Keep selling and keep going up.
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Following the "core famine" and "lithium vastness", the global new energy industry has ushered in the challenge of "demon nickel". As a large sales user, Tesla took the lead in responding to the price increase.
On March 10, Tesla China's official website showed that the price of Model 3 high-performance version and Model Y long-endurance and high-performance version models were raised by 10,000 yuan.
In addition to the domestic Tesla, Tesla has also increased accordingly in the US market. The Model Y long-endurance version was raised by $1,000 to $59,990, and the Model Y high-performance version was priced up by $1,000 to $64,990.
"We just got notice this morning and didn't explain the reason for the price adjustment." Tesla store sales told Future Auto Daily that Tesla's pricing is more flexible and may be affected by occasional factors. But even so, it still takes 14-16 weeks to get a Model Y.
Since the price exceeds the national subsidy line of 300,000 yuan, the current Model Y models cannot enjoy the national subsidy policy, which also means that the price increase has nothing to do with the policy subsidy slide. Although people have become accustomed to Tesla's price adjustment, it is not common for China and the United States to increase prices at the same time.
The price increase models are equipped with ternary lithium batteries, which also points to the raw material of the recent crazy price increase - nickel.
"The reason for the price increase is due to cost fluctuations." A Tesla insider told Future Auto Daily, "At present, it should be related to the international supply chain environment, after all, the battery uses more nickel." ”
Tesla has always followed the strategy of fixing prices at cost. In 2021, affected by chip shortages and tight supply chains, Tesla CEO Elon Musk once explained that he had to raise prices because of price pressure. At present, the chip problem has not been completely alleviated, and Tesla has ushered in greater cost pressure.
In fact, not only Tesla, as the prices of metal nickel, lithium, cobalt and even lithium carbonate soar, almost all new energy vehicle companies are difficult to bear the pressure. Now that nickel has opened a new round of price increases, can other car companies resist it?
Tesla planning ahead?
Nickel, this ancient and young metal, with the fire of new energy vehicles, began to occupy an increasingly important position in the automotive supply chain. Nickel is mainly used in nickel cobalt manganese (NCM), nickel cobalt aluminum (NCA) two kinds of ternary lithium battery field, because the cobalt price is high and the amount is small, high nickelization has become a new trend in the development of ternary lithium batteries.
According to Benchmark Minerals Intelligence, demand for nickel for power batteries will soar from 139,000 tons in 2020 to 1.4 million tons by 2030, accounting for 30% of total nickel demand.
At present, the 4680 battery developed by Tesla is to maximize the "high nickelization". On February 19, Tesla announced that its California factory had produced 1 million 4680 batteries in January, and that production capacity will continue to climb in the future, which means that Tesla's demand for nickel will continue to increase.
In order to get enough supply, from 2021, Tesla has signed nickel supply agreements with the French New Caledonia Mining Company and the global mining giant BHP Billiton.
However, the plan could not keep up with the changes. Due to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict that led to the Russian nickel embargo, the price of nickel futures in London has jumped all the way in the past few days. Its price first rose by 73.93% on March 7, and rose by more than 100% a day later, which is also known as an "epic surge" in the industry. Shanghai nickel futures also rose for three consecutive trading days, rising by 12%, 15% and 17% from March 7 to 9, respectively.
Source: Kokusho Future Auto Daily Chart
From 50,000 US dollars / ton, to now break through the 100,000 US dollar mark, the direct consequence of the rise in the price of Lun nickel is that the cost of electric vehicles has risen sharply.
On March 7, Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said in a note that the price of nickel metal rose by 67.2% on the day, followed by an increase of $1,000 per electric vehicle in the United States.
According to the Tianfeng Securities Research Report, when the nickel price is 50,000 US dollars / ton, the bicycle cost of Model 3 (76.8 kWh electricity) will rise by 10,500 yuan, Xiaopeng P7 (80.87 kWh electricity) will rise by 11,000 yuan, and Weilai EC6 (70 kWh electricity) will rise by 0.95 million yuan, and the cost of bicycles in these three models will rise by about 10,000 yuan.
If the nickel price reaches 100,000 US dollars / ton, the cost of Model 3 bicycles will rise by nearly 28,000 yuan, Xiaopeng P7 will rise by nearly 30,000 yuan, and Weilai EC6 will rise by more than 25,000 yuan.
Automotive industry analyst Zhang Xiang told Future Auto Daily that the rising Tesla model is equipped with LG ternary lithium batteries, and nickel accounts for 9% of the cost in the battery, so the vehicle price adjustment and nickel price increase are directly related.
"The rise in nickel prices will definitely lead to an increase in the production costs of battery cell factories." Dong Yang, a battery engineer at a car company, told Future AutoMotive Daily, "The price of raw materials is negotiated in advance, and if this price has been firm in the near future, it will be transmitted to battery manufacturers through cathode material manufacturers." ”
However, from battery raw materials to main engine factories, it is usually necessary to cross three or even four levels of suppliers, and in the case of manufacturers generally retaining inventory and delivery time, the short-term surge of raw material nickel will not be immediately transmitted to car companies.
Dong Yang analyzed that the reason why Tesla quickly raised the price is that on the one hand, it is due to the long delivery cycle of Tesla's car, and the cost consideration of the supply chain will be more long-term, which makes it very sensitive to costs. On the other hand, traditional OEMs also have two or three tier suppliers to share the cost pressure for them, and most OEMs are in a wait-and-see state and cannot adjust the price in time like Tesla.
From this point of view, or out of concern about the continued rise in nickel prices in the future, Tesla has to urgently raise the price to avoid risks in advance.
In fact, although the macro situation has triggered a short-term shock in nickel prices, according to TrendForce Jibang Consulting data, due to the rapid development of new energy vehicles, nickel prices have been in a state of moderate increase since last year.
More critically, global nickel inventories have begun to gradually decline. Nickel stocks in LME registered warehouses have fallen by nearly 70% to 83,328 tonnes since April 2021, and low inventories will further exacerbate price spikes.
The faster the market growth, the more serious the price increase of car companies?
In fact, before the soaring nickel price, the new energy automobile industry has encountered a lot of pressure on the cost side due to the lack of cores, the rise in the price of multi-party raw materials and the decline of subsidies.
In the past year, upstream raw materials have risen, almost exhausting the cost and pressure resistance of new energy vehicle companies. Any fluctuation in the price of raw materials is provoking the sensitive nerves of new energy vehicle companies.
From the beginning of January 2020 to the middle of January 2022, the increase in battery-grade cobalt reached 119%. Lithium carbonate is more crazy, Xinzhu lithium battery data show that on March 2, the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate exceeded 500,000 yuan / ton, up about 67% compared with the beginning of the year. At the beginning of 2021, the price of lithium carbonate is only 50,000 yuan / ton.
According to Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, the price increase of chips, batteries and other components will bring manufacturing costs of more than 100 yuan per kilowatt-hour (power battery capacity) to micro-electric vehicles. Many models have even begun to fall into the dilemma of "selling one and losing one".
On February 14, the popular Euler black and white cat model announced that it would temporarily stop taking orders. Dong Yudong, CEO of Great Wall Euler, once explained that after the sharp rise in raw materials in 2022, the loss of black cats alone exceeded 10,000 yuan.
Euler Black Cat Source: Euler official website
Not only Tesla, many car companies have to start raising prices. According to the incomplete statistics of Future Auto Daily, as of now, more than 20 car companies have announced price increases.
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 has little impact on domestic automobile sales, "In the long run, the impact is limited, but downstream car companies need to bear huge cost pressure." ”
In Zhang Xiang's view, the reason why Tesla reacted quickly is that its ability to resist supply chain risks is more sensitive than that of traditional car companies. It believes that Tesla has fewer models and has to digest the pressure affecting the price increase of raw materials through price increases. "Tesla's price increase is a process of resource reallocation, with a certain cycle, which may be eliminated by the second half of this year."
However, this also means that whether Tesla will continue to increase prices in the future still depends on whether the trend of raw material prices can be stabilized.
However, aside from the factors of short-term fluctuations in raw materials, on the one hand, the demand for new energy vehicles has increased, the market share has exceeded expectations, and the problem of production capacity has become a new anxiety for new energy vehicle companies. On the other hand, there is still a huge gap in the power battery.
A power battery recycling manufacturer told Future Automotive Daily that it is difficult to supply battery raw materials, and it will take at least three or five years to expand production to achieve a balance between supply and demand.
This also means that whether it is the terminal market or the supply chain, the new energy vehicle market is always in a non-balanced state, which also adds more uncertainty to the price of new energy vehicles.
"The overall negative growth of the global automotive industry, only the rapid growth of new energy vehicles, which is abnormal and exceeds the expectations of battery supply." Zhang Xiang said that battery factories are more conservative and will not blindly expand production capacity like some new energy vehicle companies, so the situation that parts are in short supply will always exist. "As long as the new energy automobile industry grows rapidly, the phenomenon of automobile price increases will exist."
(At the request of the interviewee, Dong Yang is a pseudonym)
The author | Qin Zhangyong
Edit the | Wang Yan