Why is the demand and scrap of power lithium batteries increasing?

The output of power cells was 16.9 GWh, accounting for 36.07 %; Consumption of lithium batteries production 23.69 GWh, accounting for 50.26 %; Lithium storage battery production of 1.73 GWh, accounting for 3.67 %. We estimate that by 2020, the demand for power lithium batteries will reach 125 GWh, and the scrap volume will reach 32.2 GWh, about 500,000 tons. By 2023, the scrap volume will reach 101GWh, about 1.16 million tons.

The large-scale power lithium electricity market will be accompanied by industrial opportunities for lithium battery recovery and downstream echelon utilization. The development of lithium battery recovery and echelon utilization will also produce considerable economic benefits and investment opportunities while avoiding resource waste and environmental pollution. In the first half of 2016, China's production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 177,000 and 170,000, respectively, and it is still the world's largest market for new energy vehicles.

From January to February, due to the influence of the Spring Festival and policy factors, production and sales were low. With the Advancement of policy adjustments, the new energy vehicles in the first half of the year gradually achieved a resumption of growth from March to June, and Sprint to 35,000 units in June. In the second half of July and August, the new energy vehicles are in a stable state of about 30,000 units, waiting for further growth momentum. According to the statistics of the China Automobile Association, in August, 21,303 new energy vehicles were produced and 18,054 vehicles were sold, an increase of 2.9 times and 3.5 times respectively, of which 13,121 and 12085 were pure electric vehicles, respectively, a year-on-year increase of 3.8 times and 6.1 times. The production and sales of plug-in hybrid vehicles completed 8182 vehicles and 5969 vehicles, respectively, an increase of 2 times and 1.6 times respectively.

According to the relevant policies of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the subsidy standard for pure electric passenger vehicles has been reduced year by year after considering factors such as scale effect and technological progress. In addition, after the government increased its efforts to check and cheat in the first half of 16 years, it considered adjusting and modifying the policy. The state will improve the subsidy policy in various aspects, study and establish a dynamic adjustment mechanism, adjust the product structure, and increase the advanced level of subsidized products. The increase in the government's investigation and compensation will help standardize the development of the industry and enhance the motivation of an enterprise's independent technology research and development and industrial upgrading. It also helps to prevent excessive expansion of industrial capacity and improve the policy and institutional environment for the development of the new energy vehicle industry.

The new energy auto industry will still be in the stage of rapid development in the next 3 to 5 years. The policy transformation and industrial structure adjustment are the only way to make industrial development more healthy and perfect. With the continuous upgrading of electric vehicle technology and the continuous improvement of industrial concentration, the industry will still experience rapid development in the future.

The demand and scrap quantity of power batteries are not only closely related to the new output of new energy vehicles, but also related to the proportion of different models, the transfer trend of battery technology routes, the service life of different power cells, and the end-of-life life of different electric models. The current average standards in the industry are as follows. It can be used as a hypothetical condition for predicting the demand for power cells and the amount of scrap: the average mass of different power cells is: 275kg for plug-in passenger vehicles, 235kg for plug-in commercial vehicles, 550kg for pure electric passenger vehicles, and 1900kg for pure electric commercial vehicles; According to the statistics of the highway department, the average annual mileage of cars and light vehicles is 50,000 km, 40,000 km for medium-sized vehicles, and 30,000 km for heavy vehicles; Under the same driving conditions, the service life of a pure electric passenger car power battery is about 4-6 years; The pure electric commercial vehicles have many daily trips, long mileage, and frequent charging. The service life of their power cells is about 2-3 years. At present, the average end-of-life life of private passenger vehicles in China is 12-15 years, the mandatory end-of-life life of commercial vehicles is 10 years, and electric vehicles replace power batteries at least twice in their life cycle, and due to uncertainties(accidents, human causes, etc.). The life cycle of the power cell will continue to change.

According to our calculations, the end-of-life capacity of lithium batteries used in commercial vehicles(based on the 3-year battery life assumption) and passenger vehicles(5 years) will reach 27GWh and 4.2 GWh respectively in 2020 and 84GWh and 17.5 GWh respectively in 2023.

According to estimates, the scale of the market created by the recovery of cobalt, nickel, manganese, lithium, iron, and aluminum from used power lithium batteries will start to erupt in 2018, reaching 5.2 billion Yuan, reaching 13.6 billion Yuan in 2020, and will exceed 30 billion Yuan in 2023. If these batteries are not properly disposed of due to the development of the new energy automotive industry, they will cause greater pollution to the environment; In addition, discarded lithium-ion batteries have significant resource properties.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.