Lack of "core" and encounter the demon "nickel" electric vehicles how many crises there are

Entering March, Tesla took the lead in announcing price increases, followed by BYD and Xiaopeng Motors, and even the "god car" Wuling could not withstand the official price increase;

Compared with the price increase at the beginning of the year because of the subsidy decline, this time it is because of the rising cost of raw materials and the price increase, and the price of new energy vehicles has been increased twice in less than three months in 2022.

In the end how fierce the rise in raw materials is, whether the price increase is individual car companies or the industry is common, the CEO of Ideal Automobile exposed the internal logic of this wave of price increases for us on Weibo.

That is to say, all new energy vehicles will face price increases, and those that have not yet risen are already on the way to price increases.

The reason for this is mainly that some battery companies have changed the price negotiation rules, and the price is negotiated according to the quarter, so it also means that in the third quarter and the fourth quarter, if the raw materials rise, there is still room for price increases.

Raw materials rise, demon nickel and cobalt grandma's pot?

Some time ago, the Russo-Ukrainian war led to a sharp rise in energy prices, and the successive rise in oil prices has reached the ceiling of the limit price.

The rise in oil prices means that the fuel vehicle market will be greatly affected, on the contrary, new energy vehicles will be hot, but new energy vehicles did not expect to eat melon to eat their own body, under the chain reaction of the international situation, the price of metal nickel used to manufacture ternary lithium batteries has soared.

According to the prediction of relevant investment banking institutions, the soaring nickel price will lead to an increase in the production cost of a pure electric vehicle by $1,000, about 6323 yuan; the most affected of which is the new energy vehicle equipped with ternary lithium batteries.

In the field of power batteries, ternary lithium batteries are a kind of lithium batteries that use nickel-cobalt elements as cathode materials and stabilize chemical structures with manganese salts or aluminum salts, mainly including NCM (nickel-cobalt-manganese) and NCA (nickel-cobalt-aluminum).

In NCM batteries, according to the different contents of nickel, cobalt and manganese, it can be divided into NCM111, NCM523, NCM622, NCM811 (the number represents the proportion of nickel, cobalt and manganese).

With the increase of nickel content, the specific capacity of ternary cathode materials gradually increases, and the energy density of the battery cell will also increase, so many high-end electric vehicles now use high-nickel batteries, such as the ternary lithium battery of the 811 formula.

The energy density of the 21700 NCA ternary lithium battery cell used by Tesla is as high as 260Wh/kg, and its nickel-cobalt-aluminum ratio is 8:1.5:0.5, which also belongs to the "high-nickel battery", so it is also one of the most ruthless car companies in this price increase.

In addition to the high proportion of "nickel", "cobalt" use is relatively small but the same price soared, as of March 28, the average domestic electrolytic cobalt spot price was reported at 570,000 yuan / ton, up 275,500 yuan / ton from the beginning of 2021, an increase of more than 93%; the average spot price of cobalt powder was 648,000 yuan / ton, a record high in the past 3 years.

There is also a potential crisis that the currently found cobalt reserves are very limited, and some insiders have calculated that the production of a Tesla will consume 13.68 kilograms of cobalt. If 30% of the current global cobalt reserves are used in electric vehicles, the cobalt will be depleted in about 30 years.

The price of ternary lithium has risen, and how lithium iron phosphate has also increased in price

Since the price of ternary lithium raw materials has increased, it is not possible for car companies that use lithium iron phosphate to laugh, after all, lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP) are lithium-ion batteries that use lithium iron phosphate as cathode materials.

However, this is not the case, jun did not see BYD is also one of the earliest car companies to increase prices, but the price increase is not as large as Tesla and Xiaopeng.

Although the cathode material of lithium iron phosphate batteries is not more precious than nickel, cobalt and other metals, the production price of lithium iron phosphate has risen from less than 100,000 yuan / ton all the way to more than 150,000 yuan / ton, and the increase is also not small, close to 60%.

In the proportion of battery materials, cathode materials account for a large proportion of the battery, its cost also directly determines the cost of the battery, and now the battery's cathode material lithium, cobalt, nickel prices rise together, with the power battery cost soaring.

From the perspective of raw material price increases, ternary lithium batteries are the most affected, and if the price continues to rise, more car companies will switch to lithium iron phosphate power battery camp.

At the same time, there may be more new energy vehicle companies actively embracing lithium iron phosphate batteries and making them the mainstream technical route of power batteries.

Such a statement is not out of thin air, 2021 is the most brilliant year of lithium iron phosphate, and its annual installed capacity accounts for more than ternary lithium batteries.

In the top ten models in the domestic sales, most of them have launched lithium iron phosphate versions, BYD is a loyal fan of lithium iron phosphate, because from the beginning of the development of electric vehicles, BYD has been the main promotion of lithium iron phosphate, but later the high energy density of ternary lithium batteries brought the endurance advantage so that lithium iron phosphate batteries once sank to the bottom.

Fortunately, when the emergence of CTP technology, the energy density of lithium iron phosphate batteries has jumped, and BYD's "blade battery" is one of the representatives.

The advantages of lithium iron phosphate have also allowed many battery manufacturers to re-evaluate, after media reports that LG new energy is also developing lithium iron phosphate batteries, which is expected to be trial production at the end of 2022, and it is aimed at the Chinese market.

Of course, it is not a good idea to use mix-and-match batteries like Weilai to reduce costs.

In the past year, Weilai launched a ternary iron lithium standard battery pack, in fact, it is a new battery pack form that combines the ternary lithium battery cell and the lithium iron phosphate battery cell in a mixed arrangement, and at the same time increases the battery capacity, adds the lithium iron phosphate battery cell, increases the safety performance, reduces the cost, and achieves "no increase in the amount".

As the leading boss in the industry, the NINGDE era is more precautionary, hoping to develop cheaper battery materials.

In the last year, the Ningde era released sodium-ion batteries, the chemical properties of sodium are extremely close to lithium, rich in resources, compared to lithium-ion sodium ions themselves are much larger, the structural stability and kinetic requirements are higher.

According to Dr. Huang Qisen, vice president of NINGDE Times Research Institute, the cathode materials with potential commercial value currently include Prussian white and layered oxide materials, with a gram capacity of 160mAh/g, close to lithium-ion battery cathode materials.

In terms of the negative electrode, because sodium ions cannot freely shuttle between graphite layers like lithium ions, the Ningde era has developed a unique hard carbon material with a gram capacity of more than 350mAh/g and excellent cycle performance.

In terms of electrolyte, CATL has developed a new unique electrolyte system suitable for such a positive and negative electrode material; in terms of manufacturing process, it can be compatible with the current lithium-ion battery manufacturing process and equipment, taking into account the economy.

In summary, the energy density of the first generation of sodium-ion battery cells in the Current Ningde Era has reached 160Wh/kg, and through a series of technological innovations, the energy density of the next generation of sodium-ion batteries will exceed 200Wh/kg.

According to the expectations of the Cataline era, the deployment of the relevant industrial chain will reach mature conditions in 2023 and open up a new commercial battery route.

Dynamic price adjustments become the norm?

The struggle between the Slavic brothers is still continuing, and various fancy sanctions in Europe and the United States have also led to continuous uncertainty in the market, knowing that the Slavic brothers not only control a large number of battery raw material resources, but also chip, car wiring harness and other related raw material resources.

Among them, Russia's Norilsk Nickel Company is the world's largest nickel producer, with an annual nickel production of about 10% of the world, and the entire Russian pure nickel supply accounts for more than 15% of the world.

In terms of chip raw materials, more than 70% of the global chip manufacturing industry's neon gas supply comes from Ukraine, and Russia controls 40% of the world's palladium supply.

Affected by the international situation, in the short term can not see a clear and clear situation, according to the battery price quarterly negotiation rules, each quarter battery price will have a big change, of course, there are ups and downs, which also makes new energy vehicles more and more like the fuel price adjustment of fuel vehicles, perhaps consumers need to adapt to this price floating method.

There is no doubt that the battery industry chain is relatively fragile, and how to maintain it in the medium and long term is a topic worth studying.

It should be noted that as an upstream enterprise of raw materials, such as Ganfeng Lithium, Tianqi Lithium, etc. released the operating data in January and February this year, its operating income and net profit have risen sharply, and in the process of battery price increases, the profits in the industrial chain are mainly controlled by upstream enterprises.

That is to say, the rising cost is basically under pressure by the car companies, and in the face of huge losses, the car companies can only transfer the cost to the consumer through price increases, so how to increase the bargaining power of all parties or middle and downstream enterprises is worth thinking about.

Maybe it's time for a unified bargaining alliance, which is a bit like pricing power for iron ore supplies.

The mainland has always been the world's largest consumer and importer of iron ore, the upstream iron ore supply is highly concentrated, and the mainland's steel companies are numerous and scattered, so the steel industry has been lacking the influence to match the consumption status, and the iron ore seller's market is unbreakable.

In order to grasp a certain pricing power and discourse power, the domestic is the establishment of Beijing Iron Ore Trading Center Co., Ltd., but also initiated the establishment of Shanghai Ore International Trading Center Co., Ltd. and other iron ore bulk commodity spot, forward spot trading platform, and constantly improve the iron ore trading delivery rules, and gradually introduce basis trading and other pricing methods, have a good effect.

Therefore, for the battery industry chain, the situation of high concentration of raw materials can also consider similar transaction methods.

In addition, in response to the recent soaring price of raw materials has also attracted the attention of relevant departments, on March 16, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Raw Materials Department, the Development and Reform Commission Price Department, the State Administration of Market Supervision and the Anti-Unfair Competition Bureau held a symposium to discuss the issue of lithium resources to ensure supply and price stability.

Key enterprises in the domestic lithium resource development, lithium salt production, cathode materials, power batteries and other industrial chains also participated in the meeting.

The meeting requested that upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain should jointly strengthen the docking of supply and demand, work together to form a long-term and stable strategic cooperation relationship, jointly guide the rational return of lithium salt prices, increase efforts to ensure market supply, and better support the healthy development of strategic emerging industries such as new energy vehicles in the mainland, which will also help stabilize the overall price.

Lack of core in 2021, soaring raw materials in 2022, and potential crises?

The entry of new car-making forces has made electric vehicles develop towards intelligence, and an electric vehicle is equipped with sensor hardware and chips much more than traditional fuel vehicles.

In 2019, affected by the imminent supply of Huawei chips, many foundries are making every effort to hoard goods for Huawei, which lays a crisis for the supply chain of the automotive chip industry behind.

At the beginning of 2020, a sudden new crown pneumonia epidemic became the fuse of the global "lack of core".

Affected by the epidemic, at that time, the upstream and downstream industrial chains of the automotive industry were pessimistic about the prediction of the automobile market, and car companies also lowered their sales forecasts for the whole year and proposed production reduction demand to foundries.

What people did not expect is that global automobile sales have not been greatly affected by the epidemic, but because of the uninterrupted and irregular suspension of production of epidemic car companies, the supply has exceeded demand.

Coupled with the power outage in Taiwan last year and the outbreak of the epidemic in Southeast Asia, the factories under various chip manufacturers have fallen into a state of suspension of work and production.

Entering 2022, when the chip supply has not fully kept up with the pace of automobile production capacity, the rise of battery raw materials at this time has followed, how proud can new energy vehicles be, and whether it is vulnerable or not.

However, from the perspective of the composition of the new energy vehicle, the battery price accounts for nearly half of the cost of the vehicle, and other parts such as body aluminum, motor rare earth, etc. The domestic production and reserves are sufficient, and it is not easy to fluctuate, and the crisis should stop at chips and batteries.

Of course, we can not ignore the potential impact of the epidemic, once the epidemic seriously leads to local sealing, then the industrial chain will still be greatly affected, once it can not be digested within the enterprise, the price at the terminal will continue to change.