Tesla co-founder: Electric vehicle sales will take off, the biggest problem is capacity constraints

According to reports, many people believe that the global electric vehicle market is about to take off. A few days ago, Tesla co-founder JB Straubel made a comment on the electric vehicle market, and he brought both good news and bad news to the optimists in the electric vehicle market.

Market changes are a surprise

Currently, Straubel serves as the founder and CEO of Mahogany Materials, a recycling company for batteries. He said that the demand for the electric vehicle market has begun to grow, but the global automotive industry has not moved quickly to adapt production capacity to the growth of demand.

In an interview with a financial TV channel in the United States, Straubel said that the rise of the electric vehicle market has caught many people off guard, which is a very strong transformation of the automobile market, the sales of traditional fuel vehicles have fallen, and in many places, the sales of electric vehicles have almost doubled.

Straubel said that according to industry sales, electric vehicles will account for 12.7% of the U.S. auto market by 2025, but this expectation is too conservative, "If you look at some parts of Europe and parts of the world, you will see the rapid growth of electric vehicle penetration, I think by 2025, the proportion of sales of electric vehicles in the United States will be higher than 12.7%. ”

Straubel said it is precisely because of the market demand for electric vehicles that his own mahogany material company is investing $1 billion to build a new factory in McCarran, Nevada. Later this year, the factory will be completed and put into production, when the anode copper foil will be produced for Panasonic in Japan, which will be used to produce lithium batteries, which will be assembled into battery packs at the Tesla factory in Nevada.

Redwood's new plant in Nevada is expected to employ more than 500 people. The company predicts that the anode copper foil produced each year can meet the needs of 1 million electric vehicles. It is reported that this will also be the first enterprise in the United States to produce anode copper foil, which was mainly imported from Asia in the past, mainly exported to the United States by Chinese and South Korean companies.

Battery prices are falling

It should be pointed out that in order to meet the needs of the electric vehicle industry, the global lithium battery production is continuing to expand. According to statistics from automotive industry consultancy AlixPartners, global lithium battery capacity totaled 713 GWh last year. The company expects this capacity to triple to 2,273 GWh by 2025, with lithium battery capacity in the U.S. quadrupling.

According to the traditional understanding, with more and more lithium battery production lines and larger and larger production scale, the cost of lithium batteries and battery packs will decline. This will help reduce the sales price of electric vehicles and improve the profits of manufacturers.

ESource, a consulting company in Colorado that has long been concerned about lithium battery prices, predicts that the price of electric vehicle power batteries will fall from $147 per kWh in 2022 to $98 per kWh in 2025. While these forecasts are encouraging, the price drop also depends on the continued expansion of the battery supply chain to meet the needs of electric vehicle manufacturers.

Stephen Brown, senior director of fitch ratings, a well-known rating agency, said that in the next decade or more, the demand for power batteries in the electric vehicle industry will remain high, and the raw materials required for lithium batteries may encounter supply shortages.

Similar to the supply risk of chips

In Straubel's view, he is not convinced that the power battery industry can meet the needs of electric vehicle manufacturers.

He said there is an absolute risk that we will see a battery shortage similar to today's semiconductor supply crisis in the electric vehicle industry, which will affect the growth of the electric vehicle market.

Straubel said his mahogany materials company is accelerating construction to be able to seize valuable business opportunities around the world from switching from fuel vehicles to electric vehicles.

"We're working 24/7, racing against the clock to speed up factories, build supply chains, and have everything in place before the industry's supply bottlenecks hit," he said. ”

Source: Sina Technology