In the past 2021, we have paid attention to the information of several automotive industries, namely "the annual sales of new energy vehicles in the Chinese market are close to 3.4 million", "the annual sales of pure electric vehicles in the US market are close to 440,000 units", and "the German market has sold 355,000 pure electric vehicles in the whole year".
The above, the side reflects that the world's new energy models have entered the "fast lane" and are in a period of rapid development. Therefore, shortly after the beginning of 2022, the price of raw materials for power batteries, which is the core of electric vehicles, has risen. At the end of 2021, the price of lithium phosphate was 261,500 yuan per ton, more than five times that of January last year.
What kind of impact will the rising price of battery raw materials have on car companies? Which car companies will be more affected? Talk about these topics today.
The reason behind the price increase of power battery raw materials
As mentioned at the beginning, the global demand for electric vehicles is gradually expanding, which directly leads to a strong demand for power batteries. Then for power batteries, lithium, nickel and cobalt are very important elements, these elements are urgently needed for electric vehicles, but the supply can not keep up with the demand.
Last year's supply chain tightening led to an increase in the price of lithium. Take spodumene in Australia in 2020, for example, the price in 2020 is $400/ton, and the price in January 2022 is $2,000/ton. However, this is only the most basic raw material, and then there are two options for extracting good lithium oxide and lithium carbonate, but their prices have increased by 254% and 413% respectively from the beginning of 2021 to the end of the year, corresponding to 31,900 US dollars / ton and 32,600 US dollars / ton, respectively.
In addition, according to the S&P global market analysis report, the supply of lithium carbonate is expected to increase from 497,000 tons in 2022 to 636,000 tons in 2022, but the demand is expected to increase from 504,000 tons to 641,000 tons, of which a demand deficit of 5,000 tons is expected.
Where does all this lithium come from? The world's largest producer of lithium is Australia, accounting for about 30% of proven resources, but the lithium produced by Australia is mostly exported in the form of spodumene concentrate, not refined lithium oxide batteries and lithium carbonate. A large number of spodumene concentrates have been exported to the Chinese market, from January to October last year, spodumene concentrate imports of 1.73 million tons, lithium carbonate imports of 69,700 tons, lithium oxide imports of 0.31 million tons, these data are more than the same period in 2020.
In addition the remaining components of the power battery, graphite of the anode and nickel with cobalt elements of the cathode.
China is the largest producer of graphite, and from 2014 to 2021, exports have been greater than imports, and the price is not as expensive. The total import of nickel and cobalt from Indonesia and Congo is close to 2.8 million tons from January to September 2021, and the total import of cobalt ore and its concentrate is 19 million tons.
The price of cobalt has reached a price of $70,000 per ton since mid-December 2021, close to the all-time high of 2018. In addition, the price of nickel has also increased from $16,000 in early 2021 to the current price of $20,000/ton.
There are other factors, such as domestic lithium battery processing enterprises have been affected by some of the power ration policies, followed by cobalt elements due to the epidemic caused by the delay in shipments in the Congo, and about 90% of China's cobalt imports are from the Congo. Relatively speaking, domestic power battery processing enterprises for graphite and nickel elements to obtain the way is simpler and closer, graphite can complete the production and processing of primary materials in the country, and about 90% of the nickel elements originate from Indonesian imported materials after processing. As we can see, the demand for raw materials required for power batteries is getting bigger and bigger, but there is a gap in the supply, and in addition, the entire industry chain also includes imports and processing and other factors, which ultimately leads to an increase in the price of power batteries.
Power battery prices rise, the market impact is large and small
Regarding the price increase of power batteries, downstream power battery companies such as DOMESTIC BYD and Guoxuan Hi-Tech have issued price increase letters at the end of 2021. In addition, with the reduction of domestic new energy subsidies, it has also affected the adjustment of the terminal price of electric vehicles in the domestic market.
At the beginning of 2022, new energy brands such as Tesla, Volkswagen, and Nezha and new energy products have ushered in price increases. Tesla's two products increased by 10,000 and 21,000 yuan respectively; the price of Nezha's full range of models ranged from 3,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan. Like BYD, although it has its own battery industry, it has also issued a price adjustment letter on batteries, but the terminal market has not received specific model price increase information, and the latest news is that the discount has begun to tighten.
Although most of the models we see in the market at present have not been affected by the "price increase tide" of power batteries in a large area, due to the above-mentioned raw material price increases and the unequal supply and demand factors, the new energy models in 2022 may be the first price increase after many years of price decline.
In the environment of rising prices in the power battery market, who will have less impact? BYD with its own battery production capacity? Or the Great Wall's Hive Energy? Neither.
We are sorted by priority, the first least affected should be the enterprises that sign agreements with the head battery suppliers, such as Tesla and catheter era, which is a large-scale supply and demand agreement. Previously, Tesla signed a supply agreement with CATL in February 2020 to purchase lithium-ion batteries, which ended on June 30, 2022; subsequently, Tesla signed a three-year supply agreement in June 2021 until December 2025. The relevant information of the agreement disclosed by CATL, which did not restrict tesla's purchase volume.
Why is it said that the brand impact of signing an agreement with a power battery head enterprise will be the least? Because enterprises like this power battery head have begun to lay out the upstream material market. In 2020, CATL took out 19 billion yuan to invest, including domestic and foreign lithium resources, nickel resources and cobalt resource enterprises, as well as electrolytes, silicon carbon anodes and other materials are covered, which can ensure the price increase of related ores to a certain extent, and the impact on themselves can be minimized.
The brands cooperating with CATL include BMW, Tesla, FAW, SAIC and GUANGZHOUC. Power battery brands such as catheter era that lay out upstream industries, as well as brands such as LG Chem. Similar to the head enterprise of the Ningde era, the upstream layout can effectively control the cost of batteries, so that it will not easily make price adjustments.
Secondly, the impact is "small" is the power battery companies mentioned above such as BYD and Great Wall Hive Energy. Among them, the better development is BYD, BYD also began to lay out the upstream industry very early, at the end of last year also participated in a phosphate company, the control of upstream materials is relatively stable. After BYD are the Great Wall Hive Energy, Geely Hengyuan, which concentrate on making batteries; but the Great Wall Hive Energy has only begun to load its own brand models since May 2020, and Geely's main battery suppliers account for a large proportion of the Ningde era, and the proportion of Hengyuan batteries is very small.
To minimize the impact, it is the power battery manufacturing enterprises that have laid out upstream resources, such as Ningde Times, LG Chemical, etc., followed by automobile brands with their own power battery production (assembly), such as BYD, Great Wall and Geely. These companies have a common point, that is, the production scale of enterprises is large, whether it is batteries or automobile products, once the production scale is expanded, the cost of sharing is lower, so they belong to the two levels of "small" and "small".
So, who will have the biggest impact? There are no brands with power battery production capacity and small production scale of automotive products. For example, Nezha Automobile, after the introduction of the new subsidy policy in 2022, adjusted the price of all products; there are zero-running cars, which increased by nearly 8,000 yuan after the zero-run T03 annual revised version was listed on December 28 last year.
summary
For new energy vehicle companies, although the price increase of batteries is caused by the rise of raw materials, it is worth considering whether this cost is borne by the brand itself or passed on to the terminal market for consumers to bear. If the cost is borne by consumers, it may have a bad impact on the overall popularization and promotion of new energy products.
For car companies and battery companies, it is particularly important to develop low-cost power batteries through technological innovation. But at present, we can get the information, the only one that meets the conditions of low-cost batteries is the sodium battery in the Ningde era, when will it be mass-produced and when will it get on the car? These are not specifically available yet. In addition, it is like the power exchange products launched by the C-end market and the Geely B-end market, which can separate the battery cost from the price of the whole vehicle, but it is not yet the mainstream demand.
New energy products in 2022, along with the rise in the price of rebates + raw materials, no automobile company or battery company can not be affected, can only be said to be affected by the big and small. We can infer that signing a large number of long-term procurement agreements with battery head companies with upstream and downstream resources is the most stable choice; followed by brands that have their own battery production capacity, but such brands are rare, and there are only three brands at present, Great Wall, Geely and BYD. The remaining small-scale mass-produced car brands that do not have the ability to produce their own batteries are likely to be the part of the enterprises that have been most affected after the battery price increase and replenishment.