Lithium battery "price war" fierce

In recent years, with the national sales subsidy policy for new energy vehicles continuously increased, and the new energy vehicle consumption gradually heating up, industrial capital and financial capital to accelerate the investment of new energy lithium battery, a never seen investment in the new energy lithium battery industry has begun.

According to the information collected by the author, from January to July this year alone, 15 listed companies invested 40 billion yuan in new energy lithium battery, and it is estimated that the investment amount for lithium battery project in China will reach 90 billion yuan in 2015. If you add up the investment in lithium batteries over the years, the rough estimate is at least more than 200 billion yuan. At present, the supply of lithium batteries for new energy vehicles in China is in short supply. However, after 2016, with the launch of lithium battery projects for new energy vehicles one after another, the whole lithium battery industry will have excess capacity. Experts estimate that the excess capacity is expected to be as high as 50%.

Compared with the strict technical requirements of lithium batteries for new energy pure electric vehicles, lithium batteries for electric bicycles are much lower. At present, on the one hand, lithium batteries used in new energy vehicles can't be bought with money. At the same time, the phenomenon of lithium batteries used in electric bicycles is puzzling.

The repair rate of lithium battery enterprises is as low as 5% and as high as 30%. It can be seen that the product quality of some large enterprises is so far from that of some batteries that are recycled, tested and reassembled. In order to get cheap, some small cars and some dealers often buy batteries assembled in underground factories through various channels for assembling products and after-sales service, resulting in more disputes between these enterprises and dealers and consumers.

The high-end market is still dominated by batteries from South Korea's samsung and Japan's panasonic. Some of the country's high-end lithium electric bicycles, lithium batteries from samsung and panasonic. In order to meet the requirements set by foreign customers, the lithium tram company imported the battery cells and then carried out PACK assembly. In order to control the Chinese market, South Korea's samsung, LG and Japan's panasonic dumped their products into the Chinese market by driving down prices. It is accepted that Japanese and south Korean enterprises have set up manufacturing bases in China one after another and entered the procurement channels of Japanese and south Korean enterprises because the manufacturing of some lithium battery materials in China has reached quite high requirements.

Different from lead-acid batteries, lithium batteries are capital, patent, technology, process and other intensive industries, the industry access threshold is very high, foreign enterprises after years of technology accumulation, research and development accumulation, talent accumulation to form the current dominant position. And many of our enterprises are basically to take the doctrine, even if there is technical precipitation, but compared with Japanese and Korean enterprises still have a larger gap.

It is worth mentioning that under the promotion of the new energy industry policy, Chinese enterprises are almost in need of capital, and listed companies can use the new energy industry under the name of new energy industry to issue additional shares in the market to make money. And local governments have an incentive to get involved. To be sure, in the next few years, with the overcapacity in the lithium battery project of new energy vehicles, many enterprises may flood into the field of electric bicycles. By then, the lithium battery for electric bicycles will be more competitive than now.

Now the competition for lithium-ion batteries for electric bikes is only the beginning. However, after more powerful enterprises enter the lithium battery industry for electric bicycles, the price of lithium battery will be further reduced, and the maintenance rate of enterprise products will also be further reduced. Thus promote the upgrading of electric vehicle industry. To be sure, the government's decision to impose a 4% sales tax on lead-acid batteries is a signal that further measures will be taken to curb the manufacture and use of lead-acid batteries.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.