"I have completely lost confidence in ternary lithium." "Only 811 is scary." "The battery design is too radical." This past weekend, the discussion on new energy vehicle power batteries on social media reached unprecedented popularity.
Notes on Xiaohongshu discussing power battery safety, picture source: Xiaohongshu screenshot
The immediate trigger for these discussions was the Ideal MEGA fire accident. On the evening of October 23, when a Lili MEGA in Shanghai was driving normally, sparks and flames suddenly appeared at the bottom of the vehicle and spread rapidly. The flames completely engulfed the entire body within 10 seconds. Fortunately, the two drivers and passengers in the car escaped in time, and no one was injured.
According to The Paper, on October 24, Li Auto responded to the latest MEGA fire accident: "When the accident occurred, the door opened smoothly and the driver and passengers all left the car safely. We have arranged for dedicated personnel to go to the scene to deal with it. The fire department has also intervened. We will actively cooperate with the fire department's investigation and carry out follow-up work based on the investigation results."
Internet video screenshots
After more than ten years of development, China's new energy vehicle industry is now very mature, and the performance of domestic power batteries has reached the world's leading level. Before leaving the factory, power batteries must undergo overcharge/overdischarge tests, short circuit tests, acupuncture tests, extrusion tests, thermal runaway/thermal spread tests, thermal shock and thermal cycle tests, fire tests, etc.
In order to prove the safety of batteries, many car companies and power battery manufacturers will show pictures of shooting batteries with guns, but the battery pack does not smoke or catch fire.It seems that the safety of power batteries has been improved very welllandGuaranteed, consumers don’t need to worry about this.
However, battery fire accidents of new energy vehicles, especially pure electric vehicles, occasionally occur. Although objectively speaking, the responsibility for a certain accident cannot be attributed to a certain manufacturer, but the Ideal MEGA fire incident happened to be recorded by the driving recorder of the car behind. Its shocking degree made many people doubt the safety of new energy vehicle power batteries.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the level of trust has gone back ten years.
Through this bizarre accident, "Jiazi Guangnian" discovered thatBehind this is a common problem in the power battery industry, and there is also a safety detail that has been ignored.
1. Bizarre accident
Although a car captured the entire process of the Ideal MEGA catching fire, the accident can still be described as "bizarre."
The online driving recorder video shows that after the ideal MEGA started normally at the green light, when passing through the intersection, the body of the car had obvious ups and downs, and then sparks burst out from the bottom of the vehicle. Soon an open flame appeared in the vehicle and quickly spread to the entire body.
It only took 10 seconds from the spark to the fire spreading throughout the vehicle.
After the accident, there was a lot of speculation on the Internet about the cause of the accident. There are rumors that the vehicle's power battery had been damaged by a collision before the accident, and that the owner of the vehicle had privately modified the car battery, causing a short circuit in the power system.
However, one day after the accident, on October 24, the owner of the car involved entrusted a lawyer to issue a statement of the situation, denying the suspected causes of the fire such as "battery knock, failure to send for repair" and other suspected causes of the fire.
Relevant statement issued by the owner of the car involved, picture source: Oriental Finance
If the information stated by the car owner involved in the situation statement is true, then judging from the available information, this was a near-standard "spontaneous combustion", which even directly caused Li Auto to lose the possibility of crisis public relations.
According to the current national safety requirements for electric vehicle power batteries, after a thermal runaway occurs, the power battery needs to send out an early warning signal 5 minutes before danger occurs to ensure that drivers and passengers can escape the vehicle smoothly.
The new national standard, which will be officially implemented on July 1, 2026, still retains the provision of a 5-minute advance warning after thermal runaway, and adds a mandatory provision that "battery cannot catch fire or explode".
In May 2025, Li Auto officially announced that its models to be launched in 2022 and beyond will meet the new national standards ahead of schedule.MEGAImpressively listed. But obviously the ideal in this incidentMEGAdid not meet such a standard.
Li Auto promotional poster, picture source: Li Auto
The Ideal MEGA is not a cheap car. On March 1, 2024, Lili MEGA, Li Auto's first pure electric model, was officially released, priced from 529,800 yuan to 559,800 yuan. Ideal had high hopes for this model, but due to inaccurate market judgment, Ideal MEGA suffered a sales failure as soon as it was released.
According to data from the Passenger Car Association, monthly sales of Ideal MEGA in September 2025 were 3,277 units, accounting for 9.65% of Ideal sales and ranking 13th in MPV sales.
Lixiang MEGA's product positioning is almost entirely aimed at the "family" concept. Lixiang, CEO of Lixiang Auto, once said bluntly: "We have moved a family's living room, cinema, concert hall, study room, and bedroom to MEGA."
After this fire incident, the size of Ideal MEGA’s user base may be compressed. The Ideal MEGA, which was originally not easy to sell, may become even harder to sell, and it will also affect other Ideal pure electric models, and even models from other brands that use ternary lithium batteries.
This is not what the power battery industry wants to see, but for consumers, safety is a crucial thing.
2. Failed protection
Why did Ideal MEGA catch fire this time? Before the official conclusion comes out, we can try to analyze it from a technical perspective.
first ispowerBattery material system.
All Li Auto MEGA models are equipped with a "Kirin battery" with a temperature of about 102 degrees. This type of power battery was jointly developed by Li Auto and CATL. The material system is ternary lithium. The Li Auto team participated in cell materials, battery system research, process design and battery pack design.
According to public reports, the system energy density of Kirin batteries using a ternary lithium material system is as high as 255Wh/kg. At the same time, according to relevant research reports from Bank of China Securities, even though Kirin batteries have introduced new technologies such as multi-functional elastic interlayers and bottom space layout functional modules, which have increased the volume utilization rate to 72%, to achieve such a high system energy density,Its cell energy density is expected to exceed 330Wh/kg.
This means that it is approaching the physical limit of the liquid battery system (about 350 Wh/kg) and represents the current cutting-edge level of high-nickel cathode, silicon-carbon anode and lightweight design. This indicator allows the battery life of electric vehicles to easily exceed 800 kilometers, marking that the energy density of liquid batteries has almost reached its peak and is already equivalent to the energy density of some semi-solid batteries.
The second is the molar ratio of the three metal elements in the cathode material of the ternary lithium battery.
"Ternary" means that the positive electrode contains three transition metal elements: Ni (nickel), Co (cobalt), and Mn (manganese). Common ternary systems include: NCM111 (nickel: cobalt: manganese = 1:1:1), NCM523 (nickel: cobalt: manganese = 5:2:3), NCM622 (nickel: cobalt: manganese = 6:2:2), NCM811 (nickel: cobalt: manganese = 8:1:1).
Among them, NCM811 has attracted more attention because of the MEGA fire incident.The NCM811 is also known as theHigh nickel ternary lithium battery, with high energy density and lower cost, but with stricter thermal stability and safety requirements, it is the mainstream high-end route for today's liquid power batteries.
NCM811 was not trusted by the market.
Compared with other ratios of ternary lithium batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries, the intrinsic safety of 811 high-nickel ternary lithium batteries is insufficient. The starting temperature of thermal runaway is lower (about 150°C, lithium iron phosphate battery is about 200°C), and the reaction after thermal runaway is more violent.
The most typical case is that in April 2019, GAC launched its flagship electric model Aion S, which was equipped with CATL's 811 high-nickel ternary lithium battery. However, within a few months after the vehicle was launched, fire accidents of this car occurred one after another in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Haikou and other places. For a time, the market "talk about 811 changed color", and many new energy vehicle companies, including GAC, began to consciously avoid the 811 high-nickel ternary lithium battery in the car.
Although with the development of technology, the safety of 811 high-nickel ternary lithium batteries has been further guaranteed, due to the rapid evolution of lithium iron phosphate battery performance, especially the improvement of fast charging performance, its market share continues to expand, resulting in the market share of ternary lithium batteries including 811 high-nickel system III being further compressed.
It should be noted that,Neither CATL nor Li Auto has clearly statedIdeal for MEGA useKirin battery is an 811 high-nickel system, so we cannot simply think that high-nickel system ternary lithium batteries are necessarily unsafe, let alone be considered as the cause of this ideal.MEGAThe direct cause of the fire accident.
However, market perception is not absolutely rational. The fire of Ideal MEGA is likely to further decline the market performance of the already controversial 811 high-nickel ternary lithium battery, and all suppliers of batteries in this system will be affected.
Finally, we think there is aThere may be a bigger problem with neglected passive safety measures, and that is——Aerogel.
CATL's Kirin battery has a unique design. It uses a multi-functional interlayer to wrap airgel and water-cooling plates in the middle of the battery core. Its function is that when a single battery cell experiences thermal runaway, the heat can be effectively blocked without spreading to other battery cells.
Schematic of the multi-functional sandwich structure of Kirin battery. Image source: CATL
This is an excellent structural innovation, but the ideal MEGA did not seem to be effectively protected in this fire incident.
According to the analysis of the research institute Hengzhou Bozhi, the main aerogel products currently on the market are silicone-based aerogels; at the same time, according to relevant articles from China Chemical Engineering Group, the maximum operating temperature of silicone-based aerogels is about 650°C. In other words, when the contact object exceeds this temperature, the airgel will lose its thermal insulation effect.
A staff member of a power battery supplier told Jiaziguangnian: "This failure of battery core insulation is not an accidental phenomenon. In theory, different material systems should be equipped with different insulation materials.The aerogel products currently used on the market are basically only suitable for the protection of lithium iron phosphate batteries."
"Jiazi Guangnian" reviewed papers such as "The Effect of Confined Space Environmental Pressure on Thermal Runaway of Ternary Lithium-Ion Batteries" and "Analysis of Thermal Runaway Characteristics of 280 Ah Large Lithium Iron Phosphate Batteries under Adiabatic Conditions" and found that,The thermal runaway temperature of 100% SOC ternary lithium battery can reach 650.8°C, which has reached the upper limit of airgel insulation temperature. However, the thermal runaway temperature of lithium iron phosphate battery under the same conditions is only 340.72°C.
Therefore, even though the power battery products currently on the market produced by many leading suppliers, including CATL, BYD, Sino-Sino Aviation, etc., are equipped with airgel components and claim to be able to effectively prevent heat diffusion, under actual operating conditions, these airgel components may not be able to effectively prevent the spread of thermal runaway due to different battery material systems.
In addition to material systems and aerogel components, extremely high charging rates, discharge powers, etc. may pose threats to battery safety. The mechanism of action is very complex. Many parties, including battery companies, car companies, industry associations, and government departments, are still conducting games, negotiations, and research around factors that affect battery safety.
Before the investigation results come out, we cannot determine what caused the fire in the Ideal MEGA involved, but one thing that is clear is that the current fire protection technology of power batteries may not be as good as some manufacturers advertise.
For car companies and power battery manufacturers, safety is the greatest luxury is not an empty talk. Restoring trust must start now.