The performance of SK on’s C has come into the spotlight after a U.S. electric car driver reported that the battery has maintained 97 percent of its original capacity after driving 160,000 kilometers in 21 months.
Automotive media outlet CarScoops carried a story based on a recent post on the F-150 Lightning Forum, a group of Ford F-150 Lightning drivers, by a driver who goes by the nickname Helium, along with actual proof, according to Yonhap News Agency on March 23.
The driver said that on a 2,500-km trip from Missouri to Las Vegas, he experienced no mileage degradation due to variables such as weather conditions or terrains.
The vehicle in question is a 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning powered by SK on batteries. The F-150 Lightning with the SK on battery is equipped with vehicle to home (V2H) technology, which allows electric vehicle batteries to be utilized as an alternative power source for homes in case of an emergency, and vehicle to load (V2L) technology, which allows electric vehicle batteries to be used as an external power source.
This was not the first time the F-150 Lightning has been the talk of the town. Ford CEO Jim Farley recounted how the F-150 Lightning’s batteries powered a concert of the band Tora Tora in Memphis, Tennessee when a power outage hit the concert.
In late 2022, when high winds and heavy snow knocked out power to more than 1 million homes and businesses across Canada, an F-150 Lightning owner in Ontario made headlines for surviving 44 hours at home by using the electric car’s batteries. According to Ford, the F-150 Lightning can double as a giant power generator.
The batteries in the F-150 Lightning are NCM9 batteries, which are high-performance high-nickel batteries, with nickel accounting for about 90 percent developed by SK on in 2020. SK on’s NCM9 batteries won a bronze prize at the 2023 Edison Awards, the most prestigious U.S. invention awards.
Electric vehicles loaded with SK on’s NCM9 batteries can run up to 514 kilometers on a single charge. Their Z-folding technology, which uniformly stacks the positive and negative electrodes in a zigzag pattern between separators, enhances safety. This overcomes high-nickel batteries’ disadvantage of higher amounts being more unstable, even though they let vehicles run for longer as well.
With a battery with a capacity of 131 kWh, people can use up to 9.6 kW of power, which is enough to power a home for up to 10 days in the event of an outage. SK on produces NCM9 batteries at its Georgia Plant 1 in the United States and supplies them to Ford.