22 Years' Battery Customization

What is restricting the development of new energy vehicle industry? The key of technical bottleneck is in battery!

May 23, 2019   Pageview:641

What the industry lacks most is not money, but mature technology and a commercial operation team.

At present, the industry's concerns about the development of the new energy vehicle industry, in addition to the fuel vehicle's own technology promotion and application, the initial cost of huge investment led to the market-oriented mass production contradictions, mainly concentrated in the relatively mature and commercial mass production of lithium battery for the kinetic energy of electric vehicles sector. What is restricting the development of new energy automobile industry? The author thinks, answer can fall into 3 respects: technology, resource, policy.

The technical bottleneck lies in the battery

Both in China and the world, shell manufacturing and vehicle assembly has a very mature technical support and manufacturing system, need not worry too much. For new energy vehicles, although the formation of consumption habits is relatively easy, but if the problem of too long charging time and too short range cannot be solved, then compared with the traditional fuel car refueling fast, the site is densely covered, new energy vehicles or will lose the new favorite position in the market.

From the perspective of market promotion, "battery station" can remove battery life and long battery charging trouble, and can carry out professional maintenance of the battery. But there are three big problems ahead:

First, the construction cost of the site itself is very huge, the battery needs professional maintenance, battery manufacturers and what kind of capital partners can do this?

Second, when consumers buy cars, they will pay a deposit for the battery modules in the whole car. This part of investment may take 3 to 10 years to be repaid. What kind of enterprises can bear such risks?

Third, the battery standard has not been unified at present. Just like the earliest mobile phones, standard modules and unified interfaces cannot be achieved. What kind of enterprises can have such forward-looking and r&d capabilities to formulate and guide the standard?

Therefore, at present, the most realistic solution is still to charge quickly and increase battery life.

In the manufacturing chain of electric vehicles, "three-power system" (battery, motor and electric control) is very important, and battery is the basis and decisive factor. For the lithium ion battery with the largest commercial production, to realize fast charging, the original material, especially the anode material, needs to be improved at a higher technical level, such as high nickel. A significant increase in energy density is needed to achieve this. It is worth noting that lithium ni-co manganate has gradually become the mainstream in the past two years, and the energy density of lithium iron phosphate has been improved in the past two years, which lay the foundation for the development of large-capacity and long-endurance battery technology.

At the same time, the negative impact of security performance can not be underestimated. For example, after the explosion of samsung mobile phone, major airports adopted more stringent regulations on the carrying and use of lithium ion batteries. The core problem is that it is difficult to achieve the most effective combination of battery capacity density and safety performance. Even once-hyped graphene will not be ready for large-scale commercial production in three to five years.

At the heart of the resource puzzle is lithium cobalt

The price of basic lithium has risen dramatically in the past three years. From the end of 2014 to 2017, the price of battery grade lithium carbonate rose from less than 40,000 yuan/ton to 180,000 yuan/ton, and fell back to about 150,000 yuan/ton at the end of 2017. The price of battery grade lithium carbonate increased by about 4 to 5 times.

Cobalt, meanwhile, looks a little crazy. According to the data, cobalt experienced an increase of 400 percent from 2006 to 2008 and an increase of nearly 50 percent from 2009 to the first half of 2010 under quantitative easing. Based on strong demand for new energy vehicle ternary materials, cobalt was quoted at $29 / lb by metal guide (MB) at the end of August 2017, but still more than 65 per cent off its all-time high. Since cobalt ore usually exists in the form of copper-cobalt or nickel-cobalt, the relationship between the prices of cobalt and nickel-copper cannot be ignored.

Are price spikes caused by a lack of resources? The answer is no.

From the perspective of lithium resources analysis, the world's current proven lithium reserves of 14Mt, the current annual demand of 32. 5 kt. Lithium resources are mainly distributed in the range of 30-40 degrees north latitude and 20-30 degrees south latitude, such as the Andean plateau of South America, the western United States and the qinghai-tibet plateau of China. Australia and Chile together control 75% of the world's lithium resources.

In China, 90% of the lithium resources are distributed in the western part of the country. Currently, the main mined minerals are lithium (lithium pyroxene and lithium mica) with low average grade (0. 8% - 1. 4 percent, lower than 1 percent abroad. 465% - 3. The Mg/Li ratio in brine is generally greater than 40, while that in atacama salt lake in Chile is only 6. Therefore, it is difficult to utilize industrial scale.

From the perspective of cobalt resources analysis, the world is rich in cobalt resources and their distribution is concentrated. According to the U.S. geological survey (USGS) minerals yearbook 2016 (MineralCommoditySummaries) statistics, in 2015 the world cobalt has proven reserves of 7.1 million tons, mainly concentrated in Congo (gold), Australia and Russia, Cuba, new caledonia, Zambia, about 80% of total reserves of cobalt in the world.

In terms of production capacity, there are 10 mines producing cobalt resources in Congo (gold), but the holding company of 5 of them is Swiss glencore, accounting for about 67% of the cobalt resources in Congo (gold). Freeport corporation of the United States, Eurasian natural resources corporation of kazakhstan, ShalinaResources corporation of the united Arab emirates, China minmetals group and jinchuan group each hold one. The rest of the world does not have enough cobalt capacity to shake up Congo's dominance.

As industrial scale level, improve the extraction technology of breakthrough, on the basis of the principle of lithium, cobalt and other metallic elements don't disappear, lithium battery recycling industry has sadly arisen, recycled to become a reality, demand for natural resources will be reduced, the rise in the short term the situation like the process of the iron ore, more is the result of the international capital control speculation, can not fully reflect the real situation of industrial development.

The key policy concern is subsidies

It is necessary to clarify a basic understanding: the essence of state subsidies for new energy vehicles is to support an industry, create first-mover advantage and rapidly expand the market, rather than subsidies similar to the traditional agricultural sector, whose purpose is to maintain the basic plate stability. So subsidies are bound to disappear in the near future.

The current policy subsidies are generally oriented in two aspects: first, on the technical level, encourage technological innovation, keep up with the international top, and reward the industry leading; Second, at the market level, break through the bottleneck of environmental protection, advocate green travel, leverage large and medium-sized cities, highlight the role of big countries, relying on "One Belt And One Road" to seize overseas markets.

Specific to the production and operation of enterprises and product sales links, the current pure electric vehicle sales seem to grow slowly or even decline, and its delivery period stretched to more than 6 months has a great relationship. It reflects the problem is, the current actual power battery capacity is very limited, on the existing technical route, despite relevant enterprises on the basis of the battery and lithium, lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide) invested on the project, but based on the industrial projects, especially lithium salts in the chemical industry of demonstration, design, planning, examination and approval, construction, reaches producing cycle time is usually 1-2 years, large-scale release of production capacity should be around 2020 years ago.

Related to this, the demand of the terminal automobile market has not been alleviated for a moment, which can be seen from the new energy vehicle ranking Numbers in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, guangzhou and shenzhen (for example, the ranking Numbers in Beijing have been as far as 2021). Some foreign media believe that without the capacity limit of battery, the sales volume of pure electric vehicles can easily surpass that of plug-in hybrids. In recent years, the Chinese government has made great efforts to support the development of new energy vehicles. At present, the key to the development of new energy vehicles is not government subsidies or market demand, but the formation of production capacity under technological breakthrough. According to public data, Volkswagen announced in November 2017 that it would invest more than 10 billion euros ($11.8 billion) to build 40 new energy vehicles with local Chinese partners. The company hopes to produce 1.5 million new vehicles in China by 2025, most of which are electric vehicles. Toyota has also said it will build electric cars in China by 2020. BMW has moved its battery research and production center from Munich to shenyang, and has chosen ningde new energy technology co., LTD. (CATL) as its partner.

Can say, to new energy car character, this is a best times. New forces are surging forward, and a large amount of capital has been involved in various ways, including mines, basic lithium salts, electrode materials, battery production and vehicle manufacturing, to seize the opportunity. Traditional barons have also woken up with a start, struggling to secure the base and expand into new areas. In a word, what the industry lacks most is not money, but mature technologies that can be applied in the market and operating teams that can be commercialized.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.

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