For many car buyers that have taken warmly to the idea of a premium Chinese EV, they automatically choose between a BYD or a Geely, via Zeekr. These brands have done extremely well in building their EV tech arsenal and most importantly they are good at telling the story of what they are doing to the world.
This formula has worked extremely well for BYD, which has topped the sales charts for EVs in both Malaysia (#1 in 2025) and Singapore (#1 overall car brand in 2025, beating even Toyota). And now Dongfeng wants a seat at that table.
While BYD has built its reputation on scale and its blade battery, and Zeekr on the fastest charging in the business, Dongfeng has picked a different hill to claim: being the first major automaker to actually mass-produce a high-energy-density solid-state battery. If it delivers, it stops being a follower and becomes a benchmark.
Dongfeng’s plan is to begin mass production and vehicle integration of a 350 Wh/kg solid-state battery in the second half of 2026, with September the target month. That energy density is roughly 35% higher than the 200–280 Wh/kg of today’s mainstream lithium-ion cells, and Dongfeng says it is enough to push a single-charge range past 1,000 km on China’s CLTC cycle.
In May 2026, Dongfeng formed the Hubei Solid-State Battery Industry Technology Innovation Consortium, bringing together 18 academic and industrial partners to push the technology over the final engineering hurdles.
Still on schedule for 2H 2026?
A June update from Hubei’s government paper confirmed the second-half-2026 production window is still live — important, because an earlier report had suggested a slip to 2027. Dongfeng also claims it now has full in-house command of the technology, from electrode materials and the solid electrolyte all the way to pack integration.
The numbers it is putting forward are genuinely striking. In cold-region testing at Mohe — China’s northernmost city — the battery reportedly held on to more than 74% of its capacity at –30°C, the kind of winter performance that would shame most liquid-electrolyte packs.
The pack is said to be around 30% lighter than an equivalent conventional battery, which means more range without more mass. On safety, the cell passed a 170°C thermal-box test, comfortably above China’s 130°C national standard, and Dongfeng says it kept working even after being compressed to half its original thickness.
Dongfeng’s 1,200V platform
Wrapped around the battery is a new electrical architecture: a 1,200V “Mach” platform built on Dongfeng’s own 1,700V silicon-carbide power module, paired with a motor spinning up to 30,000 rpm. With 12C cells and a 2 MW charger, Dongfeng claims it can add 450 km of range in five minutes — roughly 2.5 km of range for every second on the plug.
Crucially, this is a passenger-car platform: it underpins Dongfeng’s premium eπ EV line, and the firm has said the first cars to receive the solid-state pack will be premium eπ models — think sedans and SUVs in the mould of the eπ 007 and eπ 008, aimed at the same buyers Zeekr and BYD’s premium lines are chasing.
Is it really a solid state battery?
The reason the September date matters is that almost everyone else has blinked. BYD has talked about only small-scale solid-state production in 2027. CATL, the world’s largest battery maker, has repeatedly cautioned that large-scale solid-state commercialisation is unlikely before 2030.
Dongfeng looks to be early to the game because while it calls this a solid-state battery, it uses an oxide-polymer composite electrolyte, which technically is semi solid state. The chemistry choice is deliberate — oxide-polymer scales to factory production faster and cheaper than the sulfide route — and it is exactly why Dongfeng can talk about 2026 while CATL, BYD and Zeekr talks about 2030. But it is not the holy-grail all-solid-state cell.
AI and connected car features also in the push
Dongfeng’s technology pitch has a second pillar: intelligence. At April’s Beijing Auto Show, its brands leaned hard on smart-driving partnerships, with the Fengxing Xinghai V6 debuting as a six-seat electric SUV running Huawei’s QianKun ADS, and the premium eπ line co-developed with Huawei around HarmonyOS 5 and QianKun ADS 4.
Under its Dongfeng Peugeot and Citroën joint ventures, the company also showed concepts with steer-by-wire and rectangular steering interfaces — a direct nod to the same intelligent-mobility direction Zeekr and the rest of the premium pack are pursuing.
When will this reach Dongfengs in Malaysia and Singapore?
Three Dongfengs are making their Malaysian debut at June’s Kuala Lumpur International Mobility Show (KLIMS): the Voyah Dream luxury MPV, the MHero II off-roader and the 008 family SUV. Voyah and MHero are to Dongfeng what Wey and Tank are to GWM — the brands where the group shows off what it can really do.
So while the solid-state pack itself won’t arrive in a local showroom for some time, KLIMS is the moment Dongfeng stops being an abstraction for Malaysian buyers and starts being a brand with a credible claim to the EV technology frontier.
The date to circle is September, when we find out whether the battery that underpins all of this makes it off the pilot line and into a car.
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