In the past one or two months, many electric vehicle enterprises have announced a round of price increase, with an increase of thousands to tens of thousands of yuan. The direct reason is that the price of lithium battery has increased. Some media reports say that the price increase of lithium carbonate has accelerated since 2022, and exceeded the 500000 yuan / ton mark in early March, an increase of nearly 70% compared with the beginning of the year. In that case, what are the reasons for the price increase of lithium battery?
Reasons for lithium battery price rise
1. Lithium battery raw material price and cost rise
At present, diaphragm, electrolyte, positive material and negative material account for 85% of the cost of lithium battery, which are about 25%, 15%, 30% and 15% respectively. The high price of lithium battery is largely due to the fact that the industry has not formed industrialization, batch, insufficient production lines, low scientific and technological content of equipment and repeated construction of low-end products, which restrict its development.
2. The explosive rise of electric vehicles, lithium batteries in short supply.
Driven by the explosive rise of downstream electric vehicles, the supply of lithium carbonate products of major companies is tight. The continuous development of the new energy vehicle industry has increased the demand of the market. Under such huge market demand, the high price of lithium battery is inevitable.
3. The popularity of new energy vehicles has boosted the demand for lithium batteries
With the development of new energy vehicle industry, there is a huge room for the market demand of lithium battery to rise. According to statistics, every 100000 new energy vehicles will drive the demand for 5000 ~ 8000 tons of battery grade lithium carbonate, which is equivalent to an increase of 5% ~ 8% in the global demand for lithium carbonate. The continuous promotion and popularization of new energy vehicles has stimulated the strong demand for lithium batteries and further opened the space for the price rise of lithium batteries.
4. Lack of core technology of lithium battery, the rise is justified
Diaphragm, electrolyte, positive material and negative material are important components of lithium ion battery. Taking electrolyte as an example, China mainly relies on imports. Due to the high difficulty of production technology, it is mainly monopolized by several Japanese companies such as Kanto electrochemical industry and Morita chemistry in the world.
In addition, at present, there are hundreds of domestic lithium battery manufacturers, but few really have the production capacity of a complete set of power lithium batteries. There is a lack of core technology for lithium battery production. The production technology of lithium batteries of major lithium battery manufacturers, especially domestic manufacturers in China, is relatively immature. Many core technologies rely on the purchase of foreign patents and advanced production equipment, resulting in high production costs of lithium batteries.