Lithium battery demand growth in 2012

Lithium-ion batteries replace lead-acid and nickel-metal hydride batteries is an inevitable trend. As prices continue to decline, lithium-ion batteries are replacing lead-acid batteries and nickel-metal hydride batteries.

In the consumer electronics field, lithium-ion batteries almost completely replace the latter two. Smartphone battery demand is expected to grow at a rate of approximately 50% this year. The demand for lithium battery in the tablet PC market will increase by more than 230% this year, and will continue to grow rapidly next year.

The penetration rate in the field of power tools is about 70%, and the next areas of replacement are electric bicycle batteries, UPS, electric vehicles and energy storage in the grid.

Data show that the penetration rate of lithium battery in the electric bicycle battery market is about 2.5% in 2011. Under the background of sharp price drop and rectification of the lead-acid battery industry, the cost-performance advantage of lithium-ion batteries will become more obvious, and the penetration rate will increase rapidly. .

Specifically, in the first half of last year, the price of a group of bicycle lithium batteries was 1200 to 2,000 yuan, while the current lithium battery was only 800 to 1,200 yuan. The current price of bicycle lead-acid batteries ranges from 400 yuan to 600 yuan, and the price advantage continues to decline.

It is predicted that by 2015, the penetration rate of lithium-ion batteries in the field of electric bicycles will reach 20% to 30%, forming a market scale of 6 billion to 9 billion yuan, and the scale of the entire lithium-ion battery market will increase by more than 15%.

In addition, new UPS (uninterrupted power supply) products are beginning to use lithium more and more. Huawei and ZTE and other communications companies use base-station mobile power products to favor lithium. At present, the UPS lead-acid battery market is about 12 billion yuan. If Lithium's penetration rate reaches 30%, it will increase the lithium battery market by about 10%.

The key to the explosive growth opportunities in the lithium battery market is electric vehicles. For a 50kWh pure electric vehicle, the required battery is equivalent to approximately 10,000 iPhone batteries. If the sales volume of pure electric vehicles reaches 300,000 vehicles, the lithium battery market can double in size.

The large number of batteries required for energy storage plants is more sensitive to cost. In this subdivision, lithium-ion replacement of lead-acid and nickel-metal hydride batteries will take longer.

For raw materials, our data show that in 2008, the known global lithium resource reserves were 2866 million tons (equivalent to lithium metal), equivalent to 150 million tons of lithium carbonate, of which 20% were economically recoverable. Compared to the current global demand of about 100,000 tons of lithium carbonate, lithium reserves are sufficient.