In recent years, with the rapid development of China's new energy automotive market, power batteries as its core components, the demand gap is also growing. According to market analysis, the market value of the power battery industry will reach a terror of US$240 billion in the next 20 years. Targeting a huge market, many companies will not invest in it. At present, China has identified more than 140 battery manufacturers, and they are desperately burying themselves in Expansion and production increase, so as to seize the initiative in this industry and share a share of the pie. The reality that people are attacked is that the technical difficulties in power battery technology are still to be broken. For example, the status quo of the unsmooth development of China's power cars has cruising range, charging speed, and safety performance. These three factors are all power lithium battery technology ineffective breakthroughs. ,, Bottlenecks in battery recycling and other obstacles.
1. Short cruising range: As the technology continues to mature, the cruising range of electric vehicles with lithium batteries as the power source has increased from less than 100 kilometers to 300 kilometers in the current mainstream, and the mileage of individual models has exceeded 400 kilometers. . However, there is still a certain gap compared with the current 500 kilometers of the main fuel-car mileage. This problem can be solved by multiple strings of single cells, but the negative problem is that the volume is too large to increase the inconvenience of the car.
2. The charging speed is slow: Relative to the short driving distance, but the slow charging of the power lithium battery is a greater constraint for the development of the electric vehicle. At normal speed, it takes 4 to 8 hours for the lithium battery of the electric car to fully charge. There are also fast-charging lithium batteries, which can be fully charged within 1 to 2 hours, but its negative impact is significant, the life expectancy will be reduced to 1/3 of the original, and battery performance will decline significantly. Fuel vehicles do not have these problems. Refueling time does not exceed 5 minutes, and safety and stability are guaranteed.
3, safety performance to be perfected: Since the birth of lithium-ion batteries, security issues have been plagued consumers. From mobile phones and laptops to today's electric cars, safety accidents continue to occur. In addition to reports that Nissan and Tesla’s electric vehicles have not reported fire, China’s Zhongtai and BYD, the US’s GM, and Fisker’s electric vehicles all have spontaneous or fire incidents.
Downstream vehicle companies are under pressure and profits are decreasing. Coupled with the subsidy retreat, 30,000 km standard brought great pressure to the new energy vehicle companies, car companies have asked the upstream power chain battery companies to reduce prices, cost pressures surge. According to industry insiders, some of the electric vehicle manufacturers' price requirements for battery manufacturers in 2017 are 35%-40% lower than in 2016.
High energy density requirements and technical difficulties. In addition, in March this year, the four ministries and commissions issued the Action Plan for Promoting the Development of the Automotive Power Battery Industry, referring to: “By 2020, the specific energy of new lithium-ion power battery cells will exceed 300 watt-hour/kg; the system-specific energy will strive to reach 260Wh/ Kg”. This is not a small pressure on many battery companies. It can even be said to be difficult to achieve.
Big companies fight price wars and the market tightens. To make matters worse, some large companies will occupy the market by way of price cuts in order to seize market share. Some companies will directly consider the reduction in subsidies for the next year in order to obtain orders, and when they sign agreements with auto companies, they will use cheaper The price sells batteries. For small businesses, it has become increasingly difficult to survive in the highly competitive power battery market.
In fact, the power battery market has been concentrated, and the concentration of the top 10 battery manufacturers reached 74.8%. It can be said that the pattern of "oligopoly" in China's power battery industry is being formed, and the development space for small enterprises in the industry has become smaller and smaller.