In the face of the increasing cost of lithium materials, Tesla may enter the field of lithium mining and refining.
Musk said on Twitter, "Lithium prices have gone crazy, and unless the cost increases, Tesla may have to directly enter the field of lithium mining and refining on a large scale." Although lithium exists in many places on the planet, the rate of mining and refining lithium is very slow. ”
In addition to Tesla, the mainland's new energy vehicles are also troubled by the trend of high lithium prices.
According to market public data, the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate has continued to grow, rising from 54,000 yuan / ton at the end of 2020 to about 500,000 yuan / ton today, an increase of nearly 10 times.
Recently, the domestic new energy vehicles have increased prices, and the reason for their price increases is significantly related to the increasingly high cost of lithium materials.
Lithium-ion batteries with the most applications in new energy vehicles
Lithium-ion batteries have the advantages of high working voltage, low cost, environmental protection and easy recycling, while lithium-ion batteries have had certain advantages in terms of battery performance and quality compared with other new energy sources in new energy vehicles after decades of research and development and long-term application.
At present, from the perspective of making materials, lithium-ion batteries widely used in new energy vehicles are lithium manganate batteries, lithium titanate batteries, lithium iron phosphate batteries, and ternary lithium batteries. The ternary lithium battery and the lithium iron phosphate battery are the lithium-ion batteries with the most installed capacity at present.
Among them, the ternary lithium battery is known as the noble in the automobile power battery, which is mainly used for high-end models. For example, Tesla's Model 3 is a ternary lithium battery, and its comprehensive cruising range can reach 675 kilometers. To summarize the advantages of ternary batteries in one sentence, it is that the charging is fast and long.
Previously, ternary lithium batteries had an absolute advantage in the market, and in the past one or two years, the number of models that choose to carry lithium iron phosphate batteries has gradually increased, and even Tesla, a staunch advocate of ternary lithium batteries, has begun to carry lithium phosphate batteries for new cars. BYD has used lithium iron phosphate technology to develop a blade battery with a longer battery life.
Lithium phosphate batteries have lower costs and better stability and longer service life than ternary lithium batteries, but their instability and collision prone to fire are problems being overcome in the industry.
After introducing the two common lithium-ion battery types, let's take a look at the changes in the lithium material market in recent days.
The price of lithium materials continues to rise
In recent years, the price of lithium materials has continued to rise, as of March this year, the price of lithium rose from 54,000 yuan / ton at the end of 2020 to 500,000 yuan / ton, an increase of nearly 10 times, and the reason for its high price is mainly the contradiction between supply and demand.
Insufficient supply, affected by the new crown epidemic, domestic and foreign lithium resources mining and refining and trading activities are limited, shipping capacity is insufficient, while domestic lithium ore reserves are not high, production is also subject to the slow speed of lithium mining and refining, and can not be sharply improved. Therefore, the supply of lithium materials is limited in the short term.
Demand has increased sharply, and as fossil energy is slowly replaced by new energy, the amount of lithium used in batteries is increasing. In 2021, the sales volume of new energy vehicles in mainland China increased from 1.36 million units in 2020 to 3.5 million units, an increase of about 257% year-on-year, a huge increase, so the demand for enterprises to expand production capacity and increase reserves also increased, resulting in a sharp increase in demand for lithium materials.
In such a situation, some speculators who grasp the upstream monopoly resources hoard, while other speculators set up small workshops to violently dismantle old batteries, and then sell the refined lithium materials at high prices, thus exacerbating the increase in the price of lithium materials.
In the face of lithium prices that have never seen a downward trend, many car companies, including Weilai, BYD, Tesla and so on, have also officially announced price increases, and the price increase has exceeded 30,000 yuan.
How to face the rising trend of lithium materials
On March 26, Xin Guobin said at the China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum that the current sharp price increase in power battery raw materials should be seriously studied and solved.
How to control the sharp rise in lithium prices is a problem that is of high concern today.
The author believes that in the face of rising lithium prices, it is now necessary to comprehensively sort out the layout of domestic lithium resources and accelerate the development progress of domestic lithium resources, so as to crack down on unfair competition such as hoarding and price gouging.
At the same time, it is necessary to improve the power battery recycling system. Some experts pointed out that with the strengthening of China's traceability management of the whole life cycle of power batteries and the continuous improvement of the recycling system, the level of efficient utilization of resource recycling will continue to improve. This will help to increase the production capacity of lithium resources, improve the current supply contradiction and push prices back to normal.
Increasing the import volume of lithium resources can also play a good role in promoting prices to return to normal.
To sum up, controlling the rising trend of lithium materials requires the government to work together with major car companies, and the government's policy support and car companies to improve the battery supplier structure and other aspects to cope with the rise in lithium material prices is the best way at present.
Write at the end
In the current situation, lithium-ion batteries have an absolute advantage over other types of batteries. However, there are still some deficiencies in the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, resulting in the performance of the current electric vehicle range is not good enough, and the quality also needs to be effectively improved. In the future, in addition to lithium-ion batteries, hydrogen fuel is gradually entering the public's vision.
In the future, new energy vehicles will inevitably become the main means of transportation, the further development of lithium-ion batteries will also become an important section of the future research and development of new energy vehicles, and actively promote the large-scale production of lithium-ion power batteries, accelerate the cultivation and development of a number of power battery enterprises with continuous innovation capabilities is the trend of lithium-ion battery development.