Fifty-two days later, the project officially started, setting a "Yichang speed". This news once again aroused the market's enthusiasm for the power battery recycling market.
This year, China ushered in the first batch of power battery scrapping peaks. The data shows that by 2020, the total amount of decommissioning will exceed 200,000 tons, and by 2025, this figure is expected to rise to 780,000 tons.
Not long ago, at the "14 th Five-Year Plan" special meeting held by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the recycling of power batteries for new energy vehicles was mentioned again.
This market is regarded as the next hot spot. According to the orient securities research report, the domestic power battery recycling market is expected to reach $37 billion in 2025. According to enterprise survey data, the number of registered enterprises related to power battery recycling increased by 26 1 1.2% in the first half of this year.
Although various capitals compete for layout, the real market is mixed: qualified "regular army" materials are not enough to eat, and 90% of the batteries in the market are missing and eventually flow into black workshops.
"The whole market is in a state of' initial chaos', industry standards are under construction, and regulations and supervision are also improving. Formal enterprises cannot compete with small workshops in price. " Dong Liu, director of the high-tech battery recycling project in Guo Xuan, said in an interview with Automotive Sankei.
Facing the huge potential market scale, how to deal with "retired batteries"? What are the "pain points" in the industrial chain that need to be improved?
First of all, the "road to retirement" of power batteries.
In the first three quarters of this year, the domestic sales of new energy vehicles reached 2157,000, a year-on-year increase of 2 times. Moreover, according to the data of the Ministry of Public Security, by the end of 2020, the number of new energy vehicles in China will reach 4.92 million, an increase of more than 1 10,000 vehicles for three consecutive years.
Behind the increasing number of new energy vehicles, a large number of old power batteries began to "retire" gradually.
Although they are called "retired" batteries, it does not mean that the performance of these batteries has been scrapped.
According to the popular science of the shell, when the capacity of the power battery decays to below 80%-70% of the rated capacity, it is no longer suitable for electric vehicles. However, in the range of 80%-20%, the performance of the power battery can still meet the energy demand of many devices, and it only needs to be scrapped when the capacity drops to 20%.
Judging from the service life of power batteries, the effective life of power lithium batteries is about 4-6 years, and the service life is generally 5-8 years.
So, how to exert the residual heat after the battery life is over?
"The recycling mode of power batteries usually has two paths: ladder utilization and disassembly and recycling. Generally, it is used in steps first, and then the batteries that can't be used up in steps are recycled. " Liu Caisheng, chief analyst of Lithium Research, told Automobile Production and Marketing.
Some insiders describe it like this: "It's like recycling a book without destroying the paper, just using the book in other places, which belongs to ladder utilization;" Beating books into pulp belongs to dismantling and recycling. "
In other words, "cascade utilization" is actually the reuse of batteries, which requires high environmental protection, safety and technology. Only batteries that meet the requirements after testing can enter the cascade utilization link.
"When the battery capacity declines by 40%, Guo Xuan Hi-Tech will choose recycling technology. Of course, different materials have different directions. " According to Dong Liu, the content of rare metals in ternary lithium batteries is very high, and more is recycled. Lithium iron phosphate battery will have more cascade utilization value.
Volkswagen, the battery material extracted by Volkswagen, told us that "the ternary lithium battery of Volkswagen electric vehicle can reach 95% utilization rate after recycling."
Although there is a great difference between ladder utilization and disassembly and recycling technology, it is a typical complementary relationship rather than a mutually exclusive relationship for the power battery recycling industry.
Second, 90% of the used batteries are missing, and the secret market with the highest price is obtained.
A small discarded battery has put the whole industry in an awkward position.
At the request of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments, the construction of power battery recycling outlets is accelerating. By the end of 10 this year, 17 1 related enterprises have set up 10048 new energy vehicle battery recycling service outlets in 3 1 provinces and cities across the country.
"Do these more than 10,000 recycling outlets have the function of recycling or collecting batteries? Also ask a question mark. " However, from the industry feedback, the setting of recycling points is more of a form.
Since 20 18, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has successively announced three batches of ***47 enterprises that meet the industry standard conditions for comprehensive utilization of waste power batteries in new energy vehicles, commonly known as "white list enterprises" in the industry. (Excerpted from the list of some enterprises)
But in fact, the number of batteries actually entering the recycling enterprise is far from what expected. Where are all these batteries?
"Only 10%-20% of waste batteries have entered the formal enterprises, and most of the batteries can be said to have disappeared and flowed into unknown small workshops." Dong Liu revealed to us. Recycling power batteries is a very troublesome thing. Whether it is environmental protection or fire fighting, it means costs, and small workshops obviously have no burden in this respect.
Because there is no clear pricing mechanism, the phenomenon of "the highest price wins" is everywhere. Small workshops offer higher prices and lower costs, and more batteries flow to the "black market" and disappear into small workshops. When searching for keywords such as used car batteries and car chassis recycling on second-hand commodity trading platforms such as salted fish and Zhuanzhuan, Automobile Sankei found a post about the recycling of power batteries for new energy vehicles. Commodity prices range from 10 yuan to 300 yuan, but in the details, there are words such as "a large collection of used batteries can be delivered to your door".
"Battery packs without water are generally recycled at kWh, ranging from 100 yuan to 300 yuan. Battery packs filled with water are recycled by tons, and the prices of different materials are different. Lithium iron is 5000 yuan/ton, ternary lithium 13000 yuan-18000 yuan/ton. " According to interviews with auto industry and commerce, most merchants said that the specific quotation depends on the battery situation, but without exception, the prices of these "black households" merchants far exceed the quotations of "white list" enterprises.
It is understood that the recycling price of formal enterprises is only 1 10,000 yuan/ton, or even lower, and a service fee will be charged separately. In contrast, the competitiveness of both sides is not an order of magnitude at all.
Under such confrontation, the situation that the "regular army" can't recycle enough batteries has become increasingly unsustainable, and most of the retired batteries have disappeared. Third, the battery that put all your eggs in one basket is profitable, but the "regular army" enterprises are not full. "Only you can't think of it, there is no market." When we tried to trace the whereabouts of waste batteries in these small workshops, we found that there were waste batteries in low-speed electric vehicles, electric bicycles and other fields. The battery with high residual capacity after cascade treatment can indeed be used in energy storage, low-speed electric vehicles and other fields. However, the battery safety performance of small workshops is a significant problem, and hidden dangers will inevitably accumulate during use.
"More than 6,000 electric vehicles (two-wheeled electric vehicles) caught fire this year, and the battery problem is probably caused by this refurbished small workshop." Liu Caisheng guessed.
In fact, for small workshop-style recycling enterprises, due to the cost and technical threshold, their priority is dismantling and recycling.
In the first half of this year, the prices of industrial metals rose sharply, and the prices of nickel, cobalt and manganese continued to rise. For example, the price of nickel rose by nearly 50% in the first half of this year. Ternary lithium batteries contain a lot of valuable metals and materials, and the economic benefits of recycling are good, and the profit rate is very considerable.
In contrast to the high profit margin, the qualified "white list" enterprises have fallen into a difficult profit dilemma.
"If companies can buy enough batteries, there will be no profit difficulties. The main difficulty in profitability is that the production capacity cannot be released and it is impossible to purchase enough batteries for production. " Informed sources analyzed it to us.
(Source: official website, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology) Wei Bao, general manager of Huayou Cycle, one of the "white list" enterprises, bluntly said that the problem facing the industry at this stage is not the lack of production capacity, but the limited number of recyclable batteries.
According to the statistics of Wei Bao, only five enterprises on the first batch of "white list" can handle 600,000 tons, which is more than enough to deal with more than 200,000 tons of scrap steel at present.
In addition, at present, the batteries that really enter the scrapping stage are basically electric buses, taxis and other operating vehicles that have reached the mandatory scrapping period, and more are lithium iron phosphate batteries.
However, ternary lithium batteries containing high-value metal materials have not entered the market for a long time and have not yet entered the scrapping tide. In other words, there is still a certain time before the explosion point of battery retirement.
Dong Liu and others are looking forward to the real arrival of "retirement tide".
Fourth, write it at the end.
Although a large number of used batteries cannot flow into the "regular army", this market is still a blue ocean.
Straight flush statistics show that among the 32 listed companies in the power battery recycling sector, 26 companies achieved a year-on-year increase in net profit in the first three quarters of this year, accounting for more than 80%. Among them, 265,438+0 companies doubled their net profit during the reporting period.
"Under the guidance of rising raw material prices and related policies, industrial chain companies are actively deploying the power battery recycling industry." Zhang Xiang, a researcher at north china university of technology Automobile Innovation Center, analyzed the automobile production and marketing, and thought that the entry of automobile enterprises was beneficial to reduce costs and increase efficiency in the industrial chain and enhance market competitiveness.
In addition, some car companies are also taking active actions. BYD, Weilai, BAIC, Tesla, Jaguar Land Rover and other manufacturers have laid out battery recycling business.
In September this year, Tesla China official website launched the "battery recycling service" and reminded customers that Tesla can recycle "any battery that can no longer meet customers' needs", and the official will recycle 65,438+000% of these lithium-ion batteries.
On June 5438+065438+ 10 this year, Weineng signed a cooperation contract with Huayou Energy, and the two sides conducted in-depth cooperation on the cascade utilization and recycling of batteries, which is also an important part of Weineng's "full cycle management of battery assets".
In the interview, many practitioners gave us feedback that this industry is far more secretive than imagined. Omission of any link may increase the probability of "desperate battery", such as dismantling enterprises in the industrial chain, compliance companies before the implementation of the New Deal, and battery recycling outlets. .....
Of course, this is another topic.