Changan to trial solid-state batteries in vehicles by Q3

Changan Automobile has confirmed that it will begin test installations of solid-state batteries in its electric vehicles and robots before Q3 2026, with mass production scheduled to follow in 2027. The update, posted on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s interactive platform, offers a more concrete timeline for a programme Changan first announced to investors in March 2025.

The battery in question is the Golden Bell solid-state pack, first revealed back in November 2023 alongside seven other cell variants spanning liquid, semi-solid and solid-state chemistries. Changan says the all-solid-state version achieves an energy density of 400 WH/kg and claims a range exceeding 1,500 km in a battery-electric vehicle. Changan has maintained these figures since the original announcement back in 2025. 

Since then, however, it has worked to further develop the technology. Among the claimed improvements in that time frame is a 70% boost to safety through remote diagnostics and AI. At the time of writing, no additional information has been provided to shed light on, or substantiate, these claims. Additional specifications are expected to be released closer to the Q3 installation milestone.

The 1,500 km range figure has been in circulation for nearly a year without supporting test data or a named vehicle application. Until Changan discloses the vehicle platform, testing conditions and CLTC versus real-world range methodology, the claim is difficult to assess against competitors. Q3 will be the first real opportunity to verify whether the performance numbers hold up outside the automaker’s press materials.

The Golden Bell brand has a planned production capacity of 150 GWh once fully scaled, although Changan has not disclosed how that capacity will be distributed across the eight cell variants. The solid-state programme sits at one extreme of the company’s rather ambitious battery strategy—highest energy density, longest projected range, and almost certainly highest cost.

On the other end of the spectrum from solid state is sodium ion, which Changan has partnered with CATL to deploy in series production vehicles by mid-2026. Substantially cheaper to source the materials for, but also more limited in terms of range, sodium-ion has been eyed as a competitor chemistry to lithium-ion for years. The debut vehicle for the automaker’s sodium-ion technology will be the Nevo A06 mid-size sedan, packing roughly 400 km of range under China’s CLTC testing standards.