Everyone knows how important batteries are to pure electric vehicles. Everyone also knows that current pure electric vehicles use lithium batteries without exception. But what you may not know is that as early as a few years ago, the pure electric vehicle industry had a very fierce confrontation over the technical route of power batteries. On one side were lithium iron phosphate batteries backed by BYD and Mercedes-Benz, and on the other side was LG Chem. , Mitsubishi Chemical, Panasonic Battery, Samsung Chemical and other Japanese and Korean companies support ternary lithium batteries.
Later, lithium iron phosphate batteries (iron batteries for short) lost. The reason for the loss was simple: the energy density was too low. Therefore, although iron batteries are significantly safer than ternary lithium batteries, due to the disadvantage in energy density, iron batteries are only used on a small scale by BYD so far. Iron battery is a technology that BYD has been promoting for several years. In the end, even BYD itself began to despair.
But a recent piece of heavy news seems to have conveyed this news to us: Maybe BYD was right?
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Tesla and CATL are developing iron batteries!
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This news that shocked the entire pure electric vehicle industry, especially the power battery industry chain, is this: Tesla, the world’s largest pure electric vehicle company, is competing with the world’s largest Power battery manufacturer CATL is in close consultation and plans to equip all future Tesla domestically produced cars with cobalt-free batteries.
What does this cobalt-free battery and iron battery have to do with the ternary lithium battery? There are currently two mainstream lines of power battery solutions, one is ternary lithium battery and the other is lithium iron phosphate battery. Because of the advantage of energy density, ternary lithium batteries are currently used in a wider range of applications. In ternary lithium batteries, the lower the proportion of cobalt, the lower the cost of battery materials. Therefore, ternary lithium battery manufacturers are committed to reducing the cobalt content, but no matter how low it is, they still cannot completely achieve zero cobalt. Tesla suddenly announced that it will develop and apply cobalt-free batteries with CATL. What happened? It turns out the answer is lithium iron phosphate batteries.
At the 100-person meeting on electric vehicles held earlier, Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, mentioned that the current cost of power batteries for new energy vehicles is between 0.6 and 1.0 yuan/Wh, with the lower limit It is a relatively cheaper lithium iron phosphate battery, and the upper limit is the higher cost ternary lithium battery.
In fact, this has been Tesla’s long-standing goal. During Tesla’s earnings call last year, some analysts mentioned concerns about the cost and price changes of rare metals such as cobalt. Tesla said at the time that it could reduce the use of cobalt to zero, which would further reduce the cost of Tesla's new cars, lower their selling prices, and attract more consumers.
To put it simply, lithium iron phosphate battery is one of the cheapest power battery technology solutions at this stage. Everyone knows that the battery accounts for the largest proportion of the price of a pure electric vehicle. Once battery prices come down, the competitiveness of pure electric vehicles will only become higher. The speed of replacing fuel vehicles will only be faster.
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Why does Tesla suddenly no longer use power bank batteries?
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First of all, we need to explain the "power bank battery" in the subtitle. From its first car, the Roadster (a modified Lotus Elise) to its first mass-shipped car, the Model? S, and then to the Model? ?X uses 26650 batteries, but they are also batteries used in high-end power banks), that is, power bank batteries. This technology lags far behind other pure electric vehicle counterparts. Later, in the Model 3, Tesla suddenly figured it out and directly installed square batteries, which are the same type of specifications that WM Motor has already used on the EX5.
But whether it is a power bank battery or a square battery, their cost is not low. For a company like Tesla that relies on volume to increase sales and stock prices, since iron The battery has such a huge advantage in terms of cost, and it can also promote environmental protection in the product promotion, so it is naturally the best choice.
So this is normal. And what we must also see is Tesla’s leading role as the industry leader. In the future, more and more car companies will surely start to use iron batteries. Under the scale effect, the energy density problem of iron batteries can be easily solved. Therefore, we can almost see that future pure electric vehicles will begin to be equipped with iron batteries, vehicle prices will continue to drop, and the gap with fuel vehicles will continue to narrow. The day when pure electric vehicles can truly replace fuel vehicles in terms of product strength may not be too far away.
This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.