Data can reveal what is the problem with China's new energy industry?

Nine years ago, China began to develop new energy models through policy guidance. The production and sales data was excellent. The frequency of new energy vehicles around us, especially the pure electric vehicles, is getting higher and higher, but many problems that existed nine years ago remain unresolved. Just as Beijing held a heavyweight conference in recent days, it announced some worthwhile figures. Let us look at the problems facing the new energy industry and their future direction.

In 2009, Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang stated at the meeting that “the development of new energy vehicles is the only way for China to move from a big automobile country to a powerful automobile country”, and the concept of curve overtaking was subsequently included in the “Industrial Revitalization Plan”. The future development must focus on the current situation. Last year's data is an important reference for the formulation of new policies.

â–  Rapid increase in production and sales volume and supporting facilities

2018 has quietly passed nearly a month. Last year's summary and data gradually surfaced. From the "Car Industry Invigoration Plan" of 2009, the concept of electric vehicle "curve passing" was first proposed. Today, the new energy industry has soared under the support of national policies. Judging from the statistical data, in 2017, a total of 777,000 new energy vehicles were sold, no more than nine years ago, or compared to three years ago in 2014, sales have also achieved a 10-fold increase. However, the sales figure of 777,000 units in the whole year would be a bit embarrassing if it gets the entire auto market, because it only accounted for 2.69% of the total sales of new cars in the country last year.

Although the results are gratifying, we also mentioned that we rely more on policy support. The restrictions on purchases and restrictions on traditional fuel vehicles in major cities, as well as policies on tax breaks and subsidies for new energy vehicles, have forced consumers in many limited-edition and megaphone cities to choose new energy vehicles because of their travel needs. Inadequate cruising range, battery attenuation, collision safety, inconvenient charging, and long charging time still plague consumers.

For new energy sources, especially for owners of pure electric vehicles, the number and density of charging piles determine their use experience. With battery technology still far from mature today, the construction of hardware facilities determines how far owners can go and how far they can go. There is also an interesting set of figures here.

● Public charging piles: From the number of rushes to the weight

According to user classification, charging piles can be roughly divided into two types: public charging piles and private charging piles. The construction of public charging piles has slowed down. Statistical data show that the average monthly growth rate in 2017 has dropped from 8,000 in 2016 to 6,000. The main influencing factor is that operators have shifted from the initial heavy construction to heavy operation, specifically That is, they have shifted their focus to how to increase the utilization of charging facilities.

Of the 214,000 public charging piles, 86,000 were slow-filling piles, 61,000 pieces of DC piles, and 67,000 pieces of AC and DC integrated piles. In terms of distribution, it is relatively concentrated in the Beijing-Tianjin-Henan-Lu, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta regions, where the top 10 provinces and cities account for more than 80% of GDP. Among them, Beijing's 30,000 charging posts ranked first, Guangdong Province ranked second with 29,000 charging posts, and 26,000 charging posts in Shanghai won third place.

● Personal charging pile: high idle rate

According to incomplete statistics, there are 240,000 private charging posts in the country, most of which are exchanges and slow charging. With the purchase of new cars, the installation rate of owners of private stakes exceeds 80%. Among these, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong Province once again accounted for the top three with 83,000, 78,000, and 39,000 charging posts, and the amount of holdings in the three places accounted for 80% of the country's private charging piles.

According to the plan, in 2020, the number of public charging piles planned for construction in China will be about 500,000, but it still does not match the scale of development of new energy vehicles in the same period, even if it is calculated according to the 2 million annual new energy vehicles planned for 2020, The problem of "lower than average" is not only not alleviated but even worse.

The fact that the ratio of piles is too high is only part of the problem that we can read out from numbers. On the other hand, the fact that charging piles are not used at the current stage is also a fact. According to incomplete statistics, the current average utilization rate of charging piles in our country is less than 15%, which means that there are a large number of facilities that can meet the needs of daily use, but they are idle for various reasons.

The idea of ​​sharing charging piles is from Europe and the United States. It hopes to use the private charging piles for idle time through system allocation. However, at present, there are many private charging piles in China that are bound to individual parking spaces. When the parking space is in a closed cell, how does the outside vehicle enter? How to charge charging? Problems such as how to pay for the problem and so on, make the shared charging pile's front road not be even. The final solution to the problem of the ratio of car piles, to a certain extent, still needs to be vigorously promoted by the state, car companies, and third-party companies. Sharing charging piles is only a buffer to alleviate existing problems.

â–  Problems that car companies cannot avoid

New energy vehicles, especially pure electric vehicles, are not new, and their birth time is even longer than that of diesel locomotives. However, as a means of transport, they will encounter obstacles encountered in the promotion of many new products. From the niche to the recognition of most people, in addition to the policy support mentioned on the previous page, manufacturers need to further improve their own products. With the advancement of technology, difficulties and obstacles on the road to popularization will mostly be solved. Therefore, the painful technical breakthrough is a problem that cannot be avoided by car companies and suppliers.

● Increase in material costs

For pure electric vehicles, the role of the battery pack is extremely important. The previously widely used lithium iron phosphate battery is gradually being replaced by a ternary lithium battery, but the cobalt in the ternary lithium battery is very scarce for our country.

In addition to cobalt, the production of power batteries is inseparable from nickel, another nickel deposit. Although nickel production in China is slightly higher than that of cobalt, with the application of high-nickel materials and the increase in the total amount, about 2% is used at this stage. After the rate rises to nearly 10%, its price will also skyrocket like cobalt.

Lithium is similar to this. If we consider the cost, we will not use cobalt, nickel and other elements in the future. That is, we will return to the era of lithium iron phosphate or lithium manganese oxide batteries. However, the application of lithium is unavoidable. What is equally embarrassing is that 70% of lithium materials in China are also imported.

What we have described above is just a few important raw materials needed for the manufacture of power batteries. In other words, this is not the whole problem. In addition to further expanding imports and opening up new sources, the solution to resource shortages is to strengthen battery recycling and extract reusable resources from used batteries. In this regard, China is currently in a weak stage. With the shortage of resources in the future, the battery recycling industry will surely usher in an explosive growth.

On the other hand, the recovery of power lithium batteries has the problem of high recovery costs and imperfect recycling industry chain. Recycling resources of domestic power lithium batteries still draw lessons from the experience of lead-acid battery recycling. The recovery value is about 30%. There are still significant gaps between countries with mature recycling systems such as the United States and Japan. 3 years ago in 2015, the cumulative scrap of power lithium batteries was around 2-40 million tons. By 2020, the cumulative scrap quantity of lithium batteries for new energy vehicle power in China will reach the scale of 12-17 million tons, which can be described as problems and prospects. coexist.

● The new shape battery is still far away from commercial mass production

Due to the influence of the existing system architecture and key cathode materials, the energy density of lithium-ion batteries in the market is hardly to exceed 300 Wh/kg. Among them, the energy density of lithium iron phosphate battery is difficult to exceed 140Wh/kg, and the energy density of the ternary lithium battery is up to 220Wh/kg. The upper limit in the laboratory is relatively high, but only 300Wh/kg. . When consumers are constantly pursuing a vehicle with a longer cruising range, traditional lithium-ion batteries are a bit out of place. Since reality can't satisfy demand, it just represents a vast market.

All-solid-state batteries have a significant increase in energy density compared to lithium-ion batteries currently on the market. In some foreign laboratories, all-solid-state batteries with energy densities of 300-400 Wh/kg have been trial-produced. The energy density of lithium-ion battery 100-220Wh/kg can be doubled.

On the other hand, a large part of the new energy vehicles sold in the Chinese market are based on traditional fuel vehicles. The overall quality is heavier, and therefore the overall energy consumption is high. There is no breakthrough in battery technology in the short term. Under the circumstances, the lightweight body development work can, to some extent, effectively increase the mileage of new energy vehicles.

Full text summary:

In the various types of summary at the end of each year, we can see all kinds of gratifying figures. Thanks to the China Everbright market, new energy vehicles, especially pure electric vehicles, are making great strides under the guidance of national policies. From the perspective of production and sales figures, there is no doubt that China is already a big seller of new energy vehicles, and the surge in sales has also made the problem of inadequate infrastructure construction increasingly evident. On the other hand, the rapid increase in the price of raw materials also makes auto manufacturers' manufacturing costs remain high. In this race against time, it is still to be seen whether it is possible to achieve a curve overtaking.