Exposed to short plates, the 18650 cannot stand on electric passenger vehicles

Rooted in the power battery as the core of the industrial chain, we have to in the ups and downs of policy, cold look at the industry; In the surge of capital, forecast pattern trend; Refine your views in the generous debate of experts.

But this profession is still changing with each passing day the development, faces blots out the sky and cover up the media report, the author also has some own opinion, only by the comment form does a share with everybody, the right throws a brick to invite jade.

According to the industry analysis, the main growth points of the 48V battery market in the future will be in North America, Western Europe and the Asia Pacific region, where fuel economy standards and emission regulations are relatively strict.

In fact, from the perspective of automobile development alone, there are two major trends at present. One is the upgrade of the component system with ADAS function, and the other is the power system transformation based on "battery". The latter is almost a niche market for lithium-ion batteries.

When it comes to lithium-ion batteries for cars, most people's reactions are pure and hybrid. In fact, it is not, as far as the current, whether it is pure or hybrid (plug-in) in the competitiveness of fuel vehicles are a level behind, the market share is also very low; However, the power assembly represented by a 48-v micro-hybrid system is actually more competitive than the current fuel car.

No matter from the perspective of energy saving and fuel saving, or starting and stopping power, the 48-v micro-hybrid system is better than the traditional fuel car, and the cost has not increased too much, and the design difficulty is within the acceptable range. That means the 48V is a ripe, huge, palpable cake.

Of course, from the point of view of lithium battery, 48V market is considerable, but its performance requirements are more demanding, not just a casual business can share a piece of the cake.

Different from the aggressive and urgent expansion strategy in 2017, the 18650 battery enterprises in 2018 have a more calm and steady grasp of the power battery market.

As the most mature power battery product in China, 18650 has a certain cost advantage due to its high degree of automation. It also occupies the mainstream market in logistics vehicles, minivans and other segments that pay more attention to price. However, with the continuous improvement of square and soft bag technology, this gap is gradually narrowing.

On the other hand, the shortcomings of 18650 are becoming more and more prominent. One is the disadvantage of energy density; the other is that thermal management is quite difficult to do. Both make it difficult for the 18650 to gain a foothold in passenger cars, its biggest market, especially high-end models.

In such a natural disadvantage, it is difficult to win back a game through process improvement and Pack structure optimization, because the square and soft bag will also be improved in this aspect. Therefore, there are two ways out for 18650 enterprises. One is to dig into the subdivided fields and exert the cost advantage to the limit. Second, to achieve self-upgrading, to 21700, 26650 and other models, further enhance the cost performance.

"The high dependence on imports will become a thing of the past." GGII judged that domestic aluminum plastic packaging film basically by the Japanese Shodey, DNP and other enterprises monopoly is about to become the past, the next 2-3 years will be the most critical time point for the localization of aluminum plastic packaging film.

Ironically, on the one hand, many people in the industry believe that China's lithium battery has emerged and presented an unstoppable trend. On the other hand, many key lithium battery materials are still on the way of "localization".

Although from the perspective of equipment and raw materials, the power battery has been fully localized, but further tracking will find that the core parts of many domestic equipment are still imported, including some core parts of BMS system chips are not localized. This actually means that the domestic control of lithium battery original technology is defective.

But then again, there are plenty of examples of companies that didn't have the original technology and went on to dominate the world. But this is not as easy a path as domestic optimists suggest, and it will require unimaginable amounts of hard work.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.