On October 12, Ningde Times announced that it would invest 32 billion yuan in an industrial park project involving the recycling of used battery materials.
52 days later, the project officially started, creating a "Yichang speed", the news once again stirred the market on the power battery recycling market concern enthusiasm.
This year, China ushered in the first batch of power battery decommissioning peak. Data show that as of 2020 the cumulative total amount of decommissioning over 200,000 tons, and by 2025, this figure is expected to rise to 780,000 tons.
Not long ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology held a "14th Five-Year Plan" planning meeting, new energy vehicles power battery recycling work was mentioned again.
This market is seen as the next wind port, Orient Securities research report that by 2025 the domestic power battery recycling market size is expected to reach 37 billion U.S. dollars. Enterprise search data show that power battery recycling-related companies registered in the first half of this year rose 2611.2% year-on-year.
Despite the layout of the various capital, but the real market is a mixed bag: qualified "regular army" supply is not enough to eat, 90% of the batteries on the market nowhere to go, and ultimately into the black workshop.
"The entire market is in a 'chaotic' state, industry standards are being built, regulations and supervision are also being improved. Regular companies can't compete with small workshops on price." Liu Dong, director of Guoxuan Gaoke's battery recycling program, said in an interview with Automotive Business.
In the face of a huge potential market size, "decommissioned batteries" how to deal with? The industry chain needs to be perfected, and what are the "pain points" that need to be overcome?
One of the power battery's "road to retirement"
In the first three quarters of this year, domestic sales of new energy vehicles were completed 2.157 million, a year-on-year increase of two times. Not only that, the Ministry of Public Security data show that, as of the end of 2020, the national new energy vehicle ownership of 4.92 million, the incremental three consecutive years more than 1 million.
Behind the growing number of new energy vehicles, a large number of old power batteries are gradually being retired.
While it is called "retired" batteries, it does not mean that the performance of these batteries has been scrapped.
According to Nutshell, when the capacity of a power battery decreases to below 80%-70% of its rated capacity, it is no longer suitable for electric vehicles. But in the 80%-20% range, the performance of the power battery can still meet the energy needs of many devices, and only when the capacity drops to 20% before mandatory retirement.
From the point of view of the service life of the power battery, the effective life of the lithium power battery is about 4-6 years, and the service life is generally 5-8 years.
So, after the "end of life" of the battery how to play the residual heat?
"Power battery recycling mode usually has two paths: laddering utilization and dismantling recycling. Generally the first laddering utilization, and then the battery can not be laddering recycling recycling." True lithium research chief analyst Liu Caisheng told Automotive Business.
An industry source described it this way, "It's like recycling a book without destroying the paper, just using the book for other places, which belongs to the laddering utilization; while beating the book into pulp belongs to the dismantling and recycling."
That is to say, the "secondary utilization" is actually the reuse of batteries, the environmental protection, safety and technology requirements are very high. Only after testing to meet the requirements of the battery can enter the ladder utilization link.
"When the capacity of the battery decreases by 40%, Guoxuan Gaoke will choose the recycling technology. Of course, the direction is different for different materials." According to Liu Dong, ternary lithium batteries with high content of rare metals are more recycled. And lithium iron phosphate batteries will be more valuable in the secondary utilization.
Volkswagen extracted battery raw materialsVolkswagen sources told us, "Volkswagen EV's lithium ternary batteries can reach 95 percent utilization rate after recycling."
While ladder utilization and dismantling and recycling technologies are far apart, they are typically complementary rather than mutually exclusive for the power battery recycling industry.
Two, ninety percent of used batteries do not know where to go, the price of the hidden market
A small discarded batteries, the entire industry in an embarrassing situation.
Under the requirements of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments, the power battery recycling network is accelerating the construction. As of the end of October this year, 171 relevant enterprises have set up 10,048 power battery recycling service outlets for new energy vehicles in 31 provinces and municipalities across the country.
"Do these 10,000 recycling outlets have the function of collecting or collecting batteries? There is still a question mark." However, according to feedback from industry insiders, the setup of recycling points is more of a formality.
So far in 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has announced three batches of **** 47 companies into the "new energy vehicle waste power battery comprehensive utilization of industry norms and conditions" list, the industry is commonly known as the "white list of enterprises". (Excerpts from the list of companies)
But in reality, the number of batteries actually entering the recycling business is far less than expected. Where have all the batteries gone?
"Only 10-20 percent of the used batteries go into regular enterprises, and most of them can be said to be unaccounted for, flowing into unknown small workshops." Liu Dong revealed to us.
Power battery recycling is a rather troublesome thing, both environmental protection and fire protection, means cost, and small workshops obviously have little burden in this regard.
Since there is no clear pricing mechanism, the phenomenon of "high price" abounds, the small workshop gives a higher price and low cost, the battery more flow to the "black market", disappeared in the small workshop. Automotive industry in the salted fish, turn and other second-hand commodity trading platform to waste car batteries, car chassis recycling and other keywords to search, found on the new energy vehicle power battery recycling post surfaced. Commodity prices range from 10 yuan to 300 yuan, but in the details of the introduction have "a large number of collection, waste batteries, door-to-door" and other words."The battery pack without water is generally recycled by kilowatt-hour, ranging from 100-300 yuan. Into the water of the battery pack recycling by the ton, different materials prices are different, lithium iron is 5000 yuan / ton, ternary lithium is 13000 yuan -18000 yuan / ton ranging." Automotive industry visited found that most of the business said that the specific offer depends on the battery, but without exception, these "black" business prices are far more than the "white list" of companies offer.
It is understood that the regular enterprise recycling price is only 10,000 yuan / ton, or even lower, will also charge a separate service fee. In comparison, the competitiveness of the two sides is not in the same order of magnitude.
In such a confrontation, there is a "regular army" recovery does not come to a sufficient amount of batteries, more and more difficult to sustain, most of the decommissioned batteries, but the status quo is nowhere to be found. Third, the dead battery sizable profits, "regular army" companies can not eat enough "only you can not think, no market can not do." When we try to track these small workshops in the waste battery destination, found in the field of low-speed electric vehicles and electric bicycles, there are waste batteries.
Batteries with high residual capacity after gradient treatment can indeed be used in energy storage and low-speed electric vehicles. However, the safety performance of batteries in small workshops is a significant problem, in the process of using the inevitable hidden dangers pile up to form.
"This year, more than six thousand electric car (two-wheeled electric car) fire incident, which the battery problem, it is very likely that this refurbishment of small workshops flow out." Liu Caisheng guessed.
In fact, for small workshop-type recycling enterprises, limited by the cost and technical threshold, their priority option is still dismantling and recycling.
In the first half of this year, industrial metal prices rose sharply, nickel, cobalt and manganese prices continue to rise, for example, the price of nickel in the first half of the year rose nearly 50%. The ternary lithium batteries contain a large number of valuable metals and materials, the economic benefits of recycling is good, the profit margin is very substantial.
In contrast to the high profit margins, the qualified "white list" of enterprises in the difficult profitability predicament.
"If a company can acquire a sufficient amount of batteries, there is no profitability difficulties. Profitability difficulties is mainly because the capacity can not be released, the acquisition of a sufficient amount of batteries to produce." People familiar with the matter analyzed to us.
(Source: official website, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology)Bao Wei, general manager of Huayou Recycling, one of the companies on the "white list", said the problem facing the industry at this stage is not a lack of production capacity, but a limited number of batteries that can be recycled.
According to Bao Wei's statistics, only the first batch of five enterprises on the "white list" can handle 600,000 tons of batteries, which is more than enough to cope with the current end-of-life volume of more than 200,000 tons.
Additionally, the current real battery into the end-of-life stage is basically an early entry into the public service system of electric buses, cabs and other vehicles have reached the mandatory end-of-life operations, more lithium iron phosphate batteries.
The ternary lithium batteries containing high-value metal materials have entered the market for a short period of time, and have not yet entered the end-of-life wave. In other words, there is still some time before the arrival of the battery decommissioning point of explosion.
And Liu Dong and others are looking forward to the "decommissioning tide" of the real coming.
Four, written in the endDespite the fact that a large number of used batteries can not flow into the "regular army", but the market is still a blue ocean.
Flush data statistics found that in the 32 power battery recycling plate listed companies, 26 companies in the first three quarters of this year to achieve net profit year-on-year growth, accounting for more than 80%. Among them, 21 companies realized net profit doubled year-on-year during the reporting period.
"Under the guidance of rising raw material prices and relevant policies, industrial chain companies are actively laying out the power battery recycling industry." Zhang Xiang, a researcher at the Automotive Innovation Center of the Northern Polytechnic University, analyzed to Automotive Production and Economics that the entry of car companies is conducive to the industry chain's cost reduction and efficiency, and enhances market competitiveness.
In addition to this, some car companies are also taking active action. BYD, Azure, BAIC, Tesla, Jaguar Land Rover and other manufacturers have layout battery recycling business.
In September this year, Tesla China's official website launched a "battery recycling service" and reminded customers that Tesla can recycle "any battery that no longer meets the customer's needs," and will officially recycle and reuse 100% of these lithium-ion batteries.
In November of this year, Tesla signed a contract with Huayou Energy for in-depth cooperation in the areas of battery laddering and recycling, which is an important part of Tesla's "full-cycle battery asset management".
On the way to the interview, many practitioners told us that the industry is far more secretive than we thought. The omission of any one link may increase the probability of "dead batteries", such as dismantling enterprises in the industrial chain, compliance companies before the implementation of the new policy, battery recycling outlets .....
Of course, this is another topic.