Text: Understand the original Chedi Chang Siyue
Recently, data released by Shanghai Ganglian showed that the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate has fallen below 80,000 yuan/ton and 79,600 yuan/ton, once again refreshing a new low since its listing. Since the price reached a high of 600,000 yuan/ton in November 2022, the price of lithium carbonate has been declining.
The price of battery-grade lithium carbonate has hit a new low again
Lithium carbonate is one of the key raw materials for new energy vehicle batteries, mainly used for lithium iron phosphate, lithium cobalt oxide and some ternary lithium cathode materials.
Li Pan, a lithium analyst at Shanghai Ganglian New Energy Division, told the media that according to the production scheduling guidance given by some downstream manufacturers in advance, there was no significant increase in the demand for lithium carbonate in August, and the market was worried about the "peak season".
It is understood that lithium carbonate production has a strong seasonal variation law, with production increasing in summer and decreasing production in winter, and it is currently in the peak season of lithium carbonate production. Due to the large number of lithium carbonate production sources, it is difficult for lithium salt companies to reach an agreement on production reduction actions. This also means that there is a possibility that the price of lithium carbonate will fall in the future.
New energy vehicle batteries
At the beginning of 2023, many new energy vehicle companies officially announced price increases due to the soaring price of lithium carbonate, but as the price of lithium carbonate gradually decreases, the price of new energy vehicles is also declining.
In the first half of this year, the cumulative retail and wholesale sales of new energy passenger vehicles were 4.111 million and 4.62 million respectively
According to the data, the production of new energy passenger vehicles in June was 933,000, a year-on-year increase of 26.6%; Retail and wholesale sales were 856,000 and 982,000 respectively, an increase of more than 28% year-on-year. In the first half of this year, the cumulative retail production of new energy passenger vehicles was 4.581 million, a year-on-year increase of 28.9%; The cumulative retail and wholesale sales were 4.111 million and 4.620 million respectively, with a year-on-year growth rate of more than 3%.
According to the analysis of the passenger association, the price war at the beginning of this year's auto market "started early", and the price reduction of nearly 20% of some new energy hot-selling models was "strong", and the time span from the Spring Festival in February to the end of April was "long", which temporarily inhibited the start of the spring auto market. At the same time, in the context of different taxes and different rights for oil and electricity, the gap between the high growth of new energy vehicles and the negative growth of fuel vehicles is becoming increasingly obvious. The Federation of Passenger Cars pointed out that the continued negative growth in retail sales in the second quarter was mainly due to the larger-than-expected downturn of fuel vehicles that fell by 25% year-on-year. In addition, if the data of the same period last year is used, the retail sales of passenger cars for the whole year are expected to exceed 22 million units this year.