If the LG Chem 4680 battery is mass-produced, does it mean that electric vehicles have truly entered a revolutionary period?

The first is some basic knowledge of batteries. Today’s lithium batteries generally include positive electrode materials, negative electrode materials, electrolytes, separators, and packaging, and positive electrode materials. Common ones include lithium iron phosphate and ternary lithium batteries. The ternary is divided into nickel and cobalt. There are two types of aluminum, nickel, cobalt, and manganese. Under nickel, cobalt and manganese, it is divided into NCM532, NCM622, NCM811. This is the mainstream classification. Others include lithium manganate, lithium titanate, lithium iron manganese phosphate (a variant of lithium iron phosphate), and sulfur (lithium sulfur Batteries are basically still in the laboratory), nickel-cobalt-manganese-aluminum (about to be industrialized on a large scale), lithium-rich manganese-based (capacity is higher than ternary, cycle life cannot be increased, laboratory research for many years), etc., anode materials, mainly It is graphite, including natural graphite, artificial graphite, and others, including soft carbon, hard carbon, etc., which is not the mainstream. Electrolytes are mainly divided into liquid electrolytes, solid electrolytes, liquid electrolytes, and the others are separators, copper foils, etc., because for a long time, the negative electrode material is basically graphite, the electrolyte, the separator has not changed much, so the positive electrode material determines the battery capacity . The battery classification is also basically divided according to the difference of the positive electrode material. Let me first talk about the general environment, which is the amount of resources. The proven lithium mines in the world are very abundant,

The first is some basic knowledge of batteries. Today’s lithium batteries generally include positive electrode materials, negative electrode materials, electrolytes, separators, and packaging, and positive electrode materials. Common ones include lithium iron phosphate and ternary lithium batteries. The ternary is divided into nickel and cobalt. There are two types of aluminum, nickel, cobalt, and manganese. Under nickel, cobalt and manganese, it is divided into NCM532, NCM622, NCM811. This is the mainstream classification. Others include lithium manganate, lithium titanate, lithium iron manganese phosphate (a variant of lithium iron phosphate), and sulfur (lithium sulfur Battery,

Most of the lithium in the world is located in this place, which is the lithium triangle of South America. According to the USGS US Geological Survey, as of 2020, the world's proven reserves of lithium have reached 86 million tons, of which about 60% are in the lithium triangle. Among them, Bolivia is 21 million tons, Argentina is 19 million tons, and Chile is 10 million tons. This is the proven reserves. Others, mainly China, the United States, Australia, each has 5 to 8 million tons. Of course, it is the report of the United States. China’s own report is somewhat different, but in general, the global reserves of lithium mines vary. With continued prospecting, hundreds of millions of tons are very likely. The reserves of nickel and cobalt. Nickel is an associated ore of copper and iron. The proven reserves of nickel are hundreds of millions of tons. Cobalt is very troublesome. The proved reserves of cobalt are only 7 million tons. Nickel is actually very common. In daily life, stainless steel is iron. Alloys with nickel, of course there are other elements. Cobalt is 7 million tons, 70% of which are in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Unlike many people think, the poorer countries will rush to sell mines to make money. In fact, the poorer countries have high supply risks, such as lithium. The supply is Chile and Australia (Chile’s per capita GDP is US$16,000 and Australia is US$60,000). Rich countries have a wide range of economic sources. Poor countries may count on this mine. The internal political struggle is very strong, the distribution of benefits is troublesome, and coups are frequent. Bolivia, which is sitting on the world's largest lithium salt lake in Uyuni, has changed its president because of how lithium mines are mined and how benefits are distributed! A typical ternary battery car, the hypothesis here refers to MODEL3, it needs 30 kg of nickel (maybe 35 kg, not important, but a lot of nickel), 6 kg of lithium, and 6 kg of cobalt, considering both lithium and nickel reserves It is hundreds of millions of tons and 7 million tons of cobalt, which can probably meet the demand of 1 billion cars. Here, we assume that a car has about 60 kWh of electricity. Here we can see the risk of cobalt, because according to developed countries In the case of 1,000 people, an average of 600 vehicles (refer to Western Europe, the Americas are higher). About 8 billion people around the world need 5 billion cars. Although the current global car ownership is about 2 billion, nothing can stop the progress of developing countries. Why can we say that the black uncle of Africa will not be able to drive a car in the future? All of the above are mines on land. One way out is the cobalt-rich crusts in the ocean. Many people should have heard of manganese nodules. I will not write about cobalt crusts in detail here. I will write in another article. There are tens of billions of tons of nickel and cobalt in the ocean. Finding a suitable mining method should be able to maintain the supply of battery materials forever (I always think this job is very suitable for Musk, but he did not do it). The supply risk of cobalt. The above is the problem of material supply. Today, the battery market, power batteries, truly large-scale, are left with two types, lithium iron phosphate and ternary batteries. The persistence of the lithium iron phosphate route is not only because The question of cheapness, but from the material strategy point of view, if there is no disruptive technological progress, then lithium iron phosphate is estimated to be used by the end of this century. Unless you find a cheap and practical way to fish for cobalt potatoes from the Pacific. Let’s talk about the blade battery first. BYD’s blade battery is essentially an innovation in the packaging of lithium iron phosphate batteries. The intuitive understanding is to make the battery very large. The internal reason is to improve the heat dissipation of the battery. The strength of the battery is very important for the packaging of the battery into a battery pack. Because the specific energy of a lithium iron phosphate battery is 170WH/kg, it is simpler that a 100 kg battery has 17 kWh of electricity, because of the excellent design of the blade battery. After being packaged into a battery pack, the specific energy is still 140WH/kg. Here, if you know how much electricity is in cars such as Han and BYD. The battery pack is multiple. Of course, there is also a very important difference is that lithium iron phosphate is resistant to high temperatures, and lithium iron phosphate can not catch fire at a high temperature of about 600 degrees, so BYD's battery can pass the puncture test, and even press it with a large truck. Security is still very strong.

This picture may be inaccurate (I found it on the Internet), but it can explain the problem. The battery is actually layered. The biggest advantage of this improvement is that the internal resistance of the battery is reduced, the resistance is smaller, and the charging and discharging speed is faster. Soon. Everyone who has been in junior high school knows that the square of current multiplied by resistance equals work. It is a very simple thing. Secondly, one improvement is that the graphite of the negative electrode is mixed with silicon. The specific capacity of silicon is ten times that of graphite. Graphite 360 and silicon 4680. I don’t write the unit here to avoid the difficulty of understanding for many people, so as long as a little bit of silicon is added, the capacity of the battery can be increased, but the main thing here is that this improvement is only the improvement of the negative electrode material, and the improvement of the whole battery is not so much. , This technology is the same for lithium iron phosphate and ternary batteries. Ternary batteries can use silicon anodes, and lithium iron phosphate can also be used. It is stated that the specific energy of BYD blades is 170WH/KG, but the domestic counterpart Guoxuan Hi-Tech has already produced 210WH/KG batteries. Soon you should see a silicon-doped negative electrode in BYD's second-generation blade battery. Make stronger blade batteries. Another improvement of the 4680 battery is doped with carbon nanotube conductive agent. Because graphite has poor conductivity, it supports 6C charging and discharging after doping with carbon nanotubes. It is not clear here. Doping with carbon nanotubes and graphene improves conductivity. , The industry is clear, the main problem is the price. A ton of graphite is 40,000 to 140,000. Graphene, carbon nano, hundreds of pieces per gram, the price is thousands of times more expensive than graphite. Here, graphene also refers to Multilayer graphene, similar to carbon nanotubes, is not the top product researched in the semiconductor industry. So whether this way can reduce the cost, or whether to see the effect without looking at the advertisement, has to wait for the actual product to come out. The data of the press conference is to increase the capacity by 5 times, and we need to correct it here. Many self-media wrote that the energy density is increased by 5 times. This is wrong. It means that a 4680 is equal to 5 2170. The reason is very simple. , There is no essential change in the positive and negative materials. How can it be improved so much, specifically, it has increased by 16%, and the cost has been reduced by 14%? The reason for cost reduction is simple. Modern industries are all assembly lines. Originally, they were built one at a time, but now they are built with five at a time. Of course, the efficiency is improved and the cost is reduced. Of course, this is the constant price of the positive and negative materials On the basis of. Seeing the recent doubling of nickel and cobalt prices, what is the effect of this price reduction, I have to say something else. As for the price increase of lithium, because ternary and lithium iron phosphate use lithium similarly, the impact on the two batteries is the same. In 2020, the cost of ternary battery is about 800 yuan per kilowatt-hour, and the cost of iron lithium It’s 600 yuan per kilowatt-hour, but many Tesla fans see Tesla’s process improvement, but the improvement from small iron-lithium to large blades is actually a process improvement. Every major manufacturer is working hard to reduce battery costs. Tesla It is reported that it has dropped by 16%. Do you know how much the cost of BYD has dropped in the CATL era? Anyway, BYD's blades and Ningde era prismatic batteries have a single capacity larger than 4680. . The specific cost situation will not be discussed in detail. The industry generally predicts that by 2025, the cost of iron-lithium can be reduced to 400 yuan per kilowatt-hour, and the cost of ternary yuan can be reduced to 500 yuan per kilowatt-hour. Therefore, it is estimated that within ten years, three yuan will cost It is unlikely that the cost will fall below the cost of lithium iron, especially considering the huge fluctuations in the prices of nickel and cobalt, which is why Tesla purchased a large number of lithium iron batteries from the Ningde era. In fact, there is a history in this aspect in China. For example, in the past few years, there were a lot of subsidies. Starting from 15 years, a car can subsidize about 100,000. Then, according to the annual decline of 20%, the subsidy for several years is an important subsidy condition. It is the energy density of the system. The higher the density, the more subsidy money, so everyone uses ternary batteries. Now that the subsidy is almost no, car companies switch to iron and lithium. Although the issue of safety has been discussed a lot, it can be said that the mature ternary battery and the iron-lithium battery are relatively safe, and the iron-lithium battery is relatively safer. Mainly, the difference is about 200 yuan per kilowatt-hour, and 60 to 70 kilowatt-hours of electricity. The cost difference should be about 8,000 to 13,000 on the whole vehicle. About LG's nickel-cobalt-manganese-aluminum. The nickel content has increased by 90%, as if the exact point is NI 89. It can be considered as the complementary advantages of nickel-cobalt-aluminum and nickel-cobalt-manganese materials. Very powerfully, the capacity has been increased. And the cycle life can be guaranteed about 2500 times, and even the high temperature resistance has been improved by more than ten degrees. The paper said that it was increased from 220 degrees to 230,240. I will post it directly for the discussion in the comment area. Talk about some pits in the battery circle, as gossip. The 9 series battery is of course better than the 8 series battery, but it is not as big as the improvement of the 8 series over the 5 series and 6 series. It is estimated that the full battery capacity has increased by about 10%, but the situation has changed now. On the one hand, the 8-series battery is good enough. The official homepage of the Ningde Times, the single unit did not write, the battery pack specific energy, the highest can achieve 216. So don’t worry. On the other hand, with the rapid development of battery scale and industrialization, positive and negative materials, separators, etc. are all supplied by several dozen listed companies in the upstream, and battery manufacturers themselves Purchase positive and negative materials. Large-scale industrialization, the 9 series still has certain risks. Despite the superior laboratory indicators, LG has always been radical. Back then, GM recalled hundreds of thousands of vehicles with soft cases. It is estimated that in the Ningde era, these domestic giants will first wait and see. To see how much costs can be reduced by the 9 Series, the industrial chain must be changed, both upstream and downstream. Prudence comes first. Including the previous period, the 811 battery often caught fire, the industry 811 was temporarily suspended, and the single crystal high voltage 532 was applied, and there were more thunders. It's all stable.