A little worry under the feast of lithium ternary materials
On March 1, 2017, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued the Action Plan for Promoting the Development of Automotive Power Battery Industry (hereinafter referred to as the “Action Planâ€), and proposed the performance of the power battery system in 2020. The energy reaches 260Wh/kg (in which the energy density of the battery cell reaches 350Wh/kg, and then 350Wh/kg is the target of 300Wh/kg), the cost is reduced to 1 yuan/Wh, and the power battery monomer ratio is 2025. A target of 500Wh/kg. On the other hand, the new energy vehicle subsidy policy has been implemented on January 1, 2017, and the new government's requirements for energy density have increased. Newly applied for the “new energy vehicle promotion and application recommended model catalogueâ€, the passenger car using the ternary battery should be supplemented at the same time. Submit a third party test report. The passenger car sector is expected to lift the ban on the three yuan; the introduction of these policies clearly points the way for the high specific energy and low cost of power batteries.
According to a report from the GGII report, the proportion of lithium iron phosphate batteries in China remained at the top in 2016, and its sales accounted for 69% of the total domestic power batteries. In 2016, the proportion of ternary power batteries has increased, from 21% in 2015 to 27% in 2016, and a data from the “China Report Hall†indicates that the demand for ternary materials in 2020 will exceed 80,000 tons. The annual compound growth rate will reach 60%, and 2017 is expected to usher in the high demand growth rate. NCM growth rate will exceed 100%. From the growth rate, the ternary materials have reached the stage of riding the dust, international and domestic. Some mainstream passenger car models have also started to use ternary materials or try to switch from ternary materials from other materials such as lithium iron phosphate. The following picture shows the top five global electric vehicles sold last year. It can be seen that except for Tang, they have used ternary or two. Yuan Gao than energy materials.
Ternary materials have gradually become the mainstream trend in the power battery market. At the same time, in terms of price, since the end of 2016, the price of ternary materials has been rising. Taking 523 materials as an example, the current mainstream market price is about 160,000 yuan/ton, which is about 10,000 yuan higher than the end of last year. The price of materials has even reached 180,000 yuan / ton, and is still in short supply, then does it mean that a feast of ternary materials is opening? So is this really a feast? The author wants to throw a brick to attract jade and discuss it with everyone.
Upstream raw materials skyrocket, downstream prices will be constrained
At present, the mainstream market shift from LFP to ternary is largely encouraged by the national high-energy policy. However, the introduction of national policies also requires battery costs. First, let's look at several electric vehicles that have been listed on the market. Battery cost (only cars with ternary materials are analyzed here).
According to McKinsey's January 2017 survey, the average cost of power batteries is $227/kwh, which is about RMB 1500/kWh. Considering the other components of the battery system, the cost of the battery is about 1200 yuan/kwh. This is already the cost line for production models. It is only possible for small and medium-sized battery companies to be higher. At the same time, the cost of this national demand will be reduced to 1,000 yuan/kwh by 2020, which means that it will basically comply with 2017 to 2020. 1200 dropped to 1,000 yuan, such a downward trend in costs.
Let's take a look at the proportion of battery cost cathode materials. An estimate from the real lithium study shows that the ratio of cathode materials to total battery cost in 2016 is about 33%. The trend is affected by upstream resource factors, cathode and electrolysis. The liquid is going up, the negative pole and the diaphragm are going down, then we might as well make a calculation:
According to the calculation of the battery cost reduced to 1,200 yuan/kwh in 2017, the price of the cathode material is about 33%, and the cost of the cathode material is reduced to 396 yuan. The following table shows the five main cathode materials currently on the market:
According to the activity of 85 percent of the positive electrode material, the voltage platform takes 3.8v; 3.7v; 3.2v; 3.7v; 3.65v, which requires five materials: 2.243kg; 2.89kg; 2.62kg; 2.05kg; Kg, the corresponding LCO, LMO, LFP, NCM, NCA cost limit is: 176,500 / ton, 137,000 / ton, 151,000 / ton, 193,000 / ton, 209,000 / ton, we are only concerned about three here Yuan materials, you can see that when the ternary material (523) rose to 200,000 yuan / ton, compared to the cost of the core of 1.2 yuan per Wh, the pressure is very large, then let us look at the ternary material itself The cost trend is still 523:
Taking one ton of Li(Ni_0.5 CO_0.2 Mn_0.3)O 2 material as an example, the price of March 523 yuan per ton is 0.582 tons of cobalt sulfate per ton (market price is about 88,000 / ton), sulfuric acid Nickel 1.36 tons (market price about 22,000 / ton), manganese sulfate 0.525 tons (market price about 6000 yuan / ton), lithium carbonate 0.382 tons (market price about 170,000 / ton), the total cost has risen to about 149,000 yuan .
So will the two cost heads of cobalt sulphate and lithium carbonate continue to rise? The answer is that it may not fall in the short term. Look at the following two sets of data:
Zhiyan Consulting: 2017 lithium carbonate price forecast industrial grade 120,000, battery level 150,000 yuan.
Haitong Securities Research Report: The price of metallic cobalt has increased from 195,000 yuan per ton in July 2016 to 392,000 yuan per ton in March 2017, an increase of more than 100%. From July 2016 to March 2017, the price of cobalt sulphate increased from 37,000/ton to 88,000/ton, and it was subject to the restriction of lithium extraction technology in the upstream salt lake and the reduction of Co mine in Congo and other places. This price is difficult in the short term. decline.
Then the results have shown that if the ternary materials rise again compared to LMO, LFP ternary has no price advantage at all, and the increase rate is more than 20%, small and medium-sized battery factories will be unbearable. In terms of trends, it is very likely that in the application areas where space requirements or energy requirements are not too high, LFP will again raise the banner. After all, subject to overcapacity, the LFP price is only about 90,000 yuan / ton. battery business will certainly expand the production capacity of some impact. "BYD CTO Liu Weiping told senior engineer Li grid.
At present, BYD is still dominated by lithium iron phosphate, and its production capacity accounts for 90%. Is it going to slow down on the road of the big LFP like BYD?
Capacity expansion is rapid, and demand is keeping up
Since 2017, our stockholders who are concerned about stocks may often see various announcements. When the company raises 500 million new high-nickel cathode materials production line, 6000t/year at the end of 17; Tianci materials will build 25,000 tons of lithium batteries per year in Taizhou. Yuan cathode material project; Keheng shares 15,000 tons of ternary cathode material; Umicore 200,000 tons of lithium battery cathode material and the required precursors and supporting nickel-cobalt expansion projects;
We may wish to make a simple statistics on the production capacity of the current domestic ternary material manufacturers.
Table 4. Capacity planning statistics of major domestic ternary material manufacturers
Company name planning capacity production time
When the technology 6000 unknown
Godsend Material 25000 Unknown
Keheng shares 15000 unknown
Shenzhen Tianjiao 10000 Unknown
Guoxuan Hi-Tech 10000 2017
Zhonghe shares 8500 at the end of 2016
Tianli Lithium Energy 5500 Unknown
GEM 10000 2017
Shanshan shares 20000 2017
Xiamen Tungsten Industry 6800+20000 2017
Ningbo Jinhe 6000 2017
Umicore 200000 Unknown
According to the current capacity building and planning news released by mainstream domestic manufacturers, the production capacity of only the mainstream producers of ternary materials has exceeded 300,000 tons. This is not the unstated capacity of small and medium-sized small enterprises. The figure of 50% of production has reached 150,000 tons of production capacity, and statistics show that in 2016, the output of China's lithium battery ternary materials was 543,000 tons. If the production capacity is to be fully produced, 17 years need to be turned over at least 16 years. Three times, the excess capacity has become a reality.
Is ternary material technically the ultimate solution?
Finally, we return to discuss the technology itself. Will ternary materials be the ultimate solution for power battery technology? Let's first take a look at the current top battery products such as LG and panasonic have reached 250-260Wh / kg, domestic front-end suppliers such as CATL are also close to this level, without exception, in order to improve the specific energy, have chosen Going to the high-nickel system, it is true that with the use of SiC anodes, the 300Wh/kg index by 2020 seems to be close at hand, so safety will be a topic to be discussed.
In GB/T31485, the safety requirements of lithium-ion batteries are as follows:
The most difficult to pass is mainly extrusion and acupuncture experiments. For different technical routes, soft packs or hard shells may pass easily in one item but the other cannot be avoided, but whether it is acupuncture or soft pack A high nickel system will be a problem.
If there is sufficient capacity, cost increase, and safety is difficult to solve, whether there will be a new material system, or other technologies such as fuel cells and other major breakthroughs, the replacement of the trip, it is difficult to predict.
On the whole, the ternary materials under the feast do have a lot of worrying places. The increase in raw material prices and the downstream cost of the battery have reduced the profitability of ternary materials, especially the high-co-three ternary. The nickel system will usher in the challenge of safety. In addition, the rapid expansion of production capacity will make the future ternary road become very cruel. Whether we can continue the feast of ternary materials, we will wait and see.
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