Tesla wants to enter the Chinese market, reduce the dimension of the blow, or adapt to the local play, that is, "'low-cost strategy', 'broad grain'."
According to the news of overseas media inside EVS, Musk said that Tesla has been exploring the use of more manganese in batteries and believes that manganese has potential.
PR News Photo/inside EVS
In fact, at Tesla's "Battery Day" in 2020, Musk proposed a new cathode material system, that is, the cathode material contains "1/3 of manganese + 2/3 nickel".
Musk also believes that for a long time to come, Tesla will focus on nickel-based chemicals for long-range cars, as well as lithium iron phosphate batteries for short-range cars.
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Musk's calculations
1. Tesla has the idea of making a big push into the low-end market. Tesla wants to enter the Chinese market, reduce the dimension of the blow, or adapt to the local play, that is, "'low-cost strategy', 'broad grain'." Judging from the car sales data of the past 20 years, the sales market share of Ax-class new cars exceeds 50%, and this part of the market is the most competitive. Judging from the sales data of the electric vehicle market in the past 5 years, the probability is still to continue the sales inertia of fuel vehicles, and most electric vehicle brands will concentrate on A-class cars, covering A00, A0, and A-class cars.
This part of the market for the power battery requirements, the first is the untaxed quotation to be low, the battery cell quotation is best at 0.55 yuan / Wh, the module is best 0.60 yuan / Wh, the pack is best 0.70 yuan / Wh, of which the manufacturing cost of the battery cell is best not to exceed 0.04 / Wh, the material cost is best not to exceed 0.4 yuan / Wh. In addition to the material manufacturing fee, how difficult it is to ensure that high gross profit is achieved! And to seize the low-end market, "building a high wall" has the opportunity to iterate upwards.
2. The achievement of the grand goal of electrification requires the support of a variety of power battery technologies. Tesla medium and long-term production and sales can be expected: It is expected that by 2025, Tesla production and sales are expected to reach 3 million vehicles, of which 870,000 in China, 870,000 in Europe, and 1.26 million in the United States.
PR News Photo/Tesla
From this calculation, by 2025, Tesla's power battery demand is expected to reach 230GWh, of which 61GWh in Chinese factories, 110GWh in American factories, and 59GWh in European factories. Only after the completion of electrification, the goal of intelligence can be completed, and the two are inseparable.
3. From a purely technical point of view, the energy density of high-manganese batteries may be higher than that of lithium iron phosphate batteries, and the price may be more than that of high-nickel batteries. But this does not mean that lithium iron phosphate batteries and high nickel batteries will be abandoned, and more likely will be a supplement to lithium iron phosphate batteries.
Tesla's operation has always been: strategic integration, tactical positive breakthrough with traffic. For these "stones and water", Tesla is also very important, so no matter which battery technology, as long as it can meet the needs of electrification and intelligence, its core lies in large-scale delivery and cost supply guarantee.
Nickel-manganese batteries
In fact, the "manganese battery" in Musk's mind has always existed in academia and industry, and the pain point in industrialization before is that the nickel-manganese system battery is not stable, and the cycle is not satisfactory. However, the industry has continued to make considerable efforts, such as some manufacturers mixed with aluminum elements, and manufacturers are improving the morphology (such as changing to three-dimensional), etc., too many to list.
From the paper point of view, the nickel-manganese system battery, compared to the advantages of lower cost of lithium iron phosphate batteries and manganese batteries used on the market, even has the view that it is at the lowest end of the cost of lithium batteries, which can effectively control the cost of batteries and has a very good performance in fast charging performance!
But whether nickel-manganese batteries can be developed on a large scale: first of all, it depends on whether it really has the advantages of cost and performance and can be delivered on a large scale, and it also depends on which manufacturer can solve the problem of trivalent manganese dissolution cheaply and well.
1. The price of lithium ore raw materials has increased, making lithium resources directly become "white oil". Quarterly increase year-on-year: lithium hydroxide rose 2.5 to 3 times, lithium carbonate rose 1.5 to 2 times, lithium iron phosphate rose 1 times, ternary positive electrode rose 0.5 to 1 times, electrolyte rose 0.8 to 1.2 times, lithium hexafluorophosphate rose 2 to 2.5 times, artificial graphite rose 1 to 1.5 times, and graphitization rose 1.5 to 2.0 times.
PR News Photo/Institute of High Industry and Industry
In fact, the soaring price of raw materials, the material integrators in the industrial chain have adopted the method of correlation and new material price increase (quarterly cycle, open BOM, etc.), and the cost of terminal factories cannot withstand (many electric vehicle brands have raised prices this year).
Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the cost of the surrounding point, such as reducing the proportion of cobalt used and using more non-rare precious metals. The low cost of manganese batteries is more because manganese is widely present in nature and contains 0.25% manganese in soil. The contradiction of the current electrification is that the market demand for electrification is growing faster than the speed of resource development and supply, and the "one after another" of replacing or improving and smoothing out the price of materials is also an optimal solution. But it is not "cobalt specification manganese with", but also has to continue to observe, and it is more to be improved by materials.
Demand suddenly rose, on the supply side, the mineral development cycle is longer, the release rate of production capacity is far less than the growth rate of downstream demand, the market supply is relatively tight, and the company once "hoarded goods" and "grabbed goods" Sentiment soared, further exacerbating the tension between supply and demand, and finally driving raw material prices soaring. Therefore, it also depends on who can shorten the process and "how fast and save" to produce lithium battery materials.
2. Dissolution of trivalent manganese. Manganese dissolution is one of the important factors that cause the deterioration of the performance of manganese-based cathode materials, which not only directly causes the loss of electrode active materials, but also deposits on the negative surface with the migration of manganese, which in turn triggers a series of side reactions, resulting in irreversible loss of battery capacity.
Manganese will undergo disproportionation reaction under certain conditions, and trivalent manganese mainly exists in the form of manganese trifluoride and manganese trioxide, the typical reaction formula is: 2MnF3 + 2H2O = MnO2 (precipitation) + MnF2 + 4HF.
From the perspective of elemental characteristics, manganese and iron are homogeneous, similar in chemical properties, slow reaction at room temperature, when the reaction is high, the reaction is rapid, manganese is oxidized, forming a complex oxide. Therefore, from a technical point of view, it is still difficult to improve the stability and conductivity of the interface, and it is also difficult, which brings about a high short-term process cost.
3. Lithium batteries are timeless. Even if significant progress is made, it is at best an improvement, and its impact is relatively limited. The shortcomings of lithium manganese oxide batteries are also obvious, such as short cycle life, unstable materials themselves, poor high temperature, fast decay, etc., these shortcomings can be improved technically, but they are not revolutionary, and there is no need to go online.
It should be pointed out that no matter what the system of lithium batteries, they need to have a certain scale to have economic feasibility. And from this Tesla once again mentioned manganese batteries, superimposed on the Volkswagen Power Day assert to develop manganese unified cells, it can be seen that the demand for manganese in the future has a certain growth.
The nickel-manganese battery will be equipped with an all-solid-state battery around 2030, subverting the "ternary + lithium iron phosphate" and forming a multi-layer space of technology. For example, 5V Spinel nickel-manganese batteries have the potential to replace lead-acid batteries, and future cathode materials may generally use manganese to pull the demand for manganese elements, such as lithium manganese iron phosphate!
Musk has also publicly stated: "In terms of EV Scaling up, Tesla needs tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of tons of raw materials." Musk believes that the materials used to mass-produce these batteries must be ordinary materials, otherwise they cannot be scaled. Lithium battery "alternatives" seem to be emerging in an endless stream, but on the other hand, all materials are reserved 30 years ago, depending on who can "carry forward".
Industry insiders believe that lithium-ion batteries are also the "3C consumption", the "electric vehicle", the "sea vehicle", the "flight vehicle", it can be determined that it has more and more strategic resource attributes.