According to the latest forecast by the Credit Suisse research team, the global penetration rate of new energy vehicles will reach 73% in 2030, a significant increase from the previous forecast of 62%.
The global inflation situation is severe, and investors' concerns about inflation are also spreading in the new energy industry chain. Now, in addition to the recent popular nickel prices, the concerns of all walks of life include the rising lithium prices.
Recently, new energy companies represented by Tesla have started a new round of price hikes.
Tesla China took the lead in announcing a price increase on March 15, with the Model 3 and Y and other models raising prices by 14,000 yuan to 20,000 yuan.
Following this, BYD also announced that it will increase the price of new energy vehicles from 3,000 yuan to 6,000 yuan from March 16.
Since 2022, more than 20 new energy vehicle companies have announced price increases, with nearly 40 models increasing their prices.
At the 24th Credit Suisse Asia Investment Forum (AIC), Wang Bin, Co-Head of Credit Suisse Asia-Pacific Automotive Industry Research, said that it is expected that the short-term battery price increase will continue, or a further 20% price increase in the second quarter, and the price of the whole vehicle may also increase. Slight increase.
However, in the medium and long term, technological progress will still drive down costs. For example, NIO previously announced the official launch of a ternary iron lithium standard battery pack, which uses a combination of ternary lithium formula and lithium iron phosphate formula to reduce battery costs.
In addition, CTP (Cell-To-Pack, no module) technology and CTC battery system (CelltoChassis) also help reduce costs.
Long-term new energy vehicle penetration rate increases
The global penetration rate of new energy vehicles is accelerating.
According to the statistical analysis of Autohome, a total of 6,501,400 new energy vehicles will be sold worldwide in 2021, an increase of 108% over 2020, and the penetration rate will reach 10.2%.
The latest data released by the Passenger Federation in March showed that the wholesale sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 317,000 in February, a year-on-year increase of 189.1% and a month-on-month decrease of 24.1%, which was smaller than the previous year.
Affected by the price increase, orders for new energy passenger vehicles were weak in late January, but rebounded significantly in February, with retail sales reaching 272,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 180.5%.
The domestic retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles was 21.8% in February, an increase of 13 percentage points from the 8.1% penetration rate in February 2021.
The upstream price hike is fierce, but the latest research team of Credit Suisse predicts that the global penetration rate of new energy vehicles will reach 73% in 2030, a sharp increase from the previous forecast of 62%.
At the same time, the agency predicts that the global demand for electric vehicle batteries will also reach 280 million kilowatt-hours (TWh) in 2030, a significant increase from the previous forecast of 1.8TWh, which means that the global battery demand from 2021 to 2030 will increase by 28%. The compound annual growth rate has climbed, which is really amazing.
According to the reporter's recent interviews and investigations, due to the sharp rise in the price of raw materials such as lithium carbonate, the cost of power batteries, which account for the largest part of the cost of the whole vehicle, has increased sharply. Car companies, and car companies transmit the pressure to consumers.
At present, it is a critical period for downstream car companies to seize market share. Therefore, even if the competitive mid-stream and downstream companies raise prices, they are often "losing money and making a profit".
In addition to the surge in lithium prices, nickel prices have also received attention recently.
However, Wang Bin told reporters that nickel supply has been in a state of excess all the year round, and even if Russia's export volume is removed, it will still be in a relatively balanced state.
"Nickel sulfide is used in the production of battery negative electrodes, accounting for 6% to 7% of the battery cost. Therefore, the nickel price needs to soar a lot to lead to a little increase in the battery price. At present, it is not a big problem."
Wang Bin also believes that the technological progress in the past few years will also promote the rapid decline of battery costs, making new energy vehicles more popular. This trend will continue in the future, and the short-term price increase is still a small episode.
As far as technological innovation is concerned, he cited as an example that on September 23 last year, NIO announced the official launch of the ternary lithium iron standard battery pack. The battery pack is mixed with the ternary lithium formula and the lithium iron phosphate formula. Compared with the old 70 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery pack, not only the capacity has increased by 5kWh, but also the cycle life has been improved, and the mixed method also reduces the cost.
At present, lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and ternary lithium (NCM) batteries occupy an absolute advantage.
Due to the inherent physical and chemical properties of the two, both LFP and NCM have obvious long and short boards.
Among them, LFP has the advantages of relatively high safety and low cost, but its performance is poor in winter; on the contrary, although NCM has the advantages of high energy density and better low temperature performance in winter than LFP, its higher activity also brings higher security risk.
As lithium prices soar, LFP's market share may rise in the short term and become the first choice for more models.
Ruixin currently predicts that the LFP market share may reach 67% in 2025 (only 38% in 2020), and the global market share of LFP will also reach 15% in 2025, and only 0 in 2020.
In addition, technological innovations include changes in battery pack design.
Wang Bin said that CTP (no module) technology can achieve a 30% cost reduction, while the CTC battery system can reduce costs by 5% to 10%, and may be available in the second quarter of 2022.
At the same time, in order to increase market share, OEMs will not rule out price increases or discounts. Therefore, in the medium and long term, the judgment of the increase in the penetration rate of new energy vehicles will not change.
Institutions are optimistic about upstream lithium resources and midstream materials
For investment institutions, most institutions are still optimistic about the opportunities in the new energy industry chain in 2022, especially upstream lithium resources and midstream materials.
Gu Jiayuan, director of equity research and fund manager of Fullerton China, told the first financial reporter that looking forward to growth stock investment in 2022, many investors are worried that the penetration rate of new energy vehicles will slow down after the rapid increase to 20%, but After a wave of corrections, the previously overvalued new energy vehicle sector seems to be showing allocation value again.
"Last year's valuation was a bit exaggerated, because according to estimates, the compound growth rate of this track in the next five years is 30%, but it has fallen to today's position, and it has become more optimistic. Although the penetration rate of new energy vehicles has rapidly increased to 20% Later, some people began to worry about the slowdown in growth rate, but taking mobile phones as an example, when the penetration rate of smartphones was 20% to 50%, the growth rate of stock prices and performance was the fastest. The penetration rate of new energy vehicles is expected to increase to Higher levels, up to 100% cannot be ruled out."
At the same time, unlike the photovoltaic industry where the 2B side mainly looks at the rate of return, the biggest difference in the 2C side of the new energy vehicle industry chain is that it looks at the product, "Electric vehicles give people a better user experience, and better products will create demand. . Jobs said, 'We don't need to do market research, because people don't know what they want until they see something good'." Gu Jiayuan said.
Guo Chen, a fund manager of Shanghai Investment Morgan, told reporters that the ability of new energy vehicle companies to launch more and more consumer goods that consumers are willing to pay is one of the core factors driving the continuous increase in the penetration rate of the entire industry.
Rising crude oil prices may be a turning point to further promote the development of new energy.
Gu Jiayuan said that one of the most promising topics this year is the upstream lithium resources and midstream materials of new energy.
"There are concerns that the price of lithium is too expensive, but if you look at Albemarle, the world's largest supplier of lithium products, the average price of its lithium resources is not expensive, and some 200,000 or even 500,000 are more single Incidents or scattered orders are actually not so exaggerated. In addition, there will be no small opportunities for midstream materials this year, such as high-nickel ternary cathodes, etc. These materials are very important for electric vehicles and can increase the energy density of batteries ."
Author: Zhou Erin