How long will the cobalt-free power lithium battery wait?

Some analysts pointed out that although car companies have started from the perspective of cost and are vigorously developing cobalt-free batteries, under current technical conditions, electric vehicles need to be further observed if they want to complete the cobalt-free power of lithium batteries. Decreasing costs McKinsey Consulting announced that the global output value of electric vehicles will increase from 3.2 million in 2017 to 13 to 18 million in 2025, an increase of 3 to 5 times. At that time, the electric vehicle market showed an explosive rise, which directly led to a rapid rise in the planning of power lithium batteries. The development of the power lithium battery industry has now received extensive attention from the industry. According to the speculation of the Lithium Battery Research Institute of Advanced Industry Research, my country's automotive power lithium-ion battery output value will reach 141 gigawatt hours (GWh) in 2020, and the industrial plan will exceed 100 billion yuan. At present, the two most commonly used lithium-ion power lithium batteries for electric vehicles are mainly ternary lithium-ion batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries. The former has high energy density and strong battery life; the latter has good safety and lower cost. As the most expensive one element in the positive electrode material of ternary battery, the main purpose of cobalt is to stabilize the layered structure of the material, improve the data cycle and rate performance. Because lithium iron phosphate batteries do not contain cobalt, the industry said that cobalt-free usually refers to the decobaltization of ternary lithium-ion batteries. According to the study, because of the use of cobalt, cathode materials exceed 40% of the cost of ternary lithium-ion batteries. Once low-cobalt or cobalt-free ternary lithium-ion batteries are mass-produced, the cost can be reduced by 30%. Because of this, in order to reduce costs, many car companies are considering reducing the use of cobalt or developing cobalt-free power lithium batteries. As early as May 2018, Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, stated that the company plans to cut from batteries used in cars and stationary storage batteries to completely eliminate cobalt. Domestic power lithium battery company Ningde Times and others have also proposed related plans for the development of cobalt-free batteries. Get rid of dependence With the rapid development of electric vehicles, the demand for cobalt continues to surge. According to the evaluation of CITIC Securities, global cobalt consumption will increase by 11.1% to 148,000 tons in 2020, and global cobalt consumption will reach 205,000 tons by 2025. Some experts have indicated that if the recovery is not considered, the demand for cobalt will exceed the supply in 2026, and the limited cobalt resources will not be able to support the future development of electric vehicles. At present, the global distribution of cobalt resources is relatively concentrated, and the distribution of reserves is very uneven. According to data released by the US Geological Survey, the global cobalt reserves in 2017 were about 7.1 million tons, mainly distributed in the Congo (DRC) and Australia, respectively reaching 49% and 16.8% of the total reserves. The primary output of cobalt comes from Congo (DRC). In 2017, the global output value of cobalt was 111,000 tons, during which the output value of Congo (DRC) reached 64,000 tons, accounting for 58% of the total international output value. There are not many cobalt mines in Europe, my country and the United States, the three most important markets for electric vehicles in the world. my country's cobalt resources are relatively scarce. The annual output value of cobalt is only a few thousand tons, but the use amount is tens of thousands of tons. Therefore, it is basically dependent on imports from African countries, but the political situation in these countries is not stable. Said Xu Shengming, a researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Energy and New Power Skills at Tsinghua University. The new-power automobile industry is developing rapidly, and cobalt has been demanding more than supply. Because the distribution of cobalt ore is very geographically related, countries with resource endowments have great pricing power. The macro policies and industrial economy of these countries will greatly affect the market price of cobalt. On the one hand, in March 2018, the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo signed a new mining law, and the mining tax rates for copper and cobalt were both increased from 2% to 3.5%, which began to be implemented in June of that year. On December 3, 2018, the Congolese (DRC) government once again declared cobalt as a strategic metal and further increased the mining tax rate on cobalt to 10%. On the other hand, as the most important producer of cobalt in Congo (DRC), the time of its internal affairs director is unstable. For example, in the eastern part of the Congo (DRC), ethnic conflicts and the grabbing of mineral resources by various armed forces aggravated the turmoil in the region. All of these will affect the stable supply of cobalt ore, and the fluctuation of cobalt prices in the new market will further spread the impact to the electric vehicle market. Therefore, car companies vigorously promote the cobalt-free ternary lithium-ion battery, in addition to the cost reduction considerations, it is also related to the current high dependence of ternary lithium-ion batteries on cobalt resources. Skills to be verified. Although electric vehicle companies headed by Tesla are ambitious in advancing the cobalt-free power of lithium batteries, they must not only find new materials that can replace cobalt, but also on skills to complete the cobalt-free process. There is a bigger breakthrough. Some experts have shown that no new materials have been found to better replace the stable uses of cobalt, and the only way to reduce the amount of cobalt is to reduce the amount of cobalt. In order to solve the potential cobalt shortage problem, some power lithium battery manufacturers are increasing the proportion of nickel to increase the energy density of the battery to reduce the amount of cobalt used. However, high-nickel materials are difficult to produce because of the high technical threshold, and higher requirements for the company's scientific research ability and Ru0026D investment, and it is difficult to achieve results in a short period of time. It is understood that Japanese and Korean lithium battery companies such as Panasonic, LG Chem, and Samsung SDI are actively researching high-nickel materials batteries, but the progress is not smooth. It is worth mentioning that although Tesla has been claiming to stop using cobalt, it will still compete with other electric car companies for the limited global cobalt production in a short period of time. Some media announced that in order to ensure the supply of cobalt for the Shanghai Super Factory, Tesla has negotiated a long-term supply agreement with the power giant Glencore. In addition, the cobalt-free batteries that have been disclosed to the outside world still have certain restrictions in their promotion and application. Industry insiders pointed out that even for low-cobalt ternary lithium-ion batteries, it will take two or three years at the earliest to complete the large-scale commercialization. Disclaimer: Some pictures and content of articles published on this site are from the Internet. If there is any infringement, please contact to delete.