Image source @ Visual China
Text | Wise driving
Guess how many new energy vehicles will Be sold in China in 2021?
According to the association, the retail sales of new energy vehicles last year were 2.989 million units, an increase of 1.88 million units from 1.109 million units in 2020, an increase of 169.1% year-on-year. Standing on the side of the road, the green plate of new energy vehicles can be seen everywhere, as if it is a sales rush, entering the life of the public, coupled with the timetable of countries that have announced the ban on the sale of fuel vehicles, the clock sound of the comprehensive new energy countdown has been completely knocked and accelerated.
With the growth of new energy vehicle sales, the installed capacity of enterprises continues to rise, and the problem of power batteries has also attracted attention. According to data from the China Automotive Technology and Research Center, the number of new energy vehicles in China has reached 4.92 million in 2020, and the cumulative number of decommissioned power batteries is 200,000 tons (about 25GWh). In 2025, the capacity of waste power batteries that mainland China needs to recycle is expected to reach 137.4GWh, more than 5 times that of 2020.
We have the largest power battery recycling market, but the recovery of power batteries is not as smooth as imagined, not only the recycling link is chaotic, but even becomes a new source of pollution for new energy vehicles.
Batteries are risky Why promote it?
According to data reports, the service life of new energy vehicle power batteries is about 5-8 years. Since the development of new energy vehicles in 2014, the peak of the first batch of automobile power battery retirement has arrived, and the 2021 government report clearly pointed out that "accelerating the construction of power battery recycling system".
For the problem of environmental pollution of scrapped power batteries, it is the reason why many electric vehicle opponents and some radical environmentalists oppose electric vehicles, objectively speaking, if the power batteries after scrapping are not properly treated, they will definitely cause environmental pollution.
Back to the market, the mainstream new energy vehicle power battery we see at present can basically be divided into two camps, one is lithium iron phosphate battery, one is ternary lithium battery, both contain a large amount of electrolyte, these electrolytes in the lithium phosphate substance, in the air environment is very easy to hydrolyze phosphorus pentafluoride, for human skin, the eyes have great irritation, if the electrolyte is buried in the soil, may not grow things for decades. In addition, another major pollution of power batteries is that heavy metal substances such as cobalt, manganese and nickel that batteries cannot degrade on their own will also pose a huge threat to the environment.
Since there is such a major risk of environmental pollution in the power battery of new energy vehicles, why should it be vigorously promoted? To answer this question, we can analyze it from three aspects: energy, environment and travel strategic layout.
The first is the energy problem, although China has a large land, but the energy structure is extremely uneven, the simple summary is "rich in coal, more rare earths, lack of oil, less gas" . Under such circumstances, the mainland has become the largest oil importer after the United States, and according to a report released by the China Oil and Gas Enterprises Association, in 2019, we imported more than 500 million tons of crude oil.
As an important strategic and people's livelihood resource of a country, how passive it is for oil to control the lifeblood of such an important resource in the hands of other countries. The importance of chip autonomy is appreciated by everyone, right? The same goes for oil. Coupled with the complexity of the mainland's automobile exploration and development, it is more difficult to increase the scale of reserves and continuous production, and the available stock is stretched. With the depletion of petrochemical resources, the best way to maximize oil conservation is to change the form of energy consumption.
At present, the core of new energy is electric energy, and the main sources of electric energy are thermal power, hydropower, wind power and nuclear power. Especially nuclear power, with the characteristics of sufficient fuel and large energy, for such an energy acquisition method, some people have also questioned that the development of new energy vehicles was for environmental protection, but China is currently mainly based on thermal power, they believe that thermal power burning coal, will also cause environmental pollution.
It is an indisputable fact that the main power supply structure in China is mostly thermal power. However, since 2012, the proportion of thermal power compared with wind power, hydropower, solar power and other power generation methods has continued to decline. By the end of 2021, the mainland's wind power and photovoltaic power generation account for about 11% of social electricity consumption, and the follow-up will increase year by year, and it is expected to reach 16.5% in 2025, which also means that the exhaust gas pollution caused by power generation is within the controllable range.
From an environmental point of view, the carbon oxides, nitrogen oxides and other harmful particles released by traditional fuel vehicles are one of the main causes of atmospheric pollution such as smog and photochemical smog. The greenhouse effect brought by these pollutants will destroy the ozone layer, the emergence of car acid rain, black rain and other phenomena, which will seriously damage the human respiratory system and affect physical and mental health. New energy power can solve such a problem, and the car as a decentralized means of transportation, in the exhaust gas treatment of many restrictions, and large power plants use centralized treatment, the transmission of electric energy to each energy storage terminal scheme, whether it is technology or efficiency is better than the car decentralized exhaust gas treatment. It can be seen that upgrading and redistribution of new energy is one of the just needs of current social development.
In addition to energy sustainability and environmental protection considerations, the development of electric vehicles is based on strategic considerations. Automobiles as an important pillar industry of the country, but in fuel vehicles, our technology has been difficult to surpass developed countries. Take the core components of the car's engine, engine, transmission, ECU, etc., the national brand is facing a technical barrier that cannot be crossed.
New energy vehicles are different, as a new thing, in the early stage of development, the domestic independent brands and Toyota, Volkswagen century-old enterprises are in the same running line, the technology gap has not yet formed, all standards are also being discussed, the future there is still a lot of room for imagination, development space.
Since the promulgation of the "Automobile Industry Adjustment and Revitalization Plan" in 2009, a new generation of new energy vehicle manufacturing enterprises has emerged, and various local governments are also introducing relevant policies to encourage local car companies to establish new energy vehicle bases. According to the 2021 mainland automobile production and sales released by the Ministry of Information, China's new energy vehicles continue to lead the world, with annual sales of new energy vehicles reaching 3.521 million units, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year, ranking first in the world for seven consecutive years.
Behind this gratifying sales of new energy vehicles, new problems have surfaced. As an important part of new energy vehicles, the recovery of decommissioned power batteries is difficult. In the face of decommissioned power batteries that will reach 137.4GWh in 2025, if these decommissioned batteries cannot be effectively recycled environmentally friendly, the "clean" and "environmental protection" of new energy vehicles is undoubtedly a false proposition.
Car batteries are decommissioned ≠ scrapped
"Who produces, who recycles", the main body responsible for the recycling of the power battery should be the car company, but at present, once the new energy vehicle is delivered, the battery ownership is transferred to the hands of the consumer, and the consumer's awareness of the power battery recycling problem is not clear, which increases the difficulty of establishing a "recycling channel".
At present, the industry has basically reached two directions for the disposal of new energy power batteries, one is cascade utilization, and the other is recycling.
For example, the battery used in the children's electric toy car cannot be used, and it can still be used by the remote control after it is removed. Similarly, when the power attenuation of the car's power battery is less than 80%, it may no longer be suitable for continuous use in the vehicle
Car power battery is like our mobile phone battery, after repeated charging and discharging, the capacity will have obvious attenuation and shortened life, when the power battery attenuation to 80% have to replace the new battery, otherwise it can not meet the normal use mileage needed for driving. For the battery use standard, everyone's attention is only focused on the 8-year time limit of the car power battery and the mileage limit of 120,000 kilometers. Ignoring another standard, in order to ensure the mileage and driving safety, the car battery capacity is less than 80%, it must be replaced. The "retirement" of the battery, but this does not mean that the potential of the battery has been exhausted. On the contrary, the new energy power battery retired from the first line still has great potential for recycling and reuse, that is, cascade utilization.
For example, the battery used in the children's electric toy car cannot be used, and it can still be used by the remote control after it is removed. Similarly, when the power attenuation of the car power battery is less than 80%, it may no longer be suitable for continuous use in the vehicle, but it does not affect it as a power supply carrier in other fields. In the case of the good appearance of the power battery and the effective operation of the functional elements, the new energy power battery can also be used as a short-distance venue car such as a park scenic spot, or a sightseeing tour car, the source power of these low-speed electric vehicles.
Decommissioned batteries that cannot reach the value of cascade utilization can be dismantled and reorganized to extract expensive metal materials such as cobalt and nickel from the battery, and make products such as lithium carbonate, which can be used again for the production of new batteries to realize the recycling of resources.
The above recycling methods are only the ideal path, in reality, forced into small workshops and other informal channels of decommissioned power batteries are not a minority. The current power battery market still belongs to the seller's market, that is, the highest price is obtained. When the seller sells a battery, he does not care whether the buyer has the relevant qualifications.
Compared with the regular battery recycling enterprises, the black workshops hidden in the market will not invest in environmental protection and infrastructure, and even in the process of recycling, they directly eliminate important links such as battery testing, discharge and environmental protection treatment, which save certain operating costs, and have more bargaining space in the process of recycling power batteries, forming an unfair competition in which bad currency drives out good money. According to enterprise investigation data, there are nearly 43,000 existing "power battery recycling" related enterprises in the mainland, and 2020 is the outbreak period of centralized registration of enterprises, an increase of 253.3% year-on-year.
Although the number of enterprise registrations has soared, but the power battery must be recycled by enterprises with professional qualifications, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's latest release of the "new energy waste power battery" shows that only 27 companies meet the access standards of the battery recycling industry and enter the white list.
In the face of a huge battery recycling market, a small number of battery recycling institutions are still a cup of water, by the end of 2021, the number of new energy vehicles in the country reached 7.84 million, of which pure electric vehicles accounted for 6.4 million, Everbright Securities had predicted that in 2023, new energy vehicles or will reach 80 million -100 million, which also means that the future of decommissioned power batteries will be a 100 billion-level market. Due to the weak voice of the regular army in the market and the foreseeable market prospects for power battery recycling, more and more domestic ace teams have begun to focus on this piece of fat.
Giants grab hundreds of billions of cakes
From the perspective of the market, as long as the profit of power battery recycling is high enough, then the slightly so-called technical threshold will definitely be flattened by capital. But what hits the face is that before the scale effect cannot be formed, the power battery is still a business that loses money. Taking the recent hot lithium iron phosphate battery as an example, the cost of recycling a ton of lithium iron phosphate battery is about 8500 yuan, but its market value is only 8000, which also means that the company will lose about 500 yuan per power battery recovered.
In contrast, the recovery income of ternary lithium batteries is higher, because it contains a large number of cobalt nickel manganese lithium and other metals, the recoverable material content is higher, if the operation is improper, it is very easy to cause secondary pollution or cause explosion.
In addition, if you want to fully mobilize the value of a waste power battery, you must first make a precise assessment before recycling, that is, back adjustment, which requires a clear understanding of the battery's factory information, the information used, whether there has been a collision, etc., this information can not be obtained by simply checking the appearance of the battery, which requires the recycler to detect the battery one by one.
Although there are many pain points, but it is not insoluble, many companies are still willing to inject China's battery recycling industry. As early as 2018, 11 new energy vehicle companies such as Dongfeng, FAW and BYD signed a letter of intent to cooperate with China Tower on the construction of power battery recycling system.
Back to the industry, BYD, as the earliest batch of car companies to lay out the new energy vehicle market, is also the first to lay out the recycling of power batteries, and has set up nearly 40 power battery recycling outlets across the country, hoping to maximize economic benefits through refined dismantling, material recycling and comprehensive utilization. In December 2021, BYD announced the establishment of a new battery company, the focus of the new company is not to expand the production of power batteries, but to recycle waste storage batteries. The automaker Weilai chose to jointly invest in the battery asset company "Weineng" with ningde times, Guotai Junan and other enterprises, with the goal of not only recycling, but also to do the whole life cycle management of batteries.
However, due to the large number of domestic power batteries, the battery mechanism is complex and there is no specific standard, which causes high dismantling costs and is difficult to form a heavy cause of operation. As mentioned earlier, another difficulty in power battery recycling lies in the ownership of the battery, like the "power exchange service" launched by Weilai and Ningde times, to a certain extent, the ownership of the battery and the car is separated, the user only needs to pay the rent in exchange for electricity, or change the power, the ownership of the battery still belongs to the car company, which is also convenient for the car to track and control the battery.
Whether it is to establish a battery recycling chain or to adopt a power exchange model, this is a market that needs to fight a protracted war, and informal small workshops are still wildfires, which also lengthens the cycle of profitability of the regular army. In the pursuit of carbon neutrality, countries around the world have pushed new energy vehicles to the top, while the protagonist behind new energy, the power battery, is still hovering on the edge of environmental protection.
Write at the end
"We did not inherit the earth of our fathers, but borrowed the earth of our children and grandchildren." The phrase "UN-Habitat" is deafening, and it is not so much a formal development that battery recycling is the next outlet. Although the recycling process of power batteries is very complicated and difficult, with the maturity of technology, car companies assume corresponding social responsibilities, explore and solve recycling channels and business models from multiple parties, and form a complete industrial chain from outlet recycling, transportation, testing and cascade utilization.
This can not only make the mainland's new energy industry from strong to large, but also contribute to saving energy resources and protecting the ecological environment, but also solve the consumer's anxiety about the after-sales problem of new energy battery attenuation and low retention rate. At that time, the new energy automobile industry can establish a benign ecology of "production-sales-recycling" circular development, bid farewell to single policy promotion and subsidy temptation, and make more models become the favorite choice of consumers.