21st Century Business Herald reporter Zuo Maoxuan reported from Beijing
"With the explosive growth of new energy vehicles, the installed capacity of power batteries in the mainland has also achieved a significant increase, with the installed capacity of 154.5GWH in 2021, an increase of 142.8% year-on-year." It is expected that by 2030, the global battery installed capacity will reach about 3000GWH, and the industry is growing rapidly. On June 16, Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said publicly at a power battery forum.
China's battery industry is currently the world's largest and most complete industrial chain, accounting for about 70% of global output, which is China's dominant industry. However, the mainland battery industry is also facing a series of challenges such as rising material prices and the international political and economic situation.
With the substantial increase in market demand, the power battery industry has shown some new characteristics and trends in terms of technological change, industrial chain construction, market form, and industrial layout. In order to cope with the fluctuation of upstream material prices, it is urgent to establish a stable supply and demand system and carry out intelligent recycling of battery materials. In the face of strong competition from rivals in Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea, technological innovation is still an effective means for the mainland battery industry to continue to improve its competitiveness in the next few years.
The price of key materials may fall
Affected by multiple factors such as industrial cycle, epidemic situation, and international tensions, the cost of raw materials upstream of power batteries has been increasing. From the perspective of the overall industrial chain, enterprises in each chain bear the pressure of rising costs, which also affects the healthy development of the mainland new energy automobile industry.
However, in the near future, the soaring price of lithium resources has begun to stabilize, and many industry insiders believe that the price of key raw materials such as lithium and nickel may retrace.
Bai Houshan, chairman of Ronbay Technology, pointed out that it is expected that the supply of metal nickel will exceed 400,000 tons next year, and the nickel price will drop from more than 20,000 US dollars / ton to less than 15,000 US dollars / ton.
Lithium prices are also expected to fall. "We originally predicted that the price of lithium carbonate will begin to fall in the second half of the year, and this trend has begun some time ago, but because of the temporary decline in production caused by the new crown epidemic, production recovered rapidly in May, and there was a brief price correction, but the general trend is definitely declining." This is also a characteristic of the mining industry itself, mining as a cyclical industry, when the demand suddenly increases, the price will rise rapidly, but it will definitely fall. Bai Houshan said.
Despite the soaring price of materials, the supply side of the main raw materials for power batteries is well supplied in the long run.
Ouyang Minggao pointed out that from the perspective of lithium resources, the development of lithium battery industry is no problem, and the proven reserves of domestic lithium resources are increasing.
"Our current lithium resources are recoverable reserves, cars can do 3 billion vehicles, China estimates that by 2040, 2045 is about 300 million new energy cars." And to a certain extent, the material can start to cycle, and we estimate that in 2050, half of the material should be recycled. Ouyang Minggao said.
Wang Yu, chairman and CEO of Fu Neng Technology, also said that the domestic raw material reserves are sufficient, and the problem of raw material shortage now is due to the sudden outbreak of new energy vehicle production capacity, which has led to the supply of upstream supply chains, and there has been a deviation from the supply and demand relationship.
The battery industry is establishing a robust supply and demand system for battery materials. At the enterprise level, upstream and downstream enterprises in the supply chain should establish long-term, stable and friendly cooperative relations with a win-win attitude. The upstream materials and resources of the whole vehicle, battery, and battery should be considered in synergy to improve the long-term and short-term demand forecasting and preparation capabilities of battery materials.
At the national level, we have gradually carried out effective guidance and layout for upstream expansion, further independently developed domestic resources, and established closer bilateral cooperation with Australia, South America and other regions in terms of international cooperation to ensure the supply of raw materials.
On the other hand, the rise in the price of battery materials has unexpectedly spawned the rapid development of the battery recycling industry. Ouyang Minggao expects that in 2050, half of the battery materials will come from the recycling cycle, which will greatly alleviate the current shortage of raw materials for power batteries.
In fact, battery recycling is not only the responsibility of recycling enterprises, efficient, automated, intelligent recycling has a lot to do with the structure and architecture of the battery itself. Therefore, at the initial design end of the battery, including the design of the battery cell and the battery pack, it is necessary to consider the convenience of disassembly in the future. In the next generation of battery recycling system, the level of intelligence and automation will be further improved, which can provide further guarantee for the supply of raw materials.
However, at present, battery recycling is still facing difficulties in recycling and lack of standardization.
Yu Huigen, chairman and general manager of Beijing Weilan, believes that battery recycling should be considered from the design of the whole life cycle of the battery, and from the initial design, the recycling-related work such as cascade utilization should be considered, and the battery should be designed for the whole life cycle, and the whole industry chain can be fully revitalized.
"We can't push the responsibility of battery recycling to recycling companies, whether we can achieve efficient, automated and intelligent recycling, in fact, has a lot to do with the structure of the battery itself." If the battery itself does not have the convenience or friendliness of recycling, even the best technology is difficult to work on the back end. Zheng Xiang, president of the China Innovation Aviation Research Institute, said.
The development of battery technology is in full bloom
From the perspective of consumers, more attention is paid to the performance of power batteries in terms of high safety, high specific energy, long life and fast charging.
In recent years, with the advancement of technology, the specific energy level of power batteries has been rising. At present, the energy density of ternary square batteries is close to 300Wh/kg, and the soft pack battery has reached 330Wh/kg; The energy density of semi-solid-state batteries has also exceeded 360Wh/kg, and it is expected to achieve 400Wh/kg by 2025; In the future, the energy density of lithium-sulfur batteries is expected to reach 600Wh/kg. At the same time, safety is also the lifeline of battery companies. The continuous innovation and iteration of high nickel, low cobalt/cobalt-free, high manganese and other technologies are all preconditions for ensuring the safety performance of batteries.
The core of the competition of power battery companies is to achieve and meet the needs of OEMs and consumers for battery performance.
"We must have both the balance of various indicators and the improvement of absolute values, and each battery company must also have its own characteristics and adhere to diversified development." Lithium battery performance indicators should take into account the needs of different application scenarios to maximize the comprehensive benefits of the battery. We believe that the absolute value of each performance index of the battery will continue to improve, which is an inevitable trend in the development of technology. Ouyang Minggao said.
The power battery technology route is diverse, and the performance is different. Power batteries are divided according to the form of packaging, divided into cylindrical, square, soft pack batteries; According to the material system to divide, divided into lithium iron phosphate and ternary. In addition, in recent years, new batteries such as CTP, CTC, One-Stop, and Kirin batteries have emerged in an endless stream.
Different technical routes determine different performance parameters of the power battery, including capacity, voltage, fullness, cycle life, etc., which in turn determines the performance and cost of the vehicle.
From the perspective of the mainstream battery material system, lithium iron phosphate batteries and ternary lithium batteries have different advantages in different market segments and application scenarios. "For the difference between ternary and lithium iron phosphate, mainly the technology that exists in the current market, the technology of large-scale application, basically there is no problem of who is right and who is wrong, but the market scenario and application scenario of positioning are differentiated, and the face is different models or different user groups." Zheng Xiang said.
From the perspective of packaging form, the three routes of cylindrical, square and soft package are divided into three parts of the world, and different battery manufacturers have focused on it, but they overlap, and the three technical routes have their own advantages and disadvantages. The cylindrical battery recommended by Tesla adopts the winding process, the product quality is stable, the cost is relatively low, but it puts forward higher requirements for the BMS system; Square battery package has high reliability and simple structure; Soft pack batteries have the advantages of high single energy density, good safety performance, long cycle life, flexible design, etc., but the shell strength is low, the dependence on group technology is strong, and the group efficiency is relatively low.
Fu Neng Technology chose the direction of soft pack batteries. Wang Yu believes that in theory, the soft pack battery is the best choice, and now there is no problem with the stability of the soft pack battery.
Due to the different needs of different customers, the NINGDE era has a layout in cylindrical, square and soft bags. However, Wu Kai, chief scientist of the Ningde era, said that it is more appropriate to prefer a square hard shell. "Our car takes 10 years, the soft package is semi-sealed in the sealing of the package, the hard shell can be called fully sealed by laser welding, based on this Ningde era is more inclined to use square shell batteries." Wu Kai said.
Overall, the current innovation momentum of the mainland power battery industry is rapid and needs to be maintained, but developed countries such as Europe, the United States and Japan have also continued to cultivate in the field of power batteries and have their own advantages.
Ouyang Minggao believes that the battery is still in a very active and blooming time for innovation, but he believes that the situation should be clearer in another 10 years. In terms of standardization, it is important that several structural innovations continue to maintain the momentum of innovation, and everyone is innovating and improving their own systems.
"The current lithium-ion battery will still dominate the market for a long time, and the all-solid-state battery can only be said to be still an ideal state, although many car manufacturers have announced the introduction before 2030, I believe this is possible." But even in 2030, its market share will still be very low, but I believe that the ideal battery will definitely appear. Ouyang Minggao finally said.
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