November 28, 2025: CATL has launched a pilot program that the Chinese battery giant said allows it to transport lithium battery cargo by road and rail in safety and at scale.

The battery manufacturer said on November 13 it had become the first company in China to obtain a conditional exemption for road transportation — which would boost distribution and shore up a critical link in the supply chain for new energy vehicles and ESS systems.

Under the scheme, CATL said “all types” of its lithium ion batteries had been reclassified from a ‘special supervision’ to ‘safety exemption’ designation.

The firm said the safety failure rate of its battery cells are controlled by PPB — an industry standard unit of measurement used to express the concentration of a substance in parts per billion.

The batteries have also passed new national standard tests in China and the UN38.3 transportation safety test for hazardous goods, a mandatory test standard for lithium battery transportation safety in the UN Manual of Tests and Criteria for the Transport of Dangerous Goods.

CATL said the batteries also complied with relevant thermal stability tests for transportation.

The company announced last April that it had become the first in China to pass new national certification standards for EV batteries — which come into force in July 2026.

Batteries International reported then that the new standards included updates to thermal diffusion testing of batteries, further clarifying the temperature requirements, observation time, and vehicle testing conditions.

CATL said its progress was the result of establishing a multi-level safety system in dimensions such as material selection, development and design, extreme intelligent manufacturing, and empirical testing.