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The history of electric vehicles predates the most common diesel locomotives today. The Hungarian inventor and engineer Anusz Jedlik, the father of the DC motor, first tested an electromagnetic rotating motion device in the laboratory in 1828. American Thomas Davenport built the first electric car driven by a DC motor in 1834. In 1859, French physicist and inventor Gaston Prandte invented the rechargeable lead-acid battery, with the development of battery technology, electric vehicles in the second half of the 19th century in Europe and the United States has been more widely used, forming a vehicle market with steam, electric and internal combustion engines.

Due to the development of Texas oil and the improvement of internal combustion engine technology, lead-acid battery cars with weak driving range gradually lost their advantages after 1920, and the vehicle market was gradually replaced by internal combustion engine driven cars, and people almost forgot the existence of electric cars.

01. Explore lithium-ion batteries

After 1920, the development of electric vehicles completely stalled, until June 1991, Japan's SONY company launched the first commercial lithium-ion battery, which set off the first revolution in the battery industry; Due to the large unit density capacity and very good stability in work, lithium-ion batteries have rapidly revolutionized the face of consumer electronics and are widely used in the sales market.

At this time, the brutal growth of lithium batteries, which have higher energy density and good cycle performance, prompted the electric vehicle industry to recover. Coupled with the decreasing oil resources, air pollution and other problems, car manufacturers have begun to study new products equipped with lithium batteries, and people have renewed attention to electric vehicles.

Prairie Joy EV is in the Arctic

In 1996, Nissan successfully developed the Prairie Joy EV, the world's first electric vehicle equipped with cylindrical lithium-ion batteries. The Arctic Observation Center of the National Polar Research Institute of Japan used it as a support vehicle in harsh weather conditions for six years. Demonstrated the usability and durability of lithium-ion batteries under extreme conditions.

Since then, lithium-ion battery cars have officially entered the stage.

02 ternary lithium victory

Despite the Prairie Joy EV's success, Nissan was not confident enough to put it on the consumer market and was limited to fleet sales, selling around 30 units to various entities since 1997. In the time since then, automakers seem to have fallen silent, and no large-scale electric car products have appeared.

At the same time, the battery industry began to develop rapidly, in 1995, Wang Chuanfu founded BYD Industrial company in Longgang, Shenzhen, mainly to develop and produce batteries for power tools.

In 2003, BYD had grown to become the world's second-largest maker of rechargeable batteries, when Wang Chuanfu found that the battery industry was easy to achieve the ceiling, so he decided to invest in an industry. "There were two options, one was semiconductors and the other was cars. But with only $2 billion on hand, we can't invest in both. I chose the car." 'he said.

So Wang Chuanfu bought Qinchuan Automobile Co., LTD., established BYD Auto Co., Ltd. crossover car manufacturing, the same year, Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpenning founded Tesla Motors, they began to try to develop the first pure electric sports car Tesla Roadster based on the British Lotus sports car.

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, and after a long screening, they finally chose the 18650 cylinder battery that has been mass-produced, with high energy density and low cost. In 2008, the Tesla Roadster was launched, the first commercial vehicle to use lithium-ion batteries, and the first electric vehicle to have a range of more than 390 kilometers. The 3.7-second terror acceleration capability has attracted a large number of Silicon Valley upstarts, who are willing to spend $110,000 to pocket it.

Roadster in the Global Showcase (2010)

Still, Tesla was paying $10,000 for every Roadster sold, which was too expensive.

In the Roadster, the battery management system alone is rumored to cost $20,000. Runaway costs severely limited the development of Tesla, but also brought complex financial problems, the two founders have resigned, Tesla ushered in the fourth CEO - the soul, Elon Musk.

"Efforts to change the industry are almost impossible. Without Martin's indispensable efforts, Tesla would not be here today, "Musk said. He also finally took 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 ability", Musk urgently needs to find a stable and low-cost battery supplier, and spread the research and development cost of the vehicle through mass production. Finally, he locked his eyes on the 18650 cylinder battery produced by Panasonic, and the evaluation of Tesla's internal team is "fully in line with the requirements"; At the time, Panasonic was Mired in a $4 billion loss on a failed bet on plasma televisions and needed to recover with the expansion of new businesses. That year, the two sides began the research and development of power batteries.

In 2010, Panasonic bought a stake in Tesla for $30 million. The following year, the two sides signed the first cooperation agreement, agreeing that in the next four years, Panasonic will supply Tesla with 640 million 18650 batteries. Two years later, the two parties renewed the contract, increasing 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 is gaining a foothold in the auto industry. In the same year, Ningde Times, which had just been established for two years, reached a strategic cooperation with BMW Group and began to develop power batteries for BMW Brilliance's Zinuo electric vehicles.

03. Embrace lithium iron phosphate

Tesla, through the United States financial crisis, with better energy density terpolymer battery and the new Model S/X Model has achieved great success, and then through the more efficient and faster 21700 lithium battery to pull down the product pricing range, launched the hot global Model 3, established Tesla's global electric vehicle benchmark.

Compared with the 18650 battery, the 21700 battery unit capacity increased by 35%, the energy density increased by 20%, and the system price decreased by about 9%, which undoubtedly lowered 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. Riding on the east wind of the technological innovation policy of the new energy automobile industry, Weilai, Ideal and other new force car brands have been established, Ningde era has also stood on this tuyere, and has put more energy on the product polishing of three yuan as positive electrode materials.

In the years since, the combination of hard shell battery pack + ternary lithium material has always been a symbol of high-end electric vehicles, and Ningde Era has become the world's first power battery manufacturer with excellent product strength. Although the lithium iron phosphate material is better and safer in thermal stability, it can only be used in some inexpensive models due to its low energy density and fast power loss at low temperature, and even once became a tool for car companies to defraud new energy subsidies.

Time came in 2019, the Gigafactory settled in Shanghai, and Tesla began the process of localization. In order to further reduce the price, the domestic standard version Model 3 chooses to carry square lithium iron phosphate batteries, 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 Model 3 began to be accepted by the market, Tesla sold nearly 140,000 Model 3 vehicles in China in 2020, most of which are equipped with lithium iron phosphate battery entry version, supplier Ningde Times stock price also rose all the way, breaking the 400 yuan mark.

Power battery pack diagram

With the evolution of the battery industry chain, lithium iron phosphate batteries have the endurance capacity that can almost compete with three-way batteries, coupled with the decline of new energy subsidies, rising raw material prices and other factors, recognizing the cost-effective advantages of lithium iron phosphate batteries, car companies began to take the initiative to 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 battery models, and Tesla CEO Musk announced that the future standard life version of Model 3 and Model Y around the world will all use lithium iron phosphate batteries.

Byd, which had missed the ternary lithium battery dividend due to betting on the lithium iron phosphate battery technology route, finally saw the dawn of hope, and the gradual innovation of blade batteries will become a sharp edge of the counterattack. In April 2021, BYD announced that all its pure electric passenger models will be equipped with lithium iron phosphate blade batteries. Byd President Wang Chuanfu is confident about 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 64.8GWh, accounting for 50.5% of the total installed capacity, which is 1.2% higher than that of terene lithium batteries. After 3 years, the lithium iron phosphate battery has fully surpassed the ternary battery and returned to the center of the market, but this time it has torn off the low-end copycat label.

04. Return of ternary lithium

At the 125th anniversary of the founding of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shen Nanpeng asked Zeng Yuqun, chairman of Ningde Times: in three or four years, what proportion will ternary batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries take up?

Zeng Yuqun did not give specific values, but he said that with the increasing popularity of charging pile, the future range demand will be reduced, the growth rate of lithium iron phosphate batteries will be very fast, the proportion of ternary lithium batteries will gradually reduce, and some high-end cars that need long life will still need high energy density ternary lithium, "we basically can not be partial, the whole industry chain is done."

Lithium iron phosphate, does not mean that ternary lithium battery will be silent, a number of practitioners said do not worry, now this situation is just the result of market choice, no technology can always lead, enterprises will only tend to choose lower cost, more cost-effective solutions. Although lithium iron phosphate batteries have been trying to penetrate to higher prices, but for now, terpolymer lithium batteries are still in a higher range, positioning more high-end models occupy a dominant position.

Just last month, Tesla's official Twitter announced that the Fremont factory in California successfully rolled off the 1,000th 4680 battery 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 hung everyone's appetite, and even some would-be owners were willing to give up the car to wait for the model with the new battery to be listed.

The 4680 cell refers to a cylindrical battery with a diameter of 46 mm and a height of 80 mm, which uses the non-electrode ear technology of laser engraving to remove the main heating components of the battery and reduce the internal resistance, making higher density cells possible. According to the performance planning and volume and weight conversion of the Tesla 4680 battery cell, compared with the 21700 battery carried by the existing model, the future mass-produced 4680 battery can achieve 12.39% volume energy density increase and 18.67% weight energy density increase. This battery cell is expected to beat the most proud endurance of fuel vehicles.

Three specifications of cell comparison

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 batch of Model Y using 4680 batteries and structured battery packs (CTC) has begun production and is expected to be delivered to consumers by the end of the first quarter.

peroration

When the 4680 cylinder battery gradually mature, with CTP, CTC and other technologies, the unit cost of ternary lithium battery will be further reduced, by then whether ternary lithium battery will return to the peak, or will be replaced by a new technical route such as sodium ion batteries? Let time tell the answer.

References:

[1] HUANG Yan-Yu. A brief history of lithium battery development [J]. Physics,2007,36(08):643-651.

[2] Ye Lingzhen. Lithium iron phosphate returns to C position How will the competitive pattern of future power batteries evolve? [EB/OL]. Securities Times.2021.

[3] LIU Yakun. The legendary TESLA ROADSTER[J]. World Automobile,2011(4):58-63.

[4] Chen Fuye. Visit the headquarters of Ningde Times: "Richest man" Zeng Yuqun and his trillion battery empire [EB/OL]. Prism · Tencent News.2021.