At this year's Shanghai International Auto Show, environmental protection and intelligence have become a highlight. New energy vehicles have not only become the hotly discussed objects of major auto manufacturers, but also represent a trend in the development of the entire automotive industry.
Statistics show that the United States, the largest oil consumer, consumed 385 million gallons of oil in 2015, while approximately 45% of oil and 90% of gasoline are consumed by light vehicles, such as private cars, small trucks, and public transportation. It is not difficult to see that cars are the biggest consumers of daily energy consumption. Today, with limited energy and serious pollution, environmental travel has become a consensus.
In 2016, my country’s new energy vehicle market has witnessed a remarkable increase. In just one year, the sales of new energy vehicles exceeded 500,000, which accounted for 1.8% of vehicle sales. The growth rate exceeded 50% year-on-year, and the number of new energy vehicles was close to 1 million. . my country's annual sales of new energy vehicles accounted for more than 40% of the world's total. The second-ranked United States has annual sales of 160,000 vehicles, and new energy vehicles accounted for about 0.9%. There is no doubt that my country has become the largest market for new energy vehicles.
In the second largest market, the United States, government policies are restricting the demand for new energy vehicles. Although the new energy vehicle industry is now showing a bright future, more and more auto giants are increasing their investment in new energy vehicles, and the price of batteries is also falling, but gasoline is still cheap, and many states are also Reducing policy subsidies that support new energy vehicles will greatly reduce the attractiveness of electric vehicles.
Contrary to the United States, many emerging markets such as my country provide a lot of support for new energy vehicles, which also makes the United States lose its advantage in this new contest.
The needs of Chinese consumers are very realistic, and they have a very clear positioning of the use of new energy vehicles in life. KPMG’s survey data show that most consumers will only drive electric cars in daily commuting usage scenarios, and 70% of the survey respondents said they need to drive an average of 40 kilometers during the working day.
Many people believe that electric cars are more economical and environmentally friendly than traditional cars that use internal combustion engines. Government subsidies are also an important consideration for consumers when buying private cars, especially in large cities with large populations and it is difficult to obtain car license plates. However, many potential electric vehicle users believe that lower maintenance costs and environmental protection values are more important than preferential policies such as free license plates.
However, worries about new energy vehicles still exist in the past decade. New energy vehicle users and potential users all say that the battery technology of electric vehicles is an important concern for them. Whether it is battery life, charging speed, or the distribution of charging piles, they are all their considerations. Most new energy vehicle users say that they usually charge themselves at home or at work.
More than 75% of the survey respondents mentioned that they have an expected range of 350 kilometers for new energy vehicles. In their view, this can meet their daily transportation needs. In terms of charging time, 53% of new energy vehicle users said they can currently accept about four hours of charging time, while 73% of consumers who are still waiting can accept four hours of charging time.
In fact, new energy vehicles do not lack better battery technology, but there is no better battery product for a long time.
We have better battery technology, but there is still no better battery
Last year, Alan Williams, the head of the Advanced Energy Research Institute of the U.S. Energy Department, told the Guardian, “We have made breakthroughs in battery technology.” However, until now, the truly efficient and low-cost New batteries have not yet appeared on the market, and the prices of high-end electric car models are still not close to the people.
In fact, there are several start-up companies that are close to developing more economical, safe, stable and energy-density energy storage devices. The cost of storing energy in these devices can be as low as $100 per kilowatt-hour.
Such low energy storage costs can better help the operation of the 24-hour new energy power system, so that solar or wind power plants can generate and store energy at the maximum efficiency, which means that the price of new energy vehicles will further drop.
But the paradox is that these batteries have not been commercialized, and can't keep up with the rhythm of our new energy demand. Even Tesla founder Elon Musk has to admit that the current electric vehicle industry is stuck in the slow process of improving lithium-ion battery technology, and there has been no qualitative improvement.
Many researchers believe that there will be new chemical and physical forms of energy storage in the future, which will surpass lithium-ion batteries, which dominate the consumer electronics and electric vehicle markets, as well as grid-scale energy storage applications for a decade.
QichaoHu, the founder of SolidEnergySystems, has developed a lithium metal battery (using a metal anode, and traditional batteries use graphite materials), which can greatly increase the energy storage density. This nearly ten-year development process also showed a major obstacle to the development of battery technology. "For battery products, the process from concept to product is very difficult," QichaoHu explained. "Because even if you change a small area, you have to change everything else."
In addition, energy storage research has a very complicated problem: there are too many related technologies, from foam batteries, to fluid batteries, and even other chemical forms of batteries, all have their own unique advantages, and there is nothing to say. A technology receives more investment.
A study by LuxResearch analyzed more than US$4 billion in investment in energy storage, and the results showed that next-generation battery projects, such as the existence of so-called surpassing lithium-ion batteries, had an average investment of US$40 million in the past 8 years. Tesla's investment in the Gigafactory, a lithium-ion battery factory, reached $5 billion. It is difficult to keep up with this funding gap.
"Developing a new battery and building a corresponding small-scale battery production line will cost 500 million US dollars," said Gold Side, a professor of materials science at the University of California, Pericles, and the team led by Gold Side Responsible for researching the chemical technology of new batteries. He pointed out that car manufacturers have to go through several years of testing before making any battery purchasing decisions. After all, when the company only has 5 million US dollars a year in capital, it is not a casual investment of 5 million US dollars into production.
Even if battery manufacturers develop new battery technologies and bring them to the market, they will find it difficult to find buyers and put them into production.
Both LeydenEnergy and A123Systems have developed new battery technologies with great potential, but both failed due to shortage of funds and reduced demand. Two other startups, Seeo and Sakti3, were also acquired at prices lower than investors' early expectations before achieving mass production and profitability.
At the same time, the battery giants, Samsung, LG and Panasonic, want to make improvements on existing products more than to develop new battery technology. At the same time, start-up companies working on new battery technology have to face a reality that they don’t want to mention: the lithium-ion battery developed in the 1970s is still getting better.
Bigger, better, cheaper?
In the above, we mentioned that some start-up companies have developed new battery technologies. One of the major new battery technologies was first announced in February 2012 at an announcement conference in Washington, DC, USA.
Researchers, companies and investors all came to listen to celebrities such as Bill Gates and Bill Clinton explain the importance of new energy technology. At the same time, this announcement is also an opportunity for advanced energy research institutions to obtain investment.
The Advanced Energy Research Institute of the U.S. Department of Energy was founded in 2009 and has been tasked with searching for potentially revolutionary research. Alan Mazonda, the head of the Advanced Energy Research Institute, could not wait to announce a major development at the time: a new battery developed by the start-up company Envia with an energy storage capacity twice as high as conventional batteries.
According to Alan Mazonda, the cost of a battery that can complete the journey from Washington to New York with a range of mileage will be reduced from $30,000 to $15,000. This also means that the price of electric vehicles will be more affordable.
In just a few months, General Motors Corporation of the United States won this technology, signed an agreement to support the further development of the technology, and obtained the right to use all battery products. This transaction should have allowed Envia to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, but Envia soon received complaints from General Motors engineers. These engineers complained that they could not replicate the results of Envia. One year after the announcement of the new technology, the agreement became yellow. Envia's impressive battery was born before he died.
Envia's example vividly shows us why new battery technology is so difficult to realize, and the difficulties that start-up companies have experienced after acquiring technology that can change the world. In the past ten years, we have seen too many breakthrough developments, but a large part of these progress comes from the accumulation of traditional large companies.
Envia has developed a new type of lithium-ion battery. Lithium-ion batteries were first invented in the late 1970s and commercialized in the 1990s. These lithium-ion batteries have two electrodes, and lithium ions shuttle between the two electrodes, and an electric current occurs. Lithium-ion batteries are very light and powerful, making portable electronic devices a reality. But lithium-ion batteries have only recently been used in electric vehicles.
General Motors’ electric car EV-1 used cheap lead-acid batteries in the 1990s. This battery weighs 600kg each and has a range of only 55-95 miles on a full charge.
Tesla's first lithium-ion battery electric car launched in 2008 can run 250 miles, nearly three times the range of EV-1. But expensive lithium-ion batteries also make Tesla electric cars priced as high as $100,000. In order to reduce costs, many electric vehicle models of Nissan and General Motors of the United States use smaller battery packs and can only run less than 100 miles.
The development of better battery technology is difficult. Even the use of a new electrode will bring about unpredictable problems, and these problems will take years of testing to be discovered. In other words, a change will move the whole body. In order to brighten the eyes of advanced energy research institutions and venture capitalists, Envia immediately applied two experimental electrode materials.
In 2006, Envia obtained a promising material technology from the Argonne National Laboratory in the United States. But then there was a problem. The battery voltage developed with this technology changes impermanently, making it impossible to apply in actual scenarios. Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory investigated the problems that emerged, but were unable to find the exact answer. They do not have enough knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of this material, nor can they find out the cause of the problem, let alone solve the problem.
Envia is facing another challenge. Researchers seem to have solved the problem of easy decomposition of silicon electrodes, but its solution is very unrealistic in actual production.
When Envia first announced its new technology in 2012, the startup seemed to have found a way to make these experimental materials work. Envia has developed a silicon electrode with a lower production cost, and has found a way to stabilize the voltage of the new material at the Argonne National Laboratory through continuous testing.
Sukit Kumar, the co-founder of Envia, believes that the solution is a composite coating. In fact, he does not know why this composite coating can successfully stabilize the voltage. But as a start-up company with limited funds, Envia does not have the corresponding equipment to study the entire stabilization process and understand the operating mechanism behind it.
However, when Envia's development results cannot be replicated, understanding this process becomes crucial. As mentioned earlier, a slight change in the battery will have a significant impact on the overall performance, and Envia understands the fact that only a composite coating supplied by its supplier can stabilize its battery.
There is a strong comparison between Envia's story and the real major development in the field of new energy vehicle batteries. The real major progress of new energy vehicle batteries has reduced the price of batteries and improved their performance. This success does not come from breakthroughs in battery technology, but from the cooperation between Tesla and battery supply giant Panasonic.
Beginning in 2008, Tesla’s battery cost has been reduced to about half of what it was before, while its battery performance has increased by 60%. Tesla did not try to directly change the chemical technology or materials of lithium-ion batteries, but sought to improve engineering design and production technology. At the same time, Tesla and Panasonic have cooperated to improve the materials of existing batteries in accordance with the needs of their different models.
Thanks to this, Tesla has also fulfilled its promise by launching the Model 3 with a range of 200 miles and a price set at 35,000 US dollars before 2017. Prior to this, General Motors of the United States had hoped to achieve similar performance through Envia's technology.
Car companies will sell tens of thousands of electric vehicles a year, and the improvement of battery performance is undoubtedly a boon for low-end models. However, the 200-mile cruising range is still not as good as the traditional gasoline car's 350-mile or more mileage, and the price of 35,000 US dollars is still much higher than the average price of 15,000 US dollars for ordinary small gasoline vehicles.
Obviously, the new energy vehicle battery industry is not a field that is friendly to start-up companies. AndyChu, a former executive of the startup A123Systems that went bankrupt in 2012, believes that the battery industry is dominated by big companies: "Energy storage is a game for giants. After all, a small battery has too many possibilities for error. I certainly hope to pursue it. Innovative start-ups can succeed, but looking at the development in the past few years, the situation is not good."
We previously reported exclusively that Panasonic will also build a power lithium-ion battery plant in Jiangsu, my country, and invest hundreds of millions of dollars to bring Tesla’s “special battery” to my country. This will undoubtedly benefit the entire new energy vehicle market in my country. The status quo has brought huge changes, which also makes us look forward to whether there will be new energy automobile giants like Tesla in our country.
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