BYD announced on Tuesday it has exported its Chinese-made large EV lithium-ion battery pack by air for the first time. The FinDreams battery pack heading to Europe weighed 300 kilograms, Kallanish learns. 

According to BYD, on 23 November, the battery was shipped in an SF Airlines flight from Huahu Airport of Ezhou, Hubei Province and successfully arrived at Frankfurt Airport in Germany in the early morning of the 24 November. 

Under international standards, air waybill packages containing more than 35 kg of lithium batteries must pass the A99 special approval letter from the relevant civil aviation administration department, and complete multiple steps including lithium battery transportation safety testing, packaging safety testing, emergency drills, and A99 related document approval.

To comply with aviation safety transportation requirements, the FinDreams battery pack needed to be heated when fully charged to verify the safety of the failed battery pack under extreme working conditions.

In addition, the FinDreams battery expert team has developed a special explosion-proof box for aviation to ensure absolute safety during cargo transportation.

The BYD battery unit said that the successful completion of this air transportation mission is an important milestone in air transportation of power batteries in China. “It has laid a solid step” in standardisation and normalisation and provided data support for opening up more efficient transportation channels for power batteries,” the company says.