Since 1990, China's LiFePO4 battery industry from the initial imitation and borrowing to gradually independent innovation, from the initial can only provide consumer LiFePO4 battery to the late leap to become a major supplier of power batteries, China's role in the LiFePO4 battery industry has become more and more important.
After more than a few decades of development, China's LiFePO4 battery production plants have grown from a few at the beginning to hundreds today, completing a quantitative breakthrough that has made China the world's largest producer and consumer of LiFePO4 batteries. With the dual promotion of policies and subsidies, China's LiFePO4 battery industry has given birth to many globally competitive companies.
The LiFePO4 battery is a rechargeable battery that works mainly by moving LiFePO4 between the positive and negative electrodes. During the charging and discharging process, Li+ is embedded and de-embedded back and forth between the two electrodes: when charging the battery, Li+ is de-embedded from the positive electrode and embedded in the negative electrode through the electrolyte, and the negative electrode is in a lithium-rich state; the opposite is true when discharging.
Batteries that generally use materials containing lithium as electrodes. It is a representative of modern high-performance batteries LiFePO4 batteries can be divided into the following categories according to different classification methods.
1) Industry chain panorama
The upstream raw materials of LiFePO4 battery mainly include nickel cobalt manganese, lithium ore and graphite ore, thus constituting positive and negative electrode materials, electrolyte, electrode substrate, diaphragm, etc.; the midstream is to assemble positive and negative electrode materials, electrolyte, electrode substrate, diaphragm into electric cores after manufacturing and packaging; the downstream is the application area of lithium battery.
2) China's lithium battery supply side: production is growing
In recent years, the steady increase in demand for LiFePO4 batteries for 3C products, as well as with the gradual expansion of the market scale of new energy vehicles and the expansion of demand for energy storage batteries, China's LiFePO4 battery production scale has expanded year by year. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the output of LiFePO4 batteries in China has been increasing from 2015 to 2019. in 2019, the output of LiFePO4 batteries in China was 15.722 billion units. By 2020, China's LiFePO4 battery production reached 18.845 billion, an increase of 19.87% year-on-year.
2, China's lithium battery industry market competition pattern analysis
--Subdivided product competition pattern
LiFePO4 battery can be divided according to electrolyte material, battery shape, external packaging materials, positive/negative materials and performance purposes, which is currently the most important is to use the positive material as the basis for the division of lithium battery products, because the positive material is the source of lithium ions in the battery, its performance is directly related to the performance of the battery, is the basis of LiFePO4 electric energy density, is the most critical functional material in LiFePO4 battery. LiFePO4 batteries are classified by cathode materials, mainly ternary cathode materials, lithium iron phosphate, lithium cobaltate and lithium manganate, and negative materials are generally natural graphite and artificial graphite.
In 2020, China's cathode material shipments 510,000 tons, an increase of 27%. From the structure of cathode material product shipments, the proportion of ternary materials and lithium cobaltate materials in the field of cathode materials declined slightly in 2018-2020, with 46% and 16% of shipments respectively in 2020, and the proportion of lithium iron phosphate rose from 21.24% to 25%.
3, China's lithium battery industry development trend and prospects analysis
--Trend analysis: lithium, energy-saving and high-speed
Lithium, energy saving and high speed will be the future development trend of lithium batteries. As an important part of the new energy sector, the lithium battery industry is developing rapidly and has become a new focus of investment in the manufacturing sector, and lithium battery companies have increased the construction of new factories in the hope of increasing production capacity and winning with the scale effect. Lithium manufacturing energy-saving and high-speed has become the new industrial trend.
2) Development prospect analysis: good industry prospects
With the expansion of China's new energy vehicle market, the demand for power lithium batteries will have a significant increase, while the rapid development of mobile phones, electric vehicles, electric tools, digital cameras and other industries, the demand for lithium batteries will continue to grow. In addition, due to the innovation of lithium battery manufacturers in technology, people's demand for lithium batteries will continue to grow, and the development prospects of the lithium battery industry are good, and the prospect is expected that by 2026 the market size of China's lithium battery industry will exceed 260 billion yuan.
