In recent years, my country's power lithium-ion battery industry has developed rapidly, mainly due to strong government support and guidance for the new energy vehicle industry. Driven by national energy conservation and environmental protection policies, sales of new energy vehicles have increased year by year, and as a key component of new energy vehicles, the market demand for lithium-ion batteries has naturally risen. High-energy-density, high-stability automotive-grade lithium-ion batteries have expanded the prospects of the electric vehicle industry and gained initial recognition from the government and the market.
Lithium-ion batteries, as a type of rechargeable battery, primarily function by the movement of lithium ions between the positive and negative electrodes. The upstream raw materials for the lithium-ion battery industry mainly include nickel, cobalt, manganese, lithium ore, and graphite ore, which form the electrolyte, positive and negative electrode materials, electrode substrates, and separators. The midstream involves assembling the separator, positive and negative electrode materials, electrolyte, and electrode substrate into battery cells, followed by manufacturing and packaging. The downstream focuses on application areas.
In fact, people are quite familiar with lithium-ion batteries, which are widely used in various portable electronic devices such as smartphones, laptops, and tablets. Broadly speaking, lithium-ion batteries can be divided into three categories: consumer batteries, power batteries, and energy storage batteries.
Specifically, lithium-ion batteries can be divided into lithium manganese oxide, lithium iron phosphate, lithium cobalt oxide, and nickel-cobalt-manganese lithium, among others. Many automakers now choose nickel-cobalt-manganese lithium, commonly known as ternary lithium-ion batteries, for their electric vehicles. Compared to other types of lithium-ion batteries, ternary lithium-ion batteries have higher energy density, allowing vehicles to travel further within the same volume, thus gaining popularity and recognition among consumers.
Meanwhile, almost all smartphones currently use lithium-ion batteries, which generate electricity by moving lithium ions between the positive and negative electrodes in an electrolyte solution required for a chemical reaction, thus supplying power to the phone. Due to their high charging and discharging efficiency and relatively thin and compact size, these lithium-ion batteries have gradually become the mainstream type of mobile phone battery.
In 2019, the cumulative installed capacity of lithium-ion batteries for new energy vehicles in my country reached 62.2 GWh, a year-on-year increase of 9.3%, showing rapid growth. Analysts point out that the market size of the lithium-ion battery industry will continue to expand in the future, and it is estimated that by 2025, the scale of my country's lithium-ion battery industry will exceed 600 billion yuan.
It is worth mentioning that with the development of intelligent manufacturing, lithium-ion batteries, as an emerging industry, are at a crucial turning point from immaturity to maturity. In the process of the lithium battery industry moving towards a high-quality development stage, the large-scale improvement of the industrial chain and intensified competition among enterprises are two obvious signs.
Currently, lithium-ion batteries have become the preferred technology for many applications, attracting significant attention from numerous market participants across the supply chain. Battery R&D labs, material suppliers, battery component developers and manufacturers, battery and battery pack manufacturers, and system integrators are all accelerating their efforts to achieve breakthroughs in key lithium battery materials and core technologies.
In addition to developing high-performance lithium-ion battery products, effective recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries is equally important. According to a report by the international market research firm Markets and Markets, the global lithium-ion battery recycling market was worth approximately $1.5 billion (about 10.5 billion yuan) in 2019, and is projected to grow to $12.2 billion (about 85.2 billion yuan) by 2025. Promoting the dismantling of lithium-ion battery components and the reuse of usable parts also helps improve resource utilization and reduce environmental pollution.
From early lead-acid batteries to nickel-metal hydride batteries favored by Japanese companies like Toyota, and then to the lithium-ion batteries used in the Tesla Roadster in 2008, traditional liquid lithium-ion batteries have dominated the power battery market for many years. In the future, industry users will further strengthen their demands for the energy density and safety of lithium-ion batteries, making ensuring the practicality and safety of lithium-ion batteries a major challenge for entrants into the market.
Currently, with declining costs, improved efficiency, and gradually increasing battery capacity, electric vehicles, which actively respond to the national call for energy conservation and emission reduction, are gradually becoming an important tool for people's daily commuting. And the practical application of various new modes of transportation also relies heavily on the battery, this small component.
