The new core of the technology era - lithium battery

Tesla electric, known as the car version of Apple, recently accepted a Chinese order, which made the lithium battery plate once again attracted attention. In fact, gold always shines. Even without Tesla, lithium batteries will always have a world of power in this era of technology. In fact, modern people will always have one or even several products powered by lithium batteries. With the continuous changes in technology, the upstream and downstream industrial chain of lithium batteries is also burying potential explosive opportunities under the determined demand.

With the upgrading of consumer electronic products, new energy vehicles have entered the public's field of vision, bringing huge market space for the lithium industry, and thus attracting many enterprises to enter the development of lithium upstream resources. Faced with the tens of thousands of tons of capacity planning, and the annual demand for 15 tons of existing lithium carbonate, the industry can not help but consider the possibility of a serious excess. However, by carefully combing the expansion of the world's 19 major lithium resource development companies, resource endowment, climate conditions, process maturity, financing progress, construction cycle and other factors of the new project, and the existing oligarch market sales strategy, lithium supply is short-term. There is little probability of spurt growth, and supply and demand will remain roughly balanced:

1. Lithium exists mainly in the form of liquid deposits and solid deposits in nature, and approximately 80% of the resource reserves are distributed in the brine. Under the current state of the art, the cost of industrial grade lithium carbonate in brine production is half that of lithium ore, but the extraction of lithium from ore has a cost advantage in the production of battery grade lithium carbonate and above purity products, and thus directly share the high power of lithium battery.

2. The supply situation is highly concentrated. 80 % of global lithium supply is controlled by four companies: SQM, Rockwood, FMC, and Talison, an ore(Tianqi Lithium(002466, stock)). Talison, which doubled its capacity thanks to strong demand from China, ranked first in the industry in 2012. The above-mentioned companies have expanded their production capacity in recent years, and the expansion of SQM has been completed and is in production period; Rockwood's new 20,000 tons of lithium carbonate project is planned to be completed and put into operation in 2014; FMC's 30 % capacity expansion project is expected to start production in the third quarter of 2013; The Talison expansion has also been completed and will be released steadily according to market demand. This will be the main source of production growth in the lithium industry in recent years.

Lithium downstream demand for short-term electronic products, long-term storage of energy storage batteries and power lithium batteries, with the domestic major lithium carbonate producers return to normal production, domestic industrial grade lithium carbonate supply tends to surplus. However, the domestic supply of battery-grade lithium carbonate related to electronic products is still tight, and the price is well supported; and the demand for high-purity lithium carbonate and lithium fluoride related to new energy is still strong. In the long run, the growth of lithium demand is driven by the increase in power lithium battery consumption brought by new energy electric vehicles, which is expected to bring a long-term driving effect to the lithium carbonate industry. According to resource endowment, process maturity and other factors to determine the proportion of increased capacity, Haitong Securities (600,837, stocks) believe that while the growth rate of lithium demand is still maintained at 10%, supply and demand are basically balanced.

Looking up at the stars: electric cars bring imagination

In the past two years, the once-hot global new energy vehicle market can be said to be a constant loss. lithium iron phosphate power battery giant A123 bankruptcy auction, Aptera bankruptcy, Ener1 bankruptcy was acquired, Fikser bankruptcy. At the beginning of 2013, Coda went bankrupt, and the famous Israeli company BetterPlace went bankrupt. The global new energy auto market was raging. At the beginning of the year, Tesla's ModelS added a touch of color to the market, and also saw a glimmer of hope in the industry's winter. Driven by the Tesla incident, the A-share new energy vehicle related targets in the first half of 2013 have come out of a wave of rising prices.

Tesla released its second-quarter earnings on August 7. Tesla's net loss was $30.5 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2013, compared with a net loss of $105.6 million in the same period last year. Excluding share-based compensation expenses and other one-time items, Tesla Motors' adjusted earnings per share for the second quarter was 22 cents, better than a loss of 89 cents per share for the same period last year, which was better than previously expected. According to a Thomson Reuters survey, analysts on average expected Tesla's second-quarter loss of 17 cents per share. The company's productivity increased by 25% in the second quarter, and weekly car production rose from 400 to nearly 500. In the second quarter, Tesla delivered 5,150 vehicles, exceeding expectations of 4,500. Tesla expects that ModelS will sell more than 5,000 vehicles in the third quarter and reach 21,000 in 2013.

The enthusiasm brought by Tesla has made people reconsider the possibility of large-scale popularization of pure electric vehicles. On the one hand, it can continue to promote the government's support for pure electric production enterprises, and on the other hand, it can also promote the improvement of the overall supporting charging facilities. This will drive the heavy volume of the new energy automobile industry chain. Furthermore, this model will also drive innovation in the primary energy sector, and the establishment of energy storage and energy conversion systems.

The first benefit of the Tesla storm will be the lithium battery industry chain. We have also confirmed the consistency between the lithium battery concept index and Tesla's share price. Tesla uses a small lithium battery, its core technology. It is in battery pack management. Based on the 18650 battery, the TeslaModelS85kWh electric car needs 8142 18650 batteries, while the notebook only needs 6 18650 batteries, and the iPhone5 is equivalent to 0.5 18650 lithium batteries. This will greatly drive the demand for lithium batteries.

Down-to-earth: digital product growth is determined

For the lithium battery industry, the market is focusing on the most anticipated electric vehicle market. Although the electric vehicle market has a huge capacity, the slow development of the electric vehicle market has constrained the short-term driving effect on the overall growth of the lithium battery industry. The real development momentum of the lithium battery industry in the next 3 to 5 years is still the lithium battery for digital products.

Mobile internet support for high growth in lithium battery continues. Electric vehicles and energy storage bring unlimited imagination to the lithium industry, However, portable equipment(mainly consumer electronics, including primary batteries) is still the most important area of demand for lithium batteries(accounting for more than 90 %), and its rapid and stable growth is also one of the drivers of the boom in the lithium carbonate industry.

The growth rate of lithium battery capacity demand for mobile phones is revised from 20% to 27%. In the era of mobile internet, personal power consumption per unit time is rapidly increasing. Under the interaction of demand and technology improvement, the single-cell battery capacity and smart machine penetration rate of personal mobile terminals are still expected to increase. Among them, the 2500 mah battery capacity of smartphones in 2016 is expected to become mainstream. It is predicted that the compound annual growth rate of single battery capacity in 2013-2016 will be approximately 21%.

Tablet PC lithium battery capacity demand is unique, 2013-2016 compound growth rate is expected to reach 44%. With the average price of similar products going down, the high growth of tablet PC shipments is expected to continue. The compound growth rate in 2013-2016 is about 25%. The gradual increase in monomer capacity has also contributed a lot to its high-speed growth. The annual battery capacity increase rate is about 15%).While tablets could be a partial substitute for the traditional notebook market, demand for lithium battery capacity in laptops is expected to grow by 3 % over the next three years, driven by ultrabooks.

The global demand for lithium battery in the power tool market is expected to increase by 17% in 2012-2016, mainly based on:1. With strong convenience, traditional power-type power tools are gradually being replaced by mobile power tools. In 2010-13, the growth rate of mobile power tool shipments was 33%; With the increasing cost performance of lithium batteries, lithium batteries in the field to replace nickel-cadmium batteries is expected to become mainstream, and the recent EU ban will help accelerate the process.

The increase in energy density foresees the next round of growth blowouts. The advent of this era of smart phones is based on the breakthrough of battery technology. Today, mobile phone battery capacity has increased from 700 mah to 1500 mah (mean), up to 3300 mah, while smart machine standby time is 5-7 The sky is rapidly reduced to 1 day, and there is no room for increasing the smartphone function and improving performance at the expense of battery life. The capacity of single battery is urgently needed. The 4G era is just around the corner, the terminal equipment, wireless technology and other reserves are more than enough, the only bottleneck at present. Reappeared in battery technology.

At the same time, experts in the field of battery research have never stopped, the continuous attempts in the field of electric vehicles, but also provide more solutions for the improvement of the energy density of lithium batteries for consumer electronics, and once the battery technology gets new The breakthrough, battery capacity demand is expected to reproduce the growth of geometric progression, this is optimistic expectations.

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