The history of electric vehicles predates the most common diesel locomotives today. The Hungarian inventor and engineer Anyush Jedlik, the father of the DC motor, first experimented with the electromagnetic rotating mobile device in the laboratory in 1828. American Thomas Davenport built the first electric vehicle powered by a DC motor in 1834. In 1859, the French physicist and inventor Gaston Prandtl invented the rechargeable lead-acid battery. With the development of battery technology, electric vehicles were widely used in Europe and the United States in the second half of the 19th century. The vehicle market is divided into three parts by steam, electric and internal combustion engines.
Due to the development of Texas Petroleum in the United States and the improvement of internal combustion engine technology, lead-acid battery vehicles with weak cruising range gradually lost their advantages after 1920, and the vehicle market was gradually replaced by vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. People almost forget the existence of electric vehicles.
1. Preliminary Exploration of Lithium-ion Batteries
The development of electric vehicles completely stagnated after 1920, until June 1991, Japan's Sony launched the first commercial lithium-ion battery, setting off the first revolution in the battery industry; Very stable, lithium-ion batteries have rapidly revolutionized the face of consumer electronics and are widely used in the sales market.
This is a period of savage growth of lithium-ion batteries, a battery with higher energy density and good cycle performance that has led to a recovery in the electric vehicle industry. Coupled with problems such as the dwindling oil resources and atmospheric pollution, car manufacturers have started to study new products equipped with lithium batteries, and people have re-focused on electric vehicles.
In 1996, Nissan successfully developed the Prairie Joy EV, the world's first electric vehicle equipped with a cylindrical lithium-ion battery. The Arctic Observation Center of Japan's National Polar Research Institute used it as a support vehicle for 6 years in harsh climatic conditions. Demonstrated availability and durability of Li-ion batteries under extreme conditions.
Since then, lithium-ion battery vehicles have officially entered the stage.
2. The victory of ternary lithium
Despite the huge success of the Prairie Joy EV, Nissan still had no confidence in bringing it to the consumer market, and was limited to fleet sales, selling about 30 units to various entities since 1997. In the time since then, automakers seem to have fallen into silence, and no large-scale sales of electric vehicle products have appeared.
At the same time, the battery industry began to develop by leaps and bounds. In 1995, Wang Chuanfu established BYD Industrial Company in Longgang, Shenzhen, mainly to develop and produce batteries for power tools.
In 2003, BYD had grown into the world's second largest manufacturer of rechargeable batteries. At this time, Wang Chuanfu found that the battery industry could easily achieve the ceiling, so he decided to invest in an industry. "At that time, there were two options, one was semiconductors and the other was automobiles. But because there were only 2 billion on hand, it was impossible to invest in both. In the end, automobiles were chosen." He said.
So Wang Chuanfu acquired Qinchuan Automobile Co., Ltd. in one fell swoop and established BYD Auto Co., Ltd. cross-border automobile manufacturing. In the same year, Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpenning founded Tesla Motors, and they began to try the British Lotus sports car Based on the development of the first pure electric sports car Tesla Roadster.
Since the two founders of Tesla did not have the ability to independently develop and produce batteries, they could only go to the market to find suitable battery products for transformation. High and low cost 18650 cylindrical battery. In 2008, the Tesla Roadster came out, the first commercial vehicle to use a lithium-ion battery, and the first electric vehicle with a cruising range of more than 390 kilometers; its terrifying acceleration of 3.7 seconds attracted a large number of Silicon Valley upstarts, who did not hesitate to spend $110,000 's high price to pocket it.
Still, Tesla charges $10,000 for every Roadster it sells, making it too expensive.
In the Roadster, the battery management system alone is rumored to cost $20,000. The out-of-control costs severely limited Tesla’s development and brought complex financial problems. The two founders resigned one after another, and Tesla ushered in its fourth CEO, the soul, Elon Musk.
"The effort to change the industry is almost impossible. Without Martin's indispensable efforts, Tesla wouldn't be here today," Musk said. He also finally got his wish at the helm of Tesla and began to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.
In order to achieve the goal of "providing every ordinary consumer with a pure electric vehicle within the range of their consumption capacity", Musk urgently needs to find a stable and low-cost battery supplier and amortize the research and development costs of the vehicle through mass production. In the end, he set his sights on the 18650 cylindrical battery produced by Panasonic, which was evaluated by the Tesla team as "fully in line with the requirements"; at this time, Panasonic was in the quagmire of a huge loss of 4 billion US dollars due to the failure of betting on plasma TVs , the company also needs to recover from the expansion of new business. That year, the two sides started the research and development of power batteries.
In 2010, Panasonic bought a stake in Tesla for $30 million. The following year, the two parties signed their first cooperation agreement, stipulating that Panasonic would supply Tesla with 640 million 18650 batteries in the next four years. Two years later, the two parties renewed the contract to increase the number of cooperation to 1.8 billion, and Panasonic became Tesla's exclusive strategic supplier.
As of 2012, Tesla had sold more than 2,250 Roadsters in 31 countries. With the unveiling of the lower-priced Model S, Tesla has gradually gained a foothold in the auto industry. In the same year, CATL, which has just been established for two years, reached a strategic cooperation with BMW Group and began to develop power batteries for the Zino electric vehicle under BMW Brilliance.
3. Embrace Lithium Iron Phosphate (Lifepo4 Battery)
Tesla, which survived the U.S. financial crisis, achieved great success with its ternary material batteries with better energy density and the new Model S/X models, and then pulled down the price with the more efficient and faster 21700 lithium battery. The product pricing range, the launch of the popular Model 3 in the world, established Tesla's global benchmark for electric vehicles.
Compared with the 18650 battery, the 21700 battery cell capacity has increased by 35%, the energy density has increased by 20%, and the system price has dropped by about 9%, which undoubtedly lowers the production threshold of electric vehicles. The success of the combination of Tesla and Panasonic has dispelled the concerns of many car companies, and more and more brands have begun to join the ranks of electric vehicles. Taking advantage of the technological innovation policy of the new energy automobile industry, new power car brands such as Weilai and Ideal have been established one after another. .
In the following few years, the combination of hard-shell battery pack + ternary lithium material has always been a symbol of high-end electric vehicles, and CATL has become the world's largest power battery manufacturer by virtue of its excellent product strength. Although the lithium iron phosphate (Lifepo4 Battery) material has better thermal stability and safety, due to its low energy density and rapid power loss at low temperature,
Time came to 2019, the super factory settled in Shanghai, and Tesla began the localization process. In order to further reduce the price, the domestic standard version of Model 3 chooses to carry a square lithium iron phosphate battery (Lifepo4 Battery), which should be the first time that lithium iron phosphate batteries have entered the 300,000 yuan market. After several OTA upgrades to optimize the charging speed and discharge capacity, the lithium iron phosphate (Lifepo4 Battery) version of Model 3 began to be accepted by the market. In 2020, Tesla sold nearly 140,000 Model 3s in China, most of which They are all entry-level versions equipped with lithium iron phosphate batteries, and the stock price of supplier CATL BATTERY has also risen all the way, breaking through the 400 yuan mark.
With the evolution of the battery industry chain, the lithium iron phosphate battery (Lifepo4 Battery) has a battery life that can almost compete with the ternary battery. In addition, the new energy subsidies have begun to decline, and the price of raw materials has risen. Car companies with cost-effective lithium iron batteries have begun to actively develop and design models equipped with lithium iron phosphate batteries. Daimler, Volkswagen, and Ford have made it clear that they will launch Lithium Iron Phosphate (Lifepo4 Battery) models, and Tesla CEO Musk has announced that in the future, the standard battery life versions of Model 3 and Model Y worldwide will all be available. Use a lithium iron phosphate battery (Lifepo4 Battery) instead.
BYD, which once missed the dividend of ternary lithium battery because of betting on the lithium iron phosphate (Lifepo4 Battery) battery technology route, finally saw the dawn of hope. The gradual innovation of blade battery will become a sharp blade for counterattack. In April 2021, BYD announced that all its pure electric passenger models will be equipped with lithium iron phosphate (Lifepo4 Battery) batteries. Wang Chuanfu, president of BYD, is confident in the blade battery, saying it can "force the entire new energy vehicle industry to make changes."
According to the data of the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, from January to November 2021, the cumulative installed capacity of lithium iron phosphate batteries is 64.8 GWh, accounting for 50.5% of the total installed capacity, 1.2% higher than that of ternary lithium batteries. After 3 years, the lithium iron phosphate battery has fully surpassed the ternary battery and returned to the market center, but this time it has torn off the label of low-end cottage.
Fourth, the return of ternary lithium
At the 125th anniversary event of Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shen Nanpeng asked Zeng Yuqun, chairman of CATL, what proportion will ternary batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries account for in three or four years?
Zeng Yuqun did not give a specific value, but he said that with the increasing popularity of charging piles, the demand for cruising range will decrease in the future, the growth rate of lithium iron phosphate batteries will be very fast, and the proportion of ternary lithium batteries will gradually decrease. Some high-end cars that require long battery life will still need ternary lithium with high energy density.
Lithium iron phosphate (Lifepo4 Battery) is booming, which does not mean that ternary lithium batteries will be silent. Many practitioners said that there is no need to worry. Now this situation is only the result of market choice. No technology can always lead. Only tend to choose the lower cost, more cost-effective solutions. Although lithium iron phosphate batteries have been striving to penetrate to higher price points, for now, ternary lithium batteries still dominate the models with higher cruising range and higher-end positioning.
Just last month, Tesla’s official Twitter announced that the Fremont factory in California, USA, successfully rolled off the millionth 4680 cell, which is regarded as the most anticipated technological innovation in the field of ternary lithium batteries. In fact, as early as 2020, when Musk released this new technology on Tesla Battery Day, he whetted everyone’s appetite, and even some prospective car owners were willing to give up the car and wait for the new battery-equipped model to go on sale.
The 4680 cell refers to a cylindrical battery with a diameter of 46 mm and a height of 80 mm. It adopts laser-engraved electrodeless ear technology, which removes the main heating parts of the battery and reduces the internal resistance, making higher density cells possible. According to the performance planning and volume and weight conversion of Tesla's 4680 cells, compared with the 21700 cells on existing models, the mass-produced 4680 cells in the future can achieve a 12.39% increase in volumetric energy density and 18.67% in weight energy. Density increase. In defeating the most proud battery life of fuel vehicles, this kind of battery has been given high hopes.
Comparison of three specifications of batteries
Recently, Panasonic officially announced that it will build a new 4680 battery production facility at its factory in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, which will build two additional production lines and mass-produce 4680 batteries for electric vehicles in fiscal 2023.
At the same time, at the Tesla Gigafactory in Texas, the first Model Y with 4680 cells and structured battery packs (CTCs) have begun production and are expected to be delivered to consumers by the end of the first quarter.
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