What restricts the development of new energy automobile industry? The key of technical bottleneck is battery!

The industry's biggest shortage is not money, but a mature technology and commercially-available operating team.

At present, the industry's concerns about the development of the new energy automotive industry, in addition to the market production contradictions caused by the promotion of fuel vehicles 'own technology and the huge initial cost investment, are mainly concentrated in the relatively mature and commercially used lithium batteries as kinetic energy. Electric car plate. In the end, what is restricting the development of the new energy automotive industry? The author believes that the answer can be grouped into three aspects: technology, resources, and policies.

The key to the technical bottleneck is the battery.

Whether in China or the world, shell manufacturing and vehicle assembly already have very mature technical support and manufacturing systems, do not need to worry about too much. For new energy vehicles, although the development of consumption habits is relatively easy, if it can not solve the problem of too long charging time and too short mileage, then compared to the traditional fuel vehicles refueling fast, dense sites, new energy vehicles will lose the market. New pet status.

From the perspective of marketing, the "battery exchange station" can be a good solution to the battery life and charging time, and can be professional maintenance of the battery. However, there are three major issues that lie ahead:

First, the cost of building the site itself is very huge. Battery needs professional maintenance. What kind of capital can the battery manufacturer cooperate with to do this?

The second is that when consumers buy a car, the battery module in the vehicle is equivalent to paying a deposit lease. This part of the investment may take 3 to 10 years to return to the cage. What kind of company can bear such risks?

Third, battery standards have not yet been unified. Like the earliest mobile phones, there is no standard module and unified interface. What kind of companies can have such forward-looking and R&D capabilities to set and guide standards?

Therefore, the most realistic solution for the moment is still to focus on fast charging and increased endurance.

In the electric vehicle manufacturing chain, the "three electric systems"(batteries, motors, electric controls) are very important. Batteries are the basic and deciding factors. For the lithium ion battery with the largest commercial mass production nowadays, if you want to achieve fast charging, you need to make higher technical improvements to the original material, especially the positive material, such as high nickel; If you want to achieve a significant increase in endurance, you need an increase in energy density. It is worth noting that lithium nickel-cobalt manganese acid has gradually become the mainstream in the past two years. At the same time, the energy density of lithium iron phosphate has broken through in the past two years. These are all laying the foundation for the development of large-capacity and long-running battery technology.

At the same time, the negative impact of safety performance can not be underestimated. For example, after the explosion of Samsung's mobile phone, airports have adopted stricter regulations on the carrying and use of lithium-ion batteries. The core problem is that the capacity density and safety performance of the battery itself are difficult to achieve the most effective combination. At present, there is no essential breakthrough. Even graphene, which was once hot, is unlikely to be mass-produced commercially in three or five years.

The core of the resource problem is lithium cobalt

In the past three years, the price of basic lithium salt has risen alarmingly. From the end of 2014 to 2017, it climbed from less than 40,000 yuan per ton to 180,000 yuan per ton. At the end of the year, it fell to about 150,000 yuan per ton. The price of battery-grade lithium carbonate rose by about 4 to 5 times.

Meanwhile, cobalt looks a little crazy. According to the data, cobalt experienced a gain of 400 pounds between 2006 and 2008 in the past 10 years, and also experienced a nearly 50 percent increase in quantitative broadband between 2009 and the first half of 2010. Based on the strong demand for ternary materials for new energy vehicles, at the end of August 2017, the British "Metal Guide"(abbreviated as MB) issued a cobalt quotation of US$ 29 per pound, but there is still more than 65 miles from the historical high point. space. Cobalt-based minerals generally exist in the form of copper cobalt or nickel cobalt. Therefore, the price relationship between cobalt and nickel copper can not be ignored.

Is soaring prices the result of a lack of resources? The answer is no.

From the analysis of lithium resources, the world's currently proven lithium reserves are 14 Mt, and the current annual demand is 32.5 KT. Lithium resources are mainly distributed in the world at 30-40 degrees north latitude and 20-30 degrees south latitude, such as the Andean Plateau in South America, the western United States, and the Tibetan Plateau in China. Together, Australia and Chile control 75 miles of lithium worldwide.

In China, the lithium resource 90 <UNK> is distributed in the West. At present, the mining is mainly lithium ore (lithium pyroxene and lithium mica) and the average grade is low(0.8 <UNK> -1 .4 <UNK>, Lower than foreign 1.465 <UNK> -3.55 <UNK>), higher magnesium content in brine(Mg/Li ratio is generally greater than 40, Chile's Atacama Salt Lake is only 6.47), so the industrial scale is difficult to use.

From the analysis of cobalt resources, the world cobalt resources are abundant and concentrated. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Minerals Yearbook 2016, the world's proven cobalt reserves in 2015 were 7.1 million tons, mainly concentrated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Australia, Cuba, New Caledonia, Zambia and Russia., accounting for about 80 tons of total cobalt reserves in the world.

In terms of production capacity, Congo (Gold) Cobalt Resources is located in 10 mines, but five of them are Swiss Glencore, accounting for 67% of the Congo (Gold) mine's cobalt resources. The United States Freeport Company, Kazakhstan Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, United Arab Emirates ShalinaResources, China Minmetals Corporation and Jinchuan Group each hold one. Cobalt capacity in other parts of the world is not enough to instigate the Congo (Golden) dominance.

With the increase in the scale of industrial utilization and the breakthrough in extraction technology, based on the principle that metals such as lithium and cobalt do not disappear, the recycling and utilization industry of lithium batteries has quietly emerged, and recycling has become a reality, and the demand for natural resources will be reduced accordingly. The surge in the short term is similar to the course of iron ore. It is more the result of international capital control speculation and can not fully reflect the real situation of industrial development.

Policy concerns depend on subsidies

A basic understanding needs to be clarified: the essence of state subsidies for new energy vehicles is that they want to support an industry, create first-mover advantages, and quickly open up markets, rather than subsidies similar to traditional agricultural sectors, in order to maintain basic stability. Therefore, in the near future, the subsidy policy will definitely be abolished.

The direction of current policy subsidies is generally focused on two aspects: First, at the technical level, encourage technological innovation, align with the top international standards, and reward industry leadership; Second, at the market level, we need to break through the bottleneck of environmental protection, advocate green travel, promote large and medium-sized cities, highlight the role of major countries, and rely on the Belt and Road Initiative to seize overseas markets.

As for the production, operation and product sales of enterprises, the current sales of pure electric vehicles seem to be growing slowly or even declining, and it has a great relationship with the extended delivery period of more than 6 months. The problem is that the current actual power cell production capacity is very limited. In the current technology route, although relevant companies also have investment in battery plants and basic lithium salts(lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide mainly) projects, However, the cycle time of planning, demonstration, design, approval, construction, and production of chemical industries based on industrial projects, especially basic lithium salts, is generally 1-2 years, and large-scale release production capacity should be before 2020.

The related terminal car market demand has not eased for a moment. The status of new energy car rankings in cities such as Guangshen in the North (such as Beijing's row number has gone as far as 2021) is evident. Some foreign media believe that if there is no battery capacity restrictions, pure electric vehicle sales can easily exceed plug-in hybrid vehicles. In recent years, the Chinese government has vigorously supported the development of new energy vehicles. At present, the key to restricting the development of new energy vehicles is not government subsidies or market demand, but the formation of production capacity under technological breakthroughs. Volkswagen announced in November 2017 that it would invest more than 10 billion euros ($11.8 billion) in 40 new energy vehicles with local partners in China, and hopes to produce 1.5 million new cars in the country by 2025, most of them electric, according to public sources. Toyota also said it would produce electric cars in China by 2020. BMW's battery development and production center opened in Shenyang from Munich, and BMW also chose the New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (CATL) as a partner.

It can be said that this is the best era for new-energy cars. The Forces Nouvelles are under threat. A large amount of capital has been involved in mines, basic lithium salts, electrode materials, battery production, and vehicle manufacturing in various ways, and is committed to preempting the opportunity. The traditional bosses have also woken up and worked hard to stabilize the basic plate and expand new areas. In a word, what the industry is missing most is not money, but a mature technology that can be commercialized and a commercialized operating team.

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