also make power batteries eager to rise, stirring the "nervous" of power battery manufacturers.
On October 26, a "Battery Price Upward Contact Letter" signed by Shenzhen BYD Lithium Battery Co., Ltd., mentioned that due to market changes and the impact of power and production restrictions, lithium battery raw materials continued to rise compared with December last year, and the supply of negative electrode materials continued to be tight, resulting in a significant increase in comprehensive costs; according to the actual situation of rising raw material prices, after research and decision, the unit price of C08M and other battery products will be raised, with an increase of no less than 20%.
Shenzhen BYD Lithium Battery Co., Ltd. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BYD . Regarding the "Battery Price Upward Contact Letter" circulating on the Internet, BYD responded that it was confirmed internally and would not comment on the relevant price increase rumors. Affected by this news, on October 26, opened BYD, with a maximum intraday increase of 4.07%, and subsequently declined as of the closing at 319.01 yuan/share, an increase of 0.52%. As of the closing on October 27, BYD rose 0.86%, closing at 321.74 yuan/share. From the perspective of the overall lithium battery sector, the lithium battery sector rose by 0.4% on October 26, but the overall sector trend declined on October 27.
BYD may increase its price by 20% Other battery vendors and others have different reactions
industry: It will not have a major impact on the passenger car market for the time being rumored on the Internet. In the BYD "Battery Price Upward Contact Letter" rumored on the Internet, it mentioned that compared with December last year, the price of positive electrode material LiCoO2 has increased by more than 200%, the price of electrolyte has increased by more than 150%, and the supply of negative electrode materials and other products has continued to be tight, resulting in a significant increase in the overall cost; the company plans to increase the tax-inclusive price of the product based on the current Wh unit price, and the specific model and price will refer to the new quotation; starting from November 1, 2021, all new orders will be signed uniformly and the new price will be executed, and all orders that have not been executed will be closed and cancelled.
Judging from the contact letter circulating on the Internet, the positive electrode material LiCoO2 is a common material for consumer batteries; Assistant Secretary-General and Minister of Technology of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said that according to the content of the BYD battery price increase contact letter circulating on the Internet, the price increase products may be consumer batteries, not automotive power batteries. C08M battery is an electric battery suitable for new energy special vehicles such as electric forklift , ATV , and environmentally friendly vehicles.
At present, it has not been officially confirmed whether BYD lithium batteries have increased their prices; however, some power battery industry practitioners said that BYD batteries currently have relatively few external supplies in the passenger car field, so if the price increase is really increased, it will not have a significant impact on the passenger car market for the time being.
In fact, in addition to BYD, Guoxuan Hi-Tech HTML also leaked a price adjustment negotiation letter a few days ago. In the price adjustment negotiation letter, Guoxuan High-Tech admitted that with the continued rise in the price of battery cell raw materials, power battery companies are currently facing the biggest difficulties since the new crown epidemic; with the rise in prices of positive electrode materials, electrolytes, copper foils, , aluminum foils, etc., the company has made every effort to reduce the impact of the rising cost, but the results have been minimal. Guoxuan Hi-Tech once stated that upstream raw materials have a lot of pressure to increase prices, and it is still waiting to see whether to increase prices. It will negotiate with companies and will not directly raise prices.
In addition, in mid-October Penghui Energy also issued a notice of product price adjustment, which listed the changes in the increase of major battery materials and stated that it would decide that all new orders would implement bulk-linked pricing, and the increase range depends on the proportion and increase of each product material. Fineng Technology has also been revealed to be considering price increases recently. The price adjustment method will be different according to customer situations and will also be adjusted according to the price fluctuations of raw material. As for CATL , which accounts for half of the power battery market, according to market information, the price of all CATL products has not yet increased.
In the capital market, rumors of rising power batteries stimulated the stock trend. From early October to the present, the stock prices of CATL, BYD and Guoxuan Hi-Tech have all increased by more than 20%.
Data from the Gaogong Industry Research Institute shows that due to the increase in raw materials prices, the theoretical cost increase of battery cells and battery systems has exceeded 30%, and the upstream raw material price increase is mainly carried by battery manufacturers themselves. "The main reason for the price increase of batteries is the rise in the prices of key upstream materials, which is in line with the current industrial development reality. There is currently a shortage of raw materials in the field of automotive power batteries, and the price has risen sharply. The cost control pressure of power battery companies is huge." Wang Yao said.
"Car companies hope that the battery prices will continue to decline. At the same time, power battery companies hope that prices will maintain or even increase for their own profits. Therefore, the price is only a relatively acceptable range. But at this stage, the battery prices are expected to exceed the accepted price of car companies." Wang Yao said, "According to statistics from third-party institutions, the current prices of ternary and iron lithium batteries have reached 0.75 yuan/Wh and 0.61 yuan/Wh respectively, which is at the highest point this year." Zhang Hua (pseudonym), an insider of a power battery, said that the price increase of raw materials will bring certain pressure on the cost side, and enterprises generally respond from two aspects; on the one hand, expand the industrial chain, strengthen upstream and downstream cooperation in the industrial chain, and ensure the stability of raw material supply, and on the other hand, start from the product side, such as optimizing product design, improving product performance, etc., to reduce costs.
demand expands and supply-side contradictions expand, raw material prices rise wildly
At the beginning of March 2 NIO Chairman Li Bin publicly stated that compared with chips, battery supply will be the biggest bottleneck in the second quarter of this year. At present, the battery supply shortage is not just in the second quarter, but is still continuing. Chairman of Honeycomb Energy Yang Hongxin had previously publicly stated that the current capacity gap of power batteries should be between 30% and 50%, and it is expected that the power battery production capacity will be relatively tight until 2025.
In the industry's view, there are two main reasons for the shortage of power batteries. First, sales of new energy vehicles have increased significantly, and correspondingly, demand for power batteries, known as the "heart" of new energy vehicles, has also increased significantly; second, the supply of upstream raw materials is tight.
In fact, the steady growth of new energy vehicle sales and the fierce "fight" of downstream car companies have created a good market prospect for the upward prosperity of the core industries upstream of the new energy vehicle industry chain, but the expansion speed of the supply chain cannot keep up with the expansion speed of battery manufacturers, causing an imbalance in supply and demand; in addition, due to factors such as the new crown epidemic and market speculation, the supply of resources such as lithium ore has increased, the supply of raw materials is tight, and prices continue to rise.
From the perspective of the structure of the power battery, it is mainly divided into four parts: positive electrode material, negative electrode material, electrolyte and separator. Lithium battery copper foil, petroleum coke and needle coke are the negative electrode materials of the power battery, and the positive electrode material is composed of lithium carbonate and precursor material. Among them, the positive electrodes of the power battery currently used on the market mainly use lithium iron phosphate and ternary materials; the main raw materials of the electrolyte are lithium hexafluorophosphate ; at present, the prices of lithium hexafluorophosphate, lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide , electrolyte, etc. are constantly rising.
Shanghai Ganglian data showed that on October 27, the quotations of some lithium battery positive electrode materials continued to rise, among which lithium iron phosphate rose by 5,000 yuan/ton, and lithium manganate rose by 3,500 yuan/ton; according to the data of Shanghai Ganglian on October 25, the electrolyte rose by 1,000 yuan-2,000 yuan/ton, and lithium hexafluorophosphate rose by 5,000 yuan/ton. In addition, it is reported that as of October 8, the domestic spot cobalt price rose from less than 240,000 yuan/ton in April last year to 380,000 yuan/ton, an increase of nearly 60%. Due to the continued growth of subsequent demand and the reliance on imports of domestic cobalt resources, the industry generally believes that the domestic spot cobalt price may continue to rise.
takes the whole month as the node. According to CIAPS tracking, the average prices of ternary positive electrodes, iron lithium positive electrodes, electrolytes and negative electrodes in September this year increased by 42%, 87%, 145%, and 3%, respectively compared with December 2020. This predicts that the increase in battery cost prices has exceeded 20%. On October 9, a price adjustment letter from power battery raw material supplier Ganfeng Lithium Industry was leaked, saying that it had announced that the full metal lithium product series would be increased by 100,000 yuan per ton; on October 18, Tianneng Lithium Battery was rumored, saying that the price of product materials would be updated weekly and long-term orders would not be accepted.
Cui Dongshu, Secretary-General of the National Passenger Car Market Information Joint Conference, analyzed that from the surface, the tight power batteries and the rising prices are due to the rising prices of raw materials; but fundamentally speaking, it is the expansion of demand and the supply-side contradictions are highlighted. Data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers shows that the cumulative sales of new energy vehicles in the first nine months of this year were 2.157 million, an increase of 185.3% year-on-year. In addition, it is predicted that if there are no special circumstances, domestic new energy vehicles may exceed 3 million this year; and the S&P global market Caizhi predicts that the global electric vehicle sales in 2021 may reach 6.6 million, more than doubled year-on-year, reaching the highest level in history. The rapid growth in sales of new energy vehicles has led to the growth of demand for power batteries and upstream raw materials. Power battery manufacturers have accelerated their expansion of production, but the supply of raw materials has not kept up with the growth trend, and production expansion and capacity release are limited by time.
Xu Xingwu, executive vice president of Guoxuan High-tech Industrial Research Institute, once publicly stated, "Compared with the same period last year, the demand for lithium carbonate industry has increased by 60%, while the demand for lithium hydroxide has increased by 62%. And the current price has increased by about 2 times compared with the same period last year." Zhang Xiang, an analyst at the automobile industry, said that under the factors such as the unexpected growth of new energy vehicles, the easing of the supply of raw materials still requires a certain period of time. Will
trigger an increase in the price of electric vehicles?
Analysis: It will not be transmitted to the whole vehicle consumer end for the time being, but at this stage, the model discounts for 4S stores may reduce
Under the pressure of tight supply of upstream raw materials and rising prices, news of the rising prices of power batteries frequently come. Whether it will trigger an increase in the price of electric vehicles has also become the focus of attention in the industry.
Previously, many models of Tesla have raised prices many times. Tesla CEO Musk once said that the price increase is due to the supply chain pressure and raw material costs of the entire industry; except for Tesla, no other car companies have adjusted the prices of new energy models, and there is no price increase trend in the domestic automobile sales market.
In fact, power batteries are regarded as the heart of new energy vehicles, and their costs account for 30%-40% of the cost of the entire vehicle. Therefore, some people in the industry believe that according to the supply and demand relationship of market, , cost pressure and other factors, terminal sales of electric vehicles are likely to increase prices.
But Cui Dongshu made it clear that the price increase of upstream raw materials and the price increase of power batteries will not be transmitted to the whole vehicle consumer end for the time being. Zhang Xiang also has the same view. He believes that the rise in battery costs will not lead to an increase in the sales price of the whole vehicle, but at this stage it is likely that the discount for model in 4S stores will be reduced; he explained, "Although the proportion of battery costs is high, the cost of the commercial sales link of electric vehicles is also very high, so the cost of the battery production cost in the overall link of the whole vehicle will be lowered; in addition, with the rapid popularization of new energy vehicles and the growth of production and sales, the new energy vehicle industry will gradually form an economies of scale, and the cost of the whole vehicle of new energy vehicles will be reduced, which can offset the pressure of increasing power battery costs to a certain extent." Goldman Sachs once predicted that the cost of battery will drop to a level lower than the cost of internal combustion engines by 2030.
In Wang Yao's view, the price increase of upstream materials has been quickly transmitted to the downstream market, but in fact, in order to reduce the impact on vehicle sales, the current cost of material price increase is more digested by the joint internal consumption of vehicle and power battery companies. The terminal vehicle sales market has not seen a significant price increase; but he also emphasized that if upstream materials continue to rise for a long time, the price of vehicle will also be raised, which is very unfavorable to industrial development.
Beijing News reporter Wang Linlin Editor Chen Li Proofreading Wang Xin
