Source: The forefront of entrepreneurship
At the beginning of 2022, lithium prices are "crazy", electric vehicle manufacturers are panicked, and such anxiety may continue to be transmitted to the two-wheeler market.
In the past year, the news about the surge in electric vehicle sales and battery shortages has often appeared on the hot news - upstream raw material manufacturers are crazy to expand production, midstream battery factories passively undertake the pressure of raw material price increases, and downstream electric vehicle brands dare not blatantly raise prices, after all, at this stage, electric vehicles are still cost-effective.
These phenomena are closely related to the supply-side shocks caused by the market demand side of electric vehicles.
As the core component of electric vehicles, the cost of power batteries accounts for almost 40% of the total cost of the vehicle. In the face of eagerly awaited new energy consumers, lithium, one of the most important raw materials for making power batteries, is in a state of extreme shortage.
At present, the price of lithium carbonate, a raw material related to the cathode of lithium batteries, has been riding the dust.
Leaving aside the global capacity and spot shortage of lithium carbonate, according to the data of Shanghai Nonferrous Metals Network, as of January 13, 2022, the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate with a purity of 99.5% is 321,000 yuan / ton. The price of battery-grade lithium carbonate in early January 2021 was only 53,000 yuan / ton.
Compared with the electric vehicle industry, which is most affected by the cost of power batteries, the dilemma of the two-wheeler track, which also relies on batteries, has been greatly ignored.
If it is said that in the past, China's two-wheeled electric vehicle market has long relied on price wars, then with the end of the transition period of the "new national standard" policy in various places and the strict investigation of illegal modified cars at the local level, under the new round of electric vehicle replacement tide, batteries are becoming a new chip for two-wheeled electric vehicle brands to run a race.
But what cannot be ignored is that behind the team of the regular army of two-wheeled electric vehicles, there are still non-standard batteries circulating efficiently in the market, and the "loopholes" they drill are China's demand for more than 1 billion two-wheeler trips per day, as well as the extreme desire of ordinary consumers for endurance and charging efficiency.
Compared with the scorching war of new energy vehicles, the battery war of two-wheeled electric vehicles has just begun.
1 Lithium prices soared, battery shortages
With the multiplication of new energy vehicles on the street, it is not difficult to find that although electric vehicles may still have a gap with traditional fuel vehicle manufacturers in the supply chain and brand effect, electric vehicles have gradually become a travel solution that more people are optimistic about.
The feedback from the market is the best evidence.
According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, from January to October 2021, the production and sales of new energy vehicles in China were 2.566 million units and 2.542 million units, respectively, with a cumulative sales penetration rate of 12.1%. This means that for every 8 vehicles sold in China, 1 of them is a new energy vehicle.
The popularity of electric vehicles in the consumer market has also ushered in an explosive period for power batteries.
According to the data of China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, in 2021, the cumulative output of China's power batteries will be 219.7GWh, an increase of 163.4% year-on-year; the loading volume will be 154.5GWh, an increase of 142.8% year-on-year.
The continuous expansion of production from the domestic battery giant Ningde era also shows the shortage of power battery demand side. By the end of 2020, the power battery production capacity of the Ningde era is 69.1Gwh, an increase of 30% over the end of 2019, and since 2021, it has successively announced 4 major expansion projects, with a total investment of about 39.5 billion yuan.
"The shortage of power batteries is a global problem." Huang Jiaxi, CEO of imada Technology, told the "forefront of entrepreneurship" that on the supply side, the sales of electric vehicles have grown rapidly, but the construction of high-quality battery production capacity has not kept up with the growth of demand, resulting in an increase in the price of the industrial chain, and the interruption of the global supply chain and the shortage of energy have also led to the continuous rise in the cost of manufacturing batteries.
Imada's brand "imada e power exchange" is mainly engaged in light electric vehicle power exchange network operation and two-wheeler battery research and development, Huang Jiaxi found in the years of work, the domestic power battery raw material supply has long relied on overseas imports, enterprises want to obtain lithium or nickel ore procurement rights more difficult than ever, so it has also led to higher costs.
"The shortage of power batteries has been particularly severe in the past two years, and it is expected that this imbalance between supply and demand may continue for a long time." He added.
In fact, taking the price of lithium carbonate, the raw material of lithium batteries, as an example, its price has experienced three rounds of crazy rise:
The first round is from the third quarter of 2020 to the first half of 2021, and the price of lithium carbonate has risen from 40,000 yuan / ton to 90,000 yuan / ton;
The second round is from August to November 2021, and the price of lithium carbonate rose from 90,000 yuan / ton to 200,000 yuan / ton;
The third round is from November 2021 to the present, and its price has exceeded 300,000 yuan / ton.
On the one hand, the power battery production capacity is far from keeping up with the demand side and the price soars, on the other hand, the first batch of domestic electric vehicle batteries have gradually ushered in a "retirement tide" - but the question is, is the energy of this batch of power batteries really "squeezed dry"?
Generally speaking, the battery capacity of the power battery will be attenuated year by year according to the service life and other factors, if the decay is reduced at 20% can meet the driving use of the car, the attenuation is between 20% and 40%, it can be applied to other battery scenarios by processing and transformation, when the attenuation is above 40%, it is necessary to disassemble and recycle the power battery.
This involves a more complex power battery recycling problem.
At present, domestic power battery recycling is generally divided into two paths:
First, cascade utilization, after the detection, splitting, battery repair or reorganization of waste batteries, reapply them in other areas with lower use requirements, such as electric vehicle batteries can be applied to the two-wheeled electric vehicle market after retirement;
The second is recycling, the waste battery is dismantled, material repair or smelting and other treatments after resource recovery, extracting the residual precious metals in the battery.
Imagine that in the context of the shortage of power batteries for electric vehicles, two-wheelers can naturally only match batteries with relatively low battery capacity, such as lead-acid batteries, more often.
Due to the early industrialization of lead-acid batteries, the long commercial time, and the relative maturity of technology, as far as the current two-wheeled vehicle market is concerned, two-wheeled electric vehicles are still dominated by lead-acid batteries.
Lithium batteries have a lighter size, higher battery capacity and longer service life, although the penetration rate of lithium batteries in the market brand two-wheeled electric vehicles is increasing year by year, but overall, it is still not widely popularized in the field of two-wheeled electric vehicles.
"For the two-wheeled electric vehicle market, the cost of using lithium batteries is high and supply continues to be tight." Yu Qingjiao, secretary general of the Zhongguancun New Battery Technology Innovation Alliance and chairman of the Battery Hundred People's Association, revealed to the "forefront of entrepreneurship" that according to his understanding, the orders of lithium battery suppliers of several domestic two-wheeled electric vehicle brands have been scheduled for the end of this year (2022).
On the other hand, two-wheeled electric vehicles also show great potential similar to the new energy market.
From the C-end point of view, China's daily demand for two-wheeled vehicle travel is as high as 1 billion times, in first- and second-tier cities, two-wheeled electric vehicles can help users reach the last 3 kilometers; and in low-tier cities, the lack of public transportation has also made two-wheeled travel the norm of their lives. With the rise of new economic forms such as takeaway, short-distance delivery, and shared travel, B-end demand has also become an important supplement to the two-wheeled electric vehicle market.
As more and more brands enter the market to build cars, the competition in the two-wheeled electric vehicle market is becoming more and more intense, and batteries with higher energy density and better endurance effect are also becoming the key to customs clearance for brands large and small.
2 The Hidden "Gray Intention"
From the above two paths of power battery recycling, it is not difficult to find that in an ideal state, the upstream vehicle manufacturers are responsible for the channel recycling of batteries, and their 4S store network can be responsible for recovering decommissioned batteries from the C-end and passing them to battery recycling enterprises, and then these compliant enterprises will transform and process the decommissioned batteries and cascade utilization.
The power battery, which no longer has cascade utilization value, flows to downstream battery manufacturers, responsible for dismantling and refining residual precious metals, which need to have certain metallurgical and environmental protection qualifications.
However, the reality is that the recycling road of decommissioned power batteries is not very smooth, and it can even be said to be "full of thorns".
In general, the nickel, cobalt, manganese, lithium and other elements in the ternary lithium power battery are higher, and these precious metal elements can be used to make the cathode material of the battery after extraction, and the regeneration value is high, so the ternary lithium battery is more recycled.
The main components of lithium iron phosphate batteries are lithium and iron, but their service life is long, so the value of cascade utilization is relatively high.
In addition, the price of different types of power batteries also allows recycling companies to "vote with their feet". According to industry insiders, the current recycling price of ternary lithium batteries on the market is almost 5 times the price of lithium iron phosphate batteries.
So, is power battery recycling a good business?
At present, the main body engaged in battery recycling on the market mainly includes electric vehicle manufacturers, battery manufacturers and third-party battery recycling companies.
As early as 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the list of the first batch of enterprises that meet the "Industry Specification Conditions for the Comprehensive Utilization of Waste Power Batteries for New Energy Vehicles", and five companies such as Bangpu Cycle, Grimme and Huayou Cobalt were shortlisted. In January 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the second batch of 22 enterprises.
However, in reality, the recycling capacity of most of the "white list" enterprises is idle, but the black workshop recycling stations that believe in "the highest price" have occupied the upper hand in the market, forming a "gray intention".
Usually, "whitelist" companies use bidding to bid, but the vast majority of black workshops do not participate in bidding and do not need to issue invoices, so they can often give higher recovery prices on the C side. So that in the field of battery recycling, there has always been a helpless ridicule of "the regular army is not invincible to the black workshop".
However, these unqualified black workshops mostly carry out violent dismantling after recovering power batteries, and there is not only a risk of explosion in the process, but also the leakage of heavy metal elements and related chemical solutions will cause irreversible environmental pollution.