Image source @ Visual China
Text | Car smart driving
According to the latest data released by the China Automobile Association, the market penetration rate of new energy passenger cars has reached 19.5% in November. According to a report released by the Association of Passenger Vehicles, the penetration rate of the domestic retail market for new energy passenger vehicles in November was 20.8%.
It is not surprising that the penetration rate of new energy vehicles has accelerated beyond the 20% mark, and this is still the result of the production capacity of power batteries being less than the demand. According to Yang Hongxin, chairman of Hive Energy, the current battery gap in the industry is about 30%-50%.
The emergence of the contradiction between supply and demand, that is, the deformed format that has caused the discourse power of the new energy automobile industry chain to be reversed, has further promoted the internal volume of the power battery industry. The first echelon of battery suppliers strives to maximize the interests, "screening" car companies, forcing car companies to "build their own batteries"; the second echelon of the battery industry lowers the right to speak to "please" car companies, triggering a price war in the industry.
Power batteries appear highly internally rolled in the incremental market, which is enough to reflect the complexity of the power battery industry. In addition, the battle for the route of mainstream battery technology will further intensify the struggle between enterprises, and where will the future of the power battery industry go?
Power battery route "transposition", manufacturers' right to speak "down"
Who has the technical route and who is inferior has always been determined according to the comprehensive consideration of market demand, rather than pure technical considerations.
September this year is an important node in the route dispute in the field of power batteries.
According to statistics, the cumulative sales of China's power batteries in 2020 reached 65.9GWh, of which ternary lithium batteries accounted for 61.1%, down 4.1%, while lithium iron phosphate batteries accounted for 38.3%, a cumulative increase of 20.6%.
The time node came to September this year, although the lithium iron phosphate battery is still lower than the ternary battery in terms of installed capacity, it has exceeded the ternary battery in terms of production and sales, and has fully surpassed after September.
From the perspective of battery cost performance alone, the main factors for car companies to choose batteries are the three major elements of cost, safety and performance.
As we all know, lithium iron phosphate batteries have high safety and low cost, but the material properties limit the energy density, and the endurance is its short board.
Although car companies can improve the endurance through structural innovation, such as BYD's blade battery is to improve the endurance and safety of lithium iron phosphate batteries through heterogeneous battery packs, but the upper limit of materials determines the upper limit of performance, at present, the improvement of technology can not make it surpass the ternary lithium battery in all aspects of endurance.
And the market competition has always been you and me, Ningde era also has CTP technology to make up for the shortcomings of ternary lithium batteries, the technology can not only further improve the energy density, but also indirectly make up for the high cost of ternary lithium batteries.
However, the shortcomings of the weak safety of ternary lithium batteries are also difficult to make up for through subsequent design, and in the context of the internal volume of the power battery industry, battery manufacturers have always taken radical element proportion schemes in order to improve battery performance, which further exacerbates the short board effect of ternary lithium batteries.
The "ternary" in ternary lithium mainly refers to the three elements of nickel, cobalt and manganese, the main role of nickel is to increase energy density, but the content is too high will reduce the cycle life of the battery, that is, the number of charges is less, but this shortcoming can be compensated by cobalt element; manganese has the advantage of improving structural stability and safety, but the disadvantage is to reduce the energy density.
Under the demand of long market endurance, the proportion of ternary materials for ternary lithium batteries has gradually increased from a relatively stable 523 to 622, and even reached the extreme proportion of 811. According to the three elements of cost performance, the 811's aggressive scheme improves performance but reduces safety to a certain extent, which leads to a further increase in the possibility of spontaneous combustion of vehicles loaded with ternary lithium batteries, such as GAC's Aion S.
In addition to GAC, Geely, Weilai and other manufacturers have also adopted the 811 program, but after the market performance is not good, they have re-embraced the 523 proportion plan. For example, Geely Geometry A adopts the 811 scheme, and Geometry C directly shifts to the more stable 523 scheme.
The failure of the "advanced" attempt to run the ternary lithium battery reveals two key information: first, the endurance limit of the ternary lithium battery has peaked and has not reached the expectations of car companies; secondly, under the certainty of the rapid growth of new energy vehicles and the knowledge of car companies steadily opening up the market, car companies have gradually sought stability.
At the same time, the ternary lithium battery that relies on subsidies has also fallen sharply due to subsidies, raw materials have risen sharply, and cost pressure has suddenly increased. The lithium iron phosphate battery indirectly makes up for the short board of endurance due to the increase of charging piles. In the context of cost, performance, safety and the gradual establishment of the car company hierarchy, lithium iron phosphate has gradually become the new darling of the times.
Tesla has also adopted an extreme scheme of high nickel (nickel cobalt manganese), and the exploration of long endurance has gradually been replaced due to poor market performance, and even directly into the arms of lithium iron phosphate. Recently, Tesla said in the latest quarterly financial report that it will use a new battery with lithium iron phosphate electrode on the standard endurance version of the electric vehicle, and it is reported that Tesla's cooperation objects include both the Ningde era and the signing of a supply plan with BYD.
Volkswagen, BYD, Xiaopeng, Nezha, Great Wall and other car companies have announced or have embraced lithium iron phosphate batteries to assemble them on low- and mid-range models. In order to avoid BYD's advantageous areas, in addition to taking into account lithium iron phosphate batteries, the Ningde era has also invested heavily in the development of sodium batteries to provide adaptation solutions for power batteries in low- and mid-range models. However, although sodium batteries are lower in price and better in low temperature performance, they still cannot surpass the relatively mature lithium iron phosphate batteries in commercial applications in a short period of time.
According to China's carbon neutrality target, new energy vehicles will account for 20% of the total car ownership in 2025, while only about 12% has been completed so far. In 4 years to complete the 8% gap may emerge a large number of low-end models, in the absence of breakthroughs in other technologies, lithium iron phosphate batteries are promising.
In the view of car intelligent driving, the route battle of power batteries is far from over, and the uncertainty of technology makes the prospects in the battery field confusing. However, what is certain is that the internal volume dispute of battery manufacturers has indirectly sorted out the industry, making it return to the essence of the industrial chain supplier, rather than jumping out of the processing industry, and the profit margin has been as high as 44.84% of the deformed format.
Under the competition of differences, the inevitability of car companies "self-made" batteries
Although the infighting of power batteries is good for car companies to obtain high bargaining power, the cost of power batteries accounts for 40% of new energy vehicles, and not being self-sufficient means that the elastic adjustment ability is weak. As the first vane of perceiving market demand, car companies need to closely follow the market demand to make time-sensitive choices in many aspects such as model architecture design, production adjustment, and cost suppression, and the complete delivery of battery supply to a third-party supply platform needs to bear great risks and uncertainties.
For example, on enterprise cloud migration, most enterprises will choose multi-cloud and hybrid cloud approach to reduce risk, and core data must be placed on the private cloud. For car companies, batteries are one of the core data.
But at this stage, it is not realistic to achieve BYD-style self-sufficiency. Self-built battery production line to meet small-scale self-production, through a series of models to fully meet the market demand, may be the final form of car companies.
In terms of self-sufficient batteries, many car companies such as Great Wall, Geely, Weilai, Volkswagen, and Tesla have or intend to lay out. Car companies to make batteries are not based on the route of ternary lithium and lithium iron phosphate as the main entry point, in the battery packaging, structural adjustment and other aspects of optimization is the core of car companies to make batteries. Tesla, for example, according to foreign media reports, Tesla is already building a battery pack that can be used as a body structure.
The battery pack as a body structure into the vehicle, as long as the safety problem is solved, there can be more space for flexible adjustment of battery capacity, interior layout, vehicle weight, vehicle shape and other aspects.
According to Tesla's usual pricing logic, differentiation also means high-end and high premium to a certain extent, which disguises the gap in demand in the high-end market after the failure of the "advanced" exploration of ternary lithium endurance. This set of combination punches is suitable for most car companies.
Battery manufacturers' internal and external troubles
In terms of market share and technical route, although the impact of self-made batteries on battery manufacturers by car companies is not large, it does not mean that battery manufacturers can sit back and relax and not be defensive against car companies. No matter how high its current market capitalization and market share, it is still essentially a parts supplier. In the industrial chain, it belongs to the downstream of profits, the low end of the right to speak, and car companies are the ultimate enablers of batteries.
Before the arrival of the balance between supply and demand of batteries and new energy vehicles, battery manufacturers can maintain a certain right to speak in order to avoid the reversal of the situation of "big customers bullying" and being greatly reduced by car companies.
However, in the context of serious internal involvement in the industry, it is not easy for battery suppliers to compete for the right to speak from car companies. According to public data, as a leader in the field of power batteries, the profit margin of CATL has slipped from 44.84% in 2016 to 26.56% in the first half of this year. According to industry insiders, the downward trend will continue, and for now, a decline to 20% is also very likely.
In order to improve the profit margin, the Ningde era "up and down" two steps. The strategy of solving problems from the source and reducing the price of upstream raw materials includes using the scale advantage to reduce the price of raw material providers, and also includes the acquisition of raw material producers to concentrate on adjusting upstream resources.
Downwards, we will increase our own technology share and transform from a parts supplier to an energy solution provider. To this end, CATL has opened an investment route of buying, buying and buying, and its investment scope includes but is not limited to software and chips. However, this route is highly overlapping with the functions of car companies, and car companies may not be willing to pay for it.
In order to reserve the future, CATL launched a new round of financing of 45 billion yuan (down from 58.2 billion yuan). According to the Tianyancha APP, CATL only raised 19.618 billion yuan in July last year, which is enough to show its anxiety about the future.
In addition to the known crisis, battery recycling may also become a new pressure on car companies and battery suppliers, especially the latter.
New energy vehicle battery recycling is a topic that the industry cannot avoid, and in 2021, China will usher in the peak period of the first batch of power battery retirement. According to China News Network, by 2025, the decommissioning volume of China's power lithium batteries will exceed 730,000 tons, of which 70% can be used in cascades.
However, waste batteries are typical non-standard products, different models of batteries of different manufacturers are mostly inconsistent, the complete system of residual power assessment of old batteries has not yet been established, and there is no scene of large-scale secondary recycling of retired batteries, and the high cost of recycling leads to a large number of batteries directly scrapped, resulting in waste of resources and environmental pollution.
As manufacturers and outflowers of power batteries, battery manufacturers and car companies are obliged to help establish standards for waste battery recycling systems, and it is easier for production and processors to systematically estimate the remaining state of decommissioned batteries.
To this end, CATL has invested in the establishment of the Bangpu Integrated Battery Material Industrial Park project in Hubei Province, with a total amount of no more than 32 billion yuan. But this investment standard may not be sufficient relative to its huge shipments and market value of 1.49 trillion.
With the industry's internal roll and more responsibilities pressing, battery manufacturers have a long way to go.