than solid-state. If solid-state cells reach 500 Wh/kg in volume production, the economics shift: a carmaker could offer a 1,000 km pack or, more likely, sell a shorter-range pack at the same range as today's LFP cars but with far less battery weight and cost.
The stampede to claim solid-state first also has a geopolitical edge. Chinese automakers are betting that next-generation battery leadership keeps their exports competitive even as tariffs rise on Chinese-made cars in the United States and Europe. Geely's packs are unlikely to reach American showrooms soon given the current tariff climate, as Carscoops notes, but the technology itself is portable: the chemistry and the manufacturing process can be licensed or built inside overseas plants, the same way LFP was.
India is another front. Battery Tech expansion there is happening in parallel, with suppliers like Octillion opening new plants for the country's fast-growing EV market, and local content rules pushing global makers to build cells closer to the buyers.
For now, the practical test is validation. Geely's pilot deployment next year will put real packs in real cars on real roads, and the results will tell the industry whether 500 Wh/kg is a spec-sheet number or a production reality. Given the history of overpromising in this field, the safest reading is that solid-state arrives incrementally: pilot fleets first, premium models next, and mass adoption only after the factories prove they can make the cells cheaply enough.
The EV market is watching with good reason. A battery that doubles energy density and outlives the car would change the economics of electric transport more than any single model launch, and Geely is now one of the first automakers with a public date attached to it.