Lead: According to incomplete statistics, almost all electric vehicle brands, including Tesla, BYD, Weilai, Euler, Wuling Hongguang MINI EV, etc., have announced price increase plans of different magnitudes. Among them, Tesla has risen for three consecutive days in eight days, with the largest increase of up to 20,000 yuan.
The reason for the price increase is mainly due to the increase in the price of raw materials.
”Affected by the adjustment of national policies and the continuous increase in the prices of raw materials for batteries and chips, the cost of various models of Chery New Energy has continued to rise,” Chery said.
”Affected by many factors such as rising raw material prices upstream and tight supply chain supply, Nezha will adjust the prices of models on sale,” Nezha said.
”Affected by the continued sharp rise in raw material prices, BYD will adjust the official guide prices of related new energy models such as Dynasty.com and Ocean.com,” BYD said.
Judging from the reasons for the price increase announced by everyone, “the price of raw materials continues to rise sharply” is the main reason. The raw materials mentioned here mainly refer to lithium carbonate. According to CCTV news, Liu Erlong, executive deputy general manager of a new energy materials company in Jiangxi, said: “The price of (lithium carbonate) was basically maintained at about 50,000 yuan per ton, but after more than a year, it has now risen to 500,000 yuan. yuan per ton.”
According to public information, in the early years of the development of electric vehicles, lithium batteries once accounted for about 50% of the cost of electric vehicles, of which lithium carbonate accounted for 50% of the raw material cost of lithium batteries. Lithium carbonate accounts for 5% to 7.5% of the cost of pure electric vehicles. Such a crazy price increase for such a key material is very detrimental to the promotion of electric vehicles.
According to calculations, a lithium iron phosphate battery car with a power of 60kWh needs about 30kg of lithium carbonate. A ternary lithium battery car with a power of 51.75kWh requires about 65.57kg of nickel and 4.8kg of cobalt. Among them, nickel and cobalt are rare metals, and their reserves in crustal resources are not high, and they are expensive.
At the Yabuli China Entrepreneurs Forum in 2021, BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu once expressed his concerns about the “ternary lithium battery”: the ternary battery uses a lot of cobalt and nickel, and China has no cobalt and little nickel, and China cannot get oil from oil. The card neck has been transformed into a card neck of cobalt and nickel, and the batteries used on a large scale cannot rely on rare metals.
In fact, as mentioned above, not only the “ternary material” of ternary lithium batteries is becoming an obstacle to the development of electric vehicles – this is also the reason why many manufacturers are exploring “cobalt-free batteries” and other innovative battery technologies, even if It is the lithium (lithium iron phosphate battery) that Wang Chuanfu said with “more abundant reserves”, and it is also experiencing the impact of the sharp rise in the price of its raw materials such as lithium carbonate.
According to public data, China currently relies on imports for 80% of its lithium resources. As of 2020, my country’s lithium resources are 5.1 million tons, accounting for 5.94% of the world’s total resources. Bolivia, Argentina and Chile in South America accounted for nearly 60%.
Wang Chuanfu, also the chairman of BYD, once used three 70% to describe why he wants to develop electric vehicles: the dependence on foreign oil exceeds 70%, and more than 70% of the oil must enter China from the South China Sea (the “South China Sea Crisis” in 2016) China’s decision-makers feel the insecurity of oil transportation channels), and more than 70% of the oil is consumed by the transportation industry. Today, the situation for lithium resources does not seem optimistic either.
According to CCTV news reports, after visiting a number of car companies, we learned that this round of price increases in February ranged from 1,000 yuan to as many as 10,000 yuan. Since March, nearly 20 new energy vehicle companies have announced price increases, involving nearly 40 models.
So, with the rapid popularization of electric vehicles, will their prices continue to rise due to various material problems such as lithium resources? Electric vehicles will help the country reduce its dependence on “petrodollars”, but will “lithium resources” What about becoming another uncontrollable factor that gets stuck?
Post time: Apr-22-2022