New Energy Vehicles Gradually Achieve Ten Billion Lithium Battery Markets Open

The concept of lithium batteries is so sought after, and is closely related to the country's strong support for the new energy automotive industry. At the beginning of July, when Chengfei integrated the current round of the current round, it was the Ministry of Finance that began to subsidize the private purchase of new energy vehicles; subsequently, 16 central enterprises jointly established the central enterprise new energy auto industry alliance, which undoubtedly made the market see the determination from the government level. .

With more and more listed companies joining the industry, what is the development of lithium-ion batteries and what is the current ecological environment in the entire industry chain? With these questions, "Daily Economic News" reporter visited the industry.

Lithium battery demand for automobiles grows rapidly

At present, lithium batteries have been fully used in consumer electronics. The world has basically formed the pattern of China, Japan and South Korea. However, in the field of lithium-ion batteries for new energy vehicles, no country has formed a large-scale industrial cluster.

As a brand new market, how big will the lithium-ion battery market be? Major brokers give a variety of forecasts. According to the relevant plans of the Ministry of Science and Technology, in the three years since 2009, 10 cities have been developed each year. Each city has introduced 1,000 new energy vehicles in public transportation, rental, public service, municipal administration, and postal service to carry out demonstration operations in order to make the nation The scale of operation of new energy vehicles will account for 10% of the automotive market share by 2012. According to the existing car market share, this figure is about 1 million vehicles.

Taking into account the replacement of lithium-ion batteries with existing nickel-metal hydride batteries, the cost of BYD F3DM lithium iron phosphate power batteries is estimated at 50,000 yuan per unit, and the corresponding market size of 1 million will reach 50 billion yuan. Of course, this is only a very rough calculation. It does not take into account the decline in battery costs at the end of 2011 and the fact that actual demand will grow faster than expected.

To be sure, the demand for lithium battery materials for new energy vehicles is far greater than that for ordinary consumer electronics. According to estimates by Guohai Securities, Biao Zhubing, a pure electric vehicle needs 40 to 50 kilograms of cathode material and electrolyte, which is about 10,000 times the consumption of a single mobile phone battery. In this way, only 1 million electric vehicles are produced. The required lithium-ion battery-related materials will be several times the current global demand for lithium battery materials. Data show that in 2009 the global sales of lithium battery materials has reached 3.39 billion US dollars.

In addition, the dispute over the new energy vehicle battery line that had existed at the end of 2008 has now ceased to exist. Nickel-metal hydride vehicles represented by the Toyota Prius are the first generation of new commercial vehicles that have been successfully commercialized. However, in the past year or so, new investments by auto companies in the industry have turned to lithium-ion batteries. As far as domestic car companies are concerned, Changan Automobile has announced that since the second half of this year, it will replace nickel-metal hydride batteries used in its hybrid vehicles with lithium-ion batteries.

Core link or cathode material

According to the usual classification, the lithium-ion battery industry chain is divided into seven links: upstream resources, cathode materials, anode materials, electrolytes, separators, battery cells, and battery management systems. What is the current domestic development situation?

Hou Wentao, an analyst at Xiangcai Securities, told reporters that from the perspective of output value, cathode material is the largest part, accounting for about 40% of the cost of batteries; electrolyte and anode materials account for about 15% to 20%.

The development of ordinary lithium battery industry in our country is quite mature, but there is a big gap with foreign countries in the lithium battery materials used in new energy vehicles, and many materials cannot be produced. Huachuang Securities analyst Li Dajun told the reporter of “Daily Economic News” that in fact, the entire new energy automobile industry is in its infancy, battery performance is not yet mature, vehicle technology is not matched, infrastructure construction is not completed, and all are industrialized in the future. Problems to be solved.

The reporter learned that the situation is that, in terms of industrial concentration, the current positive electrode, negative electrode, and electrolyte have many companies to enter, and the diaphragm and battery management system are basically blank; the technical threshold also corresponds to it, and the latter two are far higher. The first three links.

Hua Hui United Securities analyst Xiao Hui ranked the sub-sectors, according to the maturity of the technology from high to low, electrolyte> lithium iron phosphate = lithium hexafluorophosphate (electrolyte key material)> separator; considering the product yield, separator> lithium hexafluorophosphate > Lithium iron phosphate> Electrolyte; From the perspective of the demand for power batteries, lithium iron phosphate> separator> electrolyte = lithium hexafluorophosphate.

The development of lithium batteries is also related to lithium salts. Chen Liquan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, once said that domestic lithium salts and separators are still required to be imported. Hou Wentao told the reporter that the salt extracted from the salt lake is lithium salt. Although domestic listed companies hold salt lake resources, the extraction technology and technology are not mature, and the extracted lithium salt is still mainly industrial.

Hou Wentao said that he is more optimistic about positive materials, after all, the future market capacity is much greater than other links. China's cathode material goes on the lithium iron phosphate route. Chengfei Integrated, CITIC Guoan, and China Baoan all have relevant technologies. In the future, the market can be mass-produced in time and quickly release production capacity.