The world’s largest battery maker has publicly backed lithium-air technology as its long-term strategic direction. Not solid-state (though that is next up, too). Not sodium-ion (that is already going into mass production this year).
The battery company that correctly predicted and pushed those transitions now says the real endgame is a battery that uses atmospheric oxygen as the core electrode material. If CATL says so, we’d better listen.
Next big thing
Even though it’s an announcement nobody really expected. At the 2026 Powering the Nation Forum, CATL chief scientist Wu Kai laid out a three-part technology roadmap. Sodium-ion: in series production by the end of this year. Solid-state: small-batch production from 2027. But after that, lithium-air is the next big thing.
It is the first time CATL has publicly named the technology as a strategic direction, according to media outlet CarNewsChina. And the company does have a crystal ball of some sort – though directions are easier to steer when you’re the heavyweight in your sector. Back in 2020, CATL made an identical call on sodium-ion chemistries. Everyone believed it was a sideshow, but the battery manufacturer delivered on it. Exactly on schedule.
Incredible weight advantage
As its name describes, a lithium-air battery replaces its cathode with oxygen drawn directly from the surrounding air. In contrast to conventional lithium-ion batteries, which use heavy metal compounds at the cathode (NMC or nickel, manganese, and cobalt) to host lithium ions during cycling. You could say the battery is ‘breathing’.
Because there are no scarce metals at the cathode, the supply of critical materials is much less critical. It reduces the need to navigate geopolitical tensions, and the weight advantage is nothing short of dramatic.
Lab prototypes have already achieved 1,200 Wh/kg, which is an astounding four times today’s mainstream lithium-ion cells. The theoretical ceiling is 12,000 Wh/kg, which is directly comparable to gasoline (13,000 Wh/kg). Translating that into an example: a battery pack weighing only 70 kg could provide 500 kilometers of range. A gasoline engine providing such a range weighs twice as much.
An invention from the seventies
Lithium-air can exist in both liquid and solid states. But it’s the latter that forced a breakthrough, as liquid electrolytes tend to decompose from oxygen byproducts during the reaction. The American laboratory Argonne/IIT achieved 1,200 Wh/kg by combining solid and liquid. The pack survived more than 1,000 charging cycles at room temperature, which functions as the practical durability threshold for car applications.
Air as a cathode is quite an old concept, dating back to the 1970s. IBM tried to manufacture the technology but quietly shelved its program roughly fifteen years ago. Now, the 1,000-cycle result moves the technology from “theoretically interesting” to “worth serious industrial investment.”
If lithium-air reaches commercial deployment at even a fraction of its laboratory performance, a vehicle range exceeding 1,600 km becomes realistic. None of that is guaranteed. But CATL is not a research group chasing funding. It is the company controlling nearly 40% of the worldwide battery market.
