Affected by the soaring price of Lun nickel, as of 11:30 on March 9, the main contract of Shanghai nickel continued to rise and fall, rising 17% to 267,700 yuan / ton. Since March, the price of Shanghai nickel has risen by more than 90,000 yuan / ton.
Behind this unprecedented London Metal Exchange (hereinafter referred to as "LME") nickel "forced air war", nickel as one of the important raw materials for ternary lithium batteries, and under the technical trend of high nickelization, the rise in its price will directly affect the production cost of the entire new energy automobile industry.
According to Tianfeng Securities' estimates, the demand for nickel from ternary precursors under the trend of high nickelization and de-cobaltation has increased significantly, and the amount of nickel used has risen from 21.5% of the 3 series to 52.2% of the 8 series. For every 100,000 yuan / ton increase in nickel prices, the cost of 50-degree pure electric vehicles 5 series bicycles needs to rise by 2261 yuan, 6 series needs to rise by 2709 yuan, and 8 series needs to rise by 3605 yuan.
On March 8 alone, the price of the Lun nickel futures contract rose from 50,000 US dollars / ton to a maximum of more than 100,000 US dollars / ton (about 630,000 yuan / ton). Although yesterday evening, LME scrapped the March 8 Lun nickel futures trading, but on March 7, Lun nickel also rose from nearly 30,000 US dollars / ton to more than 50,000 US dollars / ton at the close (about 320,000 yuan / ton).
Tianfeng Securities said that in the case of a nickel price of 50,000 US dollars / ton, the cost of Model3 (76.8 kWh) bicycles increased by 10,500 yuan, Xiaopeng P7 (80.87 kWh) rose by 11,000 yuan, and Weilai EC6 (70 kWh electricity) rose by 0.95 million yuan, and the cost of bicycles in these three models rose by about 10,000 yuan.
In the case of nickel prices of 100,000 US dollars / ton, the cost of Model3 bicycles rose to nearly 28,000 yuan, Xiaopeng P7 was nearly 30,000 yuan, and Weilai EC6 rose by more than 25,000 yuan.
The cost of new energy vehicles brought about by the demon "nickel" has risen, and who will eventually pay for it?
An insider of a power battery company told the first financial reporter that there is no pressure on the cost of nickel prices for them, and its company strategy is to "follow up", because the precondition for the price increase of the battery cell price of the contract signed with the car company is linked to the price of various metals in LME.
The above-mentioned people pointed out that the main pressure on the rise in nickel prices may be in power battery cathode manufacturers.
Lithium battery cathode material supplier Ronbay Technology said on the interactive platform that the company's production and operation are normal and it has not participated in nickel metal futures trading. It is understood from upstream resource suppliers that the Long European Order of Russian Nickel is still continuing to be implemented.
As of the close of trading on March 8, Rongbai Technology's stock price fell 17.66% to 104.2 yuan, but its stock price picked up today. As of the noon break on March 9, Ronbay Technology's share price rose 5.01% to 109.42 yuan.
For the rise in the production cost of new energy vehicles brought about by the soaring nickel price, Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, believes that this will not have a big impact on domestic automobile sales. However, he told reporters that the price of raw materials rose too quickly, and the upstream earned a lot of money, but the downstream car companies were bearing huge cost pressure.
Before the sharp rise in nickel prices, the new energy automobile industry has already borne a lot of pressure on the cost side due to factors such as lack of core and less electricity, multi-party raw material price increases, subsidies and other factors. At present, the new car-making forces such as Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng, etc. are in a state of loss; BAIC Group's new energy brand Beiqi Blue Valley issued a performance forecast saying that in 2021, its expected loss will reach 4.8 billion to 5.3 billion yuan, while deducting extraordinary gains and losses of 5 billion to 5.5 billion yuan; Xiaokang shares announced that its Xilis new energy automobile business sector lost about 1.4 billion yuan.
In this regard, many car companies are overwhelmed and have chosen to increase prices, and even stopped receiving orders for some "loss-making" models.
Since the beginning of this year, according to the reporter's rough statistics, more than a dozen new energy brands have chosen to increase prices, and the amount of price increases is generally between 1,000 yuan and 20,000 yuan. Among them, the Tesla Model 3 rear wheel drive plate increased by 10,000 yuan, the geometric kung fu bull increased by 7,000 yuan, the Xiaopeng P7 increased by 5,900 yuan, and the highest price increase of BYD models also came to 7,000 yuan.
In late February, Euler's two main models, the White Cat and the Black Cat, announced that they would stop taking orders. The cessation of orders by Euler is precisely to take into account the impact of the sharp rise in raw material prices, taking the black cat as an example, and its sale of one car is a loss of more than 10,000 yuan for the company. This is not the problem of Euler's family, geometric kung fu cattle, Changan BenBEN EV and other small electric vehicles are facing the situation of "selling a loss", based on this, these models have also been exposed to consumers for up to 4 to 5 months can not pick up the car.
However, the industry generally believes that the surge in nickel prices is unsustainable, and Ronbay Technology pointed out on the interactive platform that it is mainly due to the psychology of panic and the speculation of the futures market, resulting in a short-term rapid rise in nickel prices. From the perspective of the long-term nickel supply and demand balance, the high price of nickel is not sustainable, and nickel is expected to achieve a balance between supply and demand.