Cao Ji: The Chinese billionaire keeping batteries from exploding in your smartphones and electric cars
- An engineer by training, Cao is the founder of Zhejiang Hangke Technology
What do smartphones, electric cars and Nasa’s Curiosity Mars rover have in common? They all run on lithium-ion batteries.
Since Sony managed to use one in a camcorder in 1991, the rechargeable cells have grown in popularity and are now used to power virtually all portable consumer gadgets, from game consoles and e-cigarettes to scooters and hoverboards. They’re also increasingly used on hybrid and electric vehicles.
The world’s biggest supplier of lithium-ion batteries is China. The country is behind two-thirds of the world’s production. And occupying a place at the very end of this manufacturing line is Cao Ji and his team. Zhejiang Hangke Technology, the company he founded 35 years ago, builds testing equipment and other products for battery makers.
“If you want to turn wheat into bread, you’ll have to ground it into flour. This is the first step,” Cao explained to Zhejiang News. “After it becomes flour, you’ll have to make dough. That is the middle step. After it becomes dough, you’ll have to bake it. That is the final step. What Hangke Technology does is the final step.”
The challenge to “baking” a lithium-ion battery into completion is that lithium-ion batteries are essentially dormant dynamite. Lithium is an ideal battery component because it’s light and jam-packed with energy. But it can also be unstable, resulting in those rare but disastrous incidents of battery explosions famously seen in the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 and Tesla vehicles.
The last step of building a lithium-ion battery involves making sure that it’s safe enough for use. But another important part is differentiating batteries of various capacities.