The battery problem is not solved

On December 6, Li Middle East, who was on a business trip to Beijing to catch up with the haze weather that had lasted for several days, couldn't help complaining: “Why can't oil dig?”

Li's logic is not difficult to understand: If oil is used up, new energy vehicles can develop very quickly. If Beijing's cars do not emit exhaust gas, the air quality will naturally increase a lot.

As chairman of Henan Huanyu Group, he is not selfless. Universal's electric vehicle battery capacity is 400,000 amp/day, which means it can meet the demand for 8 pure electric buses or 20 electric cars. But because there is not such a big market at all, all of Universal's production capacity is idle.

"I am really confused. The demand for battery applications for new energy vehicles and grid energy storage is very large, but why do we not make money?" in the 21st Century Low Carbon China organized by 21st Century Business Herald Low Carbon Weekly. At the Development Summit (hereinafter referred to as the "low-carbon summit"), Li Middle East raised his own doubts.

The fact that new energy vehicles and grid energy storage markets are not truly sized is one of the main reasons. But Li Middle East also does not deny that the other market has always been, but only by their own battery industry constraints. Because, at least for now, the cost of the most widely accepted lithium-ion battery is still too high.

"The composition of lithium iron phosphate battery is composed of four elements, lithium, iron, phosphorus, oxygen, which in addition to the relative storage of lithium is less, the other several are fine, if the mass production, lithium iron phosphate should not be like now Your batteries will not be ridiculously expensive," said Li Middle East. "Now there is no good price without a quantity."

This is like being trapped in a "chicken or egg first" problem. Is it because battery manufacturers must first expand the market at a low price, or can they achieve price reduction after mass production?

Consistency problems remain unsolved. "The development of lithium-ion batteries has benefited largely from the development of electric vehicles. At present, lithium battery products are relatively mature, but its battery management system is a difficult one." National standard for lithium-ion battery systems Qian Liangguo, deputy director of the drafting working group, said.

The general manager of Beijing Jinghua Gaoke Electronic Technology Co., Ltd., who specializes in the research and development of battery management systems, said in an interview with reporters that the battery packs with multiple batteries connected in parallel can generally be considered as having a battery life if only one battery is broken. The end must be repaired or replaced.

It is understood that the current market of lithium battery products, the life of single battery manufacturers can do experiments can be done more than 2000 charge and discharge, but after 100 times in parallel, the use of up to 200 times.

At present, the role of China's battery management system is only the collection of information, to avoid the battery charge or excessive discharge. However, the actual situation is indeed that even if each cell can be selected as excellent or excellent, there will still be performance differences among these cells.

"Inevitably there will be backward batteries, which is unavoidable." Li Middle East said that the difference in performance determines that some individuals in the battery pack will not be able to "eat enough" for a long period of time.

Even in the ideal state where the performance of each single cell is absolutely consistent, it will be discretely opened during the application. "The location of the single cells in the whole group is different. There is no edge in the heat dissipation in the middle of the battery. The temperature of the battery with poor heat dissipation will be high. This will accelerate the decay of the performance for a long time," Li Middle East explained.

In theory, this is not an unsolved problem. It is possible to manually measure whether the battery is discrete or not. However, this method consumes energy and time, and the cost is relatively high. Another more convenient way is to let the electronic equipment automatically perform dynamic management through the battery management system (BMS). During charging and discharging, the voltage and capacity of each battery are the closest to each other, so that the battery pack life is approaching single The battery life.

"This circuit solution is not very complicated." Li Middle East told this reporter, "But companies that do BMS now do not make money because people are not interested in doing it well."

It is understood that the technical personnel of battery companies are mainly concentrated in the field of electrochemistry and research what materials they use to make better batteries. The research of BMS is in circuit control lines, so it is generally outsourced to professional companies.

“But now the battery of the electric car has not yet been used in large quantities, the battery is small in the production process, and the continuous production time is not long, and there is no need to produce more.” Li Middle East said, “In this case, the battery The level of production technology is not high, and no one is willing to spend a lot of money to buy a BMS system."

Industrialization also needs to be announced in the “Automobile Industry Adjustment and Revitalization Plan” during the financial crisis of 2009 in the 3 to 5 years. It has been explicitly mentioned that the production and sales of electric vehicles have formed scale. The existing production capacity will be transformed to produce new energy vehicle production capacity of 500,000 pure electric vehicles, rechargeable hybrid vehicles and ordinary hybrid vehicles. The sales of new energy vehicles will account for about 5% of the total passenger car sales. The major passenger car manufacturers should have certified new energy automotive products.

However, over the past three years, the development of new energy vehicles is still "small thunder and rain," and it is far from the original target.

“So far, 500,000 vehicles and 5% of the two targets have not been reached.” An industry source said that the current annual passenger car production is around 14 million vehicles, and the sales volume of new energy vehicles is 5%. Millions, and now there are only about 10,000 vehicles a year, a far cry from each other. The car enterprise's new energy vehicle production capacity is still far below the scale of 500,000 vehicles.

"Overall, the new energy passenger vehicle industry chain will still be the stage for R&D, road test, and accumulation of empirical data within 3-5 years, and the industrialization of electric vehicles will take time." This person in the industry expects.

“Everybody invariably waits for the government's tilt in support and consumption of emerging industry policies, and promotes the effective operation of the entire industry chain. In fact, the government is also watching the reaction of the market and watching the actions of companies.” At the low-carbon summit Wu Jianzhong, chairman of Zhongtai Holding Group stated.

He said that as a breakthrough in the marketization and industrialization of new energy vehicles, Zotye Automotive's creative proposal puts a car to run first, allowing a group of people to use it first and make a city perfect. "We have made some breakthroughs in the respect of the first electric vehicle of Zotye, Hangzhou consumers of willingness to consume new energy vehicles, and the combination of new energy vehicle industry development and quality city strategy in Hangzhou."

However, according to Li Middle East, if there is no government subsidy, the electric vehicle market will inevitably be difficult to scale up. "And the existing subsidy policy is still not enough."

According to the data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in January this year, in 2010, the demonstration and promotion cities for energy-saving and new energy vehicles in the public service sector were expanded from 13 cities in 2009 to 25 cities, and 6 cities started private subsidies for the purchase of new energy vehicles.

“The pilots for private car subsidies are still too small, so the industry will be more difficult to develop.” Li Middle East said.

The commercialization model has been controversial and the aforementioned industry insiders believe that “the development of electric vehicles is still a hindrance to battery development, because the development of battery technology is far behind the requirements of electric vehicles.”

He said that the automotive industry hopes that the battery's energy density can achieve 1-2 kilograms of electricity, but the current market's battery products, the mass production of lithium iron phosphate battery products can also be safe, about 7.9 kilograms to survive for a time Electricity.

Li Middle East believes that lithium iron phosphate batteries theoretically speaking, the limit of energy density is about 5 kilograms of stored electricity. "And this does, to some extent, constrain the development of electric vehicles."

It is understood that if the electric vehicle is required to run for 200 kilometers on one charge, the weight of the battery will exceed 300 kilograms. "This weight person is certainly not moving, so it is impossible to take home to charge." Li Middle said.

Different from the high penetration rate of garages in developed countries, many Chinese car owners do not even have fixed parking spaces. The problem of charging is relatively difficult to solve. Although lithium-ion batteries can also be charged quickly, excessively fast charging will shorten battery life.

It is also based on this, the national grid proposed "mainly for power exchange, plug charge supplemented, centralized charging, unified delivery" model. The State Grid hopes that these links will be linked by them. The car companies will only produce bare cars and the batteries will be provided by the State Grid. "The State Grid collected the batteries and charged them at the low-lying electricity consumption of the latter part of the night. After that, they re-concentrated their electricity," said Li Middle East.

But for such a model, car prices do not buy it. "This will inevitably reduce our profits. If we finally implement the power exchange model, will there be a price monopoly?" said a domestic car maker.

He disclosed that the "Energy-saving and New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan" has not been issued, because the National Power Grid and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology have different opinions on the technical route. "The State Grid represents the power system, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology represents the car companies, and it is a game of interests."

"The battery replacement mode is discussed in more and more countries around the world, but each company has its own model, so I think it is unlikely that there will be a battery strategy for all models." Ford Motor Company Group Vice President, Asia Pacific and Han Ruiqi, president of the Africa Region, told this reporter.

In response, Wu Jianzhong said, “Our theory of non-controversy is not about the uncertainty of high-speed and low-speed, charging and exchange, remote and short-range, car purchase and car rental. Zotye Motors can do what it can, let the market. Choose."