At present, the global commodity market has been severely impacted by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and the international nickel price has risen wildly in recent days.
After a 74% surge on the 7th, the 8th Lun nickel continued to go crazy, soaring 110% intraday, setting a record sky-high price of 101365 US dollars / ton. The gain reached 248% in two trading days.
On March 8, when the metal nickel rose 66.4% to break through $100,000 / ton, the London Metal Exchange suspended LME nickel trading, and on the 9th, the London Metal Exchange said that it is not expected to restart nickel trading before March 11, and a series of price limit measures will also be taken after the restart, such as a 10% limit on the rise and fall.
The demons are soaring, and the batteries are under pressure
As a key component of lithium-ion batteries, the soaring price of nickel has caused people in the industry to have serious concerns about the development of the new energy automobile industry. Morgan Stanley auto analyst Adam Jonas said earlier, "The price of nickel rose by 67.2% in one day, which means that the average input cost of manufacturing each electric vehicle increased by about $1,000." ”
Older lithium-ion batteries use about one-third of the nickel content of the cathode. But in recent years, automakers have found that increasing the proportion of nickel in the cathode can increase the energy density of batteries and increase the driving range of cars. At present, the cathodes of most lithium-ion batteries on the market contain at least 60% nickel. The nickel content in the high-nickel ternary lithium batteries produced by the CATL era is as high as 80%, and the nickel content in the batteries supplied by LG Chem for Tesla is as high as 90%.
Analysts at Rystad Energy warned last fall that the high-grade nickel needed for electric vehicle batteries is likely to outstrip supply by 2024.
The high nickel content is doomed to the cost of power batteries will be seriously affected by the fluctuation of nickel prices. If the price of nickel continues to rise, during the year, the high cost pressure will inevitably be transmitted to the main engine factory, especially the high-end electric vehicles with higher endurance requirements.
In order to reduce costs, manufacturers are likely to switch to lithium iron phosphate batteries that do not require nickel. Among them, BYD's blade battery with a special production process to achieve an energy density comparable to that of ternary lithium batteries, last August, foreign media reports pointed out that sources revealed that some Tesla models will start to use BYD's blade batteries in 2022. As the price of nickel continues to rise, there will be more OEMs following Tesla's example, and better-cost blade batteries may benefit.
The surge is not sustainable, but new energy vehicle companies cannot escape the doom
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 also said 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.
For this round of rising market, the industry generally believes that the surge in nickel prices is not sustainable, and Ronbay Technology pointed out on the interactive platform that it is mainly due to panic psychology and speculation in 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.
Many people in the industry speculate that such a huge increase in a single day is difficult to explain from the perspective of supply and demand, and there may be forced factors behind it. Recently, the market is rumored that the domestic nickel mining giant Qingshan Holdings holds 200,000 tons of nickel futures contract short orders, due to the lack of spot can not be delivered by foreign traders squeezed. "Foreigners do have some actions and are actively coordinating. Got a lot of calls today. Xiang Guangda, the actual controller of Tsingshan Holdings, responded that there was no problem with Tsingshan's position and operation.
Brokerage Oanda senior market analyst Mo Ya said on the 8th that if the news that Qingshan Holdings holds a large number of short positions is true, from the perspective of nickel price performance, Qingshan may have been forced to close some of the short positions, and he expects that the price fluctuations of Lun nickel are not over.
Moya also noted that nickel is a key metal for electric vehicle batteries, and palladium is a key raw material for chips, "too much metal and energy comes from Russia, which means that the supply chain in the semiconductor sector may take longer to normalize." Russia is the world's third-largest producer of nickel, accounting for about 9%-11% of the world's nickel supply, and the world's largest producer of palladium, accounting for about 40% of global production.
Whether it is the obstruction of Russian nickel exports caused by the Russian-Ukrainian conflict or the factors forced by nickel ore giants, there is no doubt that the supply chain of new energy vehicles will usher in severe challenges in the following days of 2022.
Affected by the news, Oriental Wealth data shows that the new energy vehicle sector index fell by 4% on March 9.