The Development and Divergence of Technical Roadmap of Three Major Application Fields of New Energy Batteries

The Development and Divergence of Technical Roadmap of Three Major Application Fields of New Energy Batteries

1.Application scenarios of new energy batteries

Since the launching of lithium battery, three transformations have been made in terms of application scenarios.Firstly, lithium batteries were applied in early-stage smart end products; currently, they are being applied in power batteries of electric vehicles; in the future, energy storage batteries hopefully will be the biggest target application field for lithium batteries.With regards to electric vehicles, electric energy is the principal energy.However, it cannot be called new energy if the electric energy comes from conventional energy such as coal.So far, PV power generation and wind power generation are occupying more proportion.In the future, electric vehicles can work as an energy storage device, just as the power bank.Besides working as a transportation tool for normal running, electric vehicles can also work as mobile energy storage.Currently, there are three major modes of electric vehicles, i.e.battery electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.In China, the previous two types account for principal proportion.From the perspective of future development trends, PV power generation and wind power generation will hopefully develop into mainstream installation main body in future power market.By 2030, total installation volume of PV power generation and wind power generation will hopefully surpass coal power generation, and the cost is falling correspondingly.By 2035, the cost of PV power generation will fall to below RMB 0.1/kwh.In the future, smart grid and distributed PV power generation can be connected to electric vehicles and make the vehicles a kind of large energy storage device.

2.New energy technical roadmap under the policy of “dual carbon”

In the first place, lithium batteries were invented by a Japanese company in 1991, and they started to be applied in electric vehicles in 2012.The lithium batteries being used now are still the updated version based on early-stage lithium batteries.In the future, solid-state lithium batteries, lithium-air batteries and lithium-sulfur batteries are going to be launched.The whole world, including China, is actively promoting peak carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality, and putting forth clear objectives in penetration rate and energy consumption reduction of electric vehicles.Electric vehicles are playing an important role in carbon emission reduction in two aspects: realizing inventory optimization by replacing fuel vehicles; realizing the optimization of the total amount of road traffic emission reduction by smart technologies such as intelligent road network and driverless vehicles.China also has put forth the technical roadmap of “1+9” energy saving and new energy.

3.Technical roadmap of new energy industry

New energy batteries are mainly applied in electric vehicle battery, energy storage battery and digital battery, among which, electric vehicle is the principal application field.

(1) Principal technical roadmap of electric vehicle batteries

Firstly, lithium iron phosphate batteries.Chinese battery manufacturers, represented by BYD, are playing the leading role in the development and manufacturing of lithium iron phosphate batteries.From 2013 to 2016, when lithium iron phosphate batteries were launched in the first place, relatively low Range Per Charge was the obvious disadvantage; from 2016 to 2020, Tesla launched ternary batteries, with higher energy density and higher Range Per Charge (RPC).For this reason, Chinese government made corresponding adjustment in policies, i.e.providing subsidies based on energy density.This greatly influenced the development of electric vehicle industry in China; after 2020, battery manufacturers, such as CATL and BYD, eliminated lithium iron phosphate module, which helps to improve battery energy density.lithium iron phosphate blade battery of BYD and CTP lithium iron phosphate battery of CATL both achieved RPC of over 600-700 km.Especially in 2022, BYD launched “漢”, which is able to achieve RPC of 715 km.This helped lithium iron phosphate battery re-occupy the leading role in roadmap.In June to July, 2023, CATL and Tesla entered into cooperation to launch M3P battery, which applies lithium manganese iron and improve RPC by 10%.It is the updated version of lithium iron phosphate.Therefore, it is estimated that lithium manganese iron phosphate is going to occupy high proportion since next year.In the future, lithium iron phosphate battery technologies will still follow the development trend of high voltage, high energy, low temperature and fast charge, and also lower cost.With regard to manufacturing, when the holdings of electric vehicles achieve 200 million ones, demands for lithium batteries globally will achieve 10TWh and demands for lithium iron phosphate will achieve 15 million tons.Lithium iron phosphate materials have become bulk raw materials, which gives higher requirements on capacity.Improvements need to be made for manufacturing equipment in terms of being large scale, intelligent and lower energy consumption.

Secondly, ternary lithium batteries.The idea was put forth by Tesla in the first place.The battery is made of NCA battery from Japanese Panasonic, ternary 811 from Korean LG and ternary 811 from Chinese CATL.The RPC achieves 700 km and will even achieve 1000 km in the future.The higher content of nickel in ternary battery, the higher battery density will be.However, it creates two problems, one is severe sacrifice of safety and stability, and the other is battery cycle life becoming shorter.Therefore, ternary batteries have bigger hidden safety risks compared to lithium iron batteries albeit high density.The puncture experiment during battery manufacturing directly tells us that ternary batteries will explode and burst into flames during puncture.The temperature will rise to over 800 degree.Lithium iron batteries do not explode, and the temperature does not rise to over 100 degree.This is the main reason leading to safety accidents of vehicles installed with ternary batteries.The technical trend for ternary batteries: 1) to realize high nickel content and low cobalt content.China is a country seriously in short of cobalt.90% of cobalt is imported from Democratic Republic of the Congo of Africa, with high importation price.To reduce cobalt content in ternary batteries helps to greatly reduce material cost.Now, battery materials with cobalt content of less than 5% have already been applied; 2) to realize high voltage.The commonly used NCM523 and 622 material are more stable than 811 material in terms of structure, and have higher voltage and energy density; 3) to reduce the sensibility of high-nickel material to humidity so as to enhance safety of batteries.

After China cancelled subsidy for electric vehicles in 2021, the main difficulty for ternary batteries is high manufacturing cost.Besides nickel and cobalt being expensive, the content of lithium (7%) is also high compared to that in lithium iron battery (4%).480 kg of lithium carbonate is needed for the manufacturing of 1 ton of ternary battery material, while manufacturing 1 ton of lithium iron phosphate battery needs just 230 kg of lithium carbonate.This indicates that manufacturing cost of ternary material is much higher than that of iron lithium battery material.

Thirdly, lithium manganite battery.This idea was put forth by Japanese company in 2010.A few enterprises are still engaged in such manufacturing.Some enterprises in Suzhou are manufacturing low-speed electric vehicles with lithium manganite battery.Lithium manganite still occupies a certain amount of proportion.

(2) Principal technical roadmap of energy storage batteries

In recent years, energy storage batteries are developing very fast.It is estimated that the holdings of electric passenger vehicles by 2040 in China will be 300 million ones.Based on the average storage (per vehicle) of 65kwh, total vehicle energy storage will achieve around 20 billion kwh, equivalent to current daily power consumption in our country.Consequently, energy storage market scale in the future will obviously surpass electric vehicle scale.

Current principal technical roadmap of energy storage batteries are mechanical energy storage, electrical energy storage, electrochemical energy storage, thermal energy storage and chemical energy storage.Electrochemical energy storage is the one with developed technologies and fastest progress, including lead acid battery, lithium ion battery, sodium sulfur battery and flow battery.Lithium batteries are playing the principal role, mainly including liquid lithium batteries and solid-state lithium batteries.In addition, spring flow batteries and sodium sulfur batteries also have their characteristics.At present stage, among all lithium ion energy storage batteries, lithium iron phosphate batteries and lithium iron manganese batteries have significant strengths, especially lithium iron manganese batteries, which boast strengths of low cost, good safety performance and long cycle life of over 8000 times and even 10000 times in the future.

With regard to overseas market, Tesla has been making deployments in energy storage batteries since long ago.In 2017, Tesla constructed an energy storage power station with the capacity of 100 MW/129 MWh in South Australia.South Korea is the earliest country that developed energy storage batteries, and the country had been the the one with the largest annual installed capacity in the world for two consecutive years.However, the consistency and safety problem of its single-cell battery hinders the large-scale promotion and application in energy storage field.From August in 2017 to January in 2019, 21 fire incidents at energy storage power stations occurred in South Korea, leading to the command from Ministry of Public Administration and Security that 345 energy storage power stations installed in public institutions stopped service.

Additionally, sodium-ion batteries are also one of mainstream technical roadmaps, with its most obvious strength of lower raw material cost, 30%-40% lower than lithium batteries.Sodium-ion batteries are developing very fast during the period when the price of lithium carbonate rose to RMB 500000-RMB 600000/ton last year.A significant weakness in sodium-ion battery industry is incompatibility in the industry.According to industry analysis, when the price of lithium carbonate is less than RMB 150000-RMB 200000, cost advantage of sodium batteries is less obvious.In the future, sodium batteries will get some development in energy storage field and low-speed electric vehicles.Meanwhile, the development of sodium battery industry is of great importance to balance the price of lithium carbonate.In 2021, CATL expressed that the Company will apply sodium batteries on a large scale if the price of lithium carbonate remains high for a long time.Nearly 30 enterprises home and abroad have been making deployments in sodium battery industry, and after industrialization, a multi-hundred-billion-RMB market scale will be built.

(3) Technical roadmap of digital batteries

As the earliest cathode material for lithium ion batteries, cobalt is irreplaceable in 3C digital electronics with the strengths of good safety performance, high charge capacity and outstanding cycle life.China is a big manufacturer country of lithium cobalt oxide battery.Due to the fact of cobalt resource starvation and high price, part of digital products such as power bank battery, laptop battery, toy battery and drone battery also replace lithium cobalt oxide battery with ternary material NCM/NCA.

Moreover, some high-voltage ternary materials and single crystal ternary materials are also applied in some digital products.

4.Conclusion and outlook

Power battery, energy storage battery and smart new energy system are three major application fields for new energy.Currently, lithium iron phosphate battery and ternary battery are mainstream technical roadmap for power battery; lithium iron phosphate and lithium manganite are mainstream technical roadmap for energy storage lithium battery; lithium cobalt oxide and ternary material are mainstream technical roadmap for digital battery.In the coming 5-10 years, it is estimated that demands for new energy power battery and energy storage battery will increase by 10 times to 20 times, achieving 2-4TWH.The market pain points of battery system are still safety, energy density, low-temperature performance fast charge-discharge, manufacturing cost and raw material supplying.There are potentials for sodium ion battery to get applied in low-speed electric vehicles and energy storage field.In the era of electric vehicle, the whole world is full of fierce competition in all aspects including new technologies, new process, new products, new materials, new systems, smart manufacturing, brand marketing and industry chains.