Recently, with the successful completion of its business combination with Ivanhoe Capital Acquisition, SES, a developer and manufacturer of lithium metal batteries, announced that its Class A common shares and warrants were listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Start trading under the symbols "SES" and "SES WS".
The prospectus shows that SES introduced many investors before going public.
Specifically, in the list of SES investors, financial investment institutions include: Vertex Investment and Temasek, the parent company of Vertex Investment; automobile manufacturers include: Geely Holding Group, General Motors, Honda Motor, Hyundai Motor, Kia Corporation, SAIC Motor, Foxconn, etc.; at the same time, it also includes industrial capital such as SK Group and Tianqi Lithium Industry.
On February 7, Tianqi Lithium Industry announced that as of now, the company holds 27.7679 million shares of SES. The merger of the business areas of SES and Ivanhoe will create better conditions for SES to implement its longer-term strategic plan in the future, thereby further accelerating the commercialization process of lithium metal batteries.
Previously, in November 2021, SES released the Apollo lithium metal battery with a capacity of 107Ah. At the same time, the company announced that it is building a lithium metal battery super factory in Jiading, Shanghai, with a total area of ??30,000 square meters and is scheduled to be completed in 2023. After completion, the production capacity will reach 1GWh.
At the 10th Global New Energy Vehicle Conference, Xiang Yanhuo, President of the Passenger Vehicle Solutions Department of CATL China, once said, “After nearly 10 years of research, we believe that the use of lithium metal All-solid-state metal batteries as negative electrode materials are the optimal development direction for solid-state batteries. This technology can essentially improve the safety and high energy density of batteries, but there are still some key technical and process issues that require industry collaboration. . ”
The biggest difference between hybrid lithium metal batteries and lithium-ion batteries lies in the negative electrode material. Among them, the negative electrode of lithium-ion batteries is mainly graphite and silicon, while the negative electrode of lithium metal batteries is lithium metal.
According to reports, SES’s lithium metal batteries use high-energy-density lithium metal anodes, protective anode coatings, and patented high-concentration lithium salt electrolytes.
Soochow Securities research shows that the production process of SES batteries is more than 60% similar to that of lithium-ion batteries. The material difference lies in the electrolyte and negative electrode. The production process of hybrid lithium metal batteries is more than 60% the same as that of lithium-ion batteries. From the material system point of view, the difference between the two lies in the electrolyte and lithium metal anode. The electrolyte uses a high-concentration solvent salt electrolyte, and the efficiency increases from 5% to more than 95%. Other materials are the same as lithium-ion batteries.
CITIC Research said that SES’s Apollo lithium metal battery uses a composite polymer coating, but it is not an all-solid-state battery and does not affect the use of separators. There are many difficulties in mass production of all-solid-state batteries, and there are still many problems that need to be solved, such as interface conductivity and battery consistency.
According to Cao Guangping, an independent researcher on new energy and intelligent connected vehicles, "Hybrid lithium metal batteries are hybrid solid-state lithium-ion batteries. This type of high energy density battery is a development trend, especially as a power battery. The weight is very light and is easy to be accepted by the electric vehicle industry. ”
Oriental Fortune Securities Research believes that all-solid-state batteries are currently in the state of laboratory research, and mass production and commercialization still face many difficulties. Semi-solid-state batteries are a transitional solution to solid-state batteries. The battery capacity density has been greatly improved. It is compatible with existing electrolyte battery process equipment and materials and can achieve lower-cost mass production. It is one of the current research directions and has the possibility of rapid implementation. .
In addition to SES, many companies have made frequent moves on semi-solid-state batteries and revealed relevant plans. Taken together, semi-solid-state batteries are expected to accelerate vehicle installation in 2022.
Among them, on January 22, the first batch of Dongfeng E70 equipped with Ganfeng hybrid solid-liquid lithium-ion battery was delivered in Xinyu, Jiangxi; on December 10, 2021, it held a test run ceremony in Xinyu, Jiangxi.
On January 14, Funeng Technology stated on the investor interaction platform that the company’s semi-solid-state battery samples were sent to OEM customers and received good feedback.
The products produced at the Zhenjiang plant are mainly supplied to Mercedes-Benz, and the first-phase production line can be adapted to produce future 330Wh/Kg products after slight adjustments. In addition, it said that the company will build a similar 285Wh/Kg production line in the future, which will shorten the time from the beginning of capacity ramping to the target value by at least 30%.
Li Yongwei, deputy general manager of Beijing Weilan New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., said in an interview with the media, “We are advancing the research and development and engineering of higher energy density solid-liquid hybrid batteries as planned, and it is expected to be launched in late 2022. Batch verification will be provided to customers in half a year.”
In November 2021, Li Zhen, chairman of Guoxuan Hi-Tech, said, “The company has achieved a cruising range of over 1,000km for domestic high-end pure electric semi-solid-state batteries. Its first-generation model has doubled.”
According to Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a professor at Tsinghua University, and the director of the State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy Conservation, “all solid-state batteries must be industrialized and integrated. It will still take about ten years to have an important impact on the market structure, and existing lithium battery technologies, including liquid batteries and semi-solid batteries, will still dominate before 2030."