Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. lost the first place in the face of "internal troubles and foreign invasion": Can the new battery turn the situation around?

As the core power component and key technology of new energy vehicles, power batteries have always been the place that new energy vehicle enterprises compete for. On the one hand, the driving battery directly determines the pure electric cruising range of the vehicle. On the other hand, the type, manufacturing process and manufacturing technology of the battery also determine the safety and maintenance rate of the vehicle. But it is not easy for car companies to produce drive batteries. Even a global electric vehicle manufacturer like Tesla is currently "outsourcing" the battery business to Panasonic. As a result, Panasonic, LG Chem, BYD, and Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd., which ranked first in the world in terms of shipments, have all entered the consumer's field of vision.

However, due to the epidemic and the rebound of other brands' shipments, Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. lost its first position this year. Faced with this situation, at the "2020 China Auto Forum", Meng Xiangfeng, assistant to the chairman of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd., said that he was developing a new type of nickel-free cobalt drive battery, which would be different from the existing NCA, NCM and LFP batteries and would not use expensive metals such as nickel or cobalt.

Preempt the layout of the next generation of "no rare metal batteries"

Cobalt has always been an important chemical element for driving batteries, which can ensure the layered structure of battery materials and improve the cycle and rate performance of materials. However, high cobalt content will reduce the actual capacity of the battery, and the global output of cobalt resources is low and unstable, and its price also greatly affects the production cost of the battery. Therefore, many power batteries began to reduce the proportion of cobalt used in production and laid out ternary batteries with high nickel and low cobalt. However, excessive nickel content will lead to mixed discharge of lithium and nickel in ternary materials, leading to lithium precipitation. Therefore, this time, Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. will lay out the next generation of "non-rare metal batteries" in one step, and further expand its own market on the basis of greatly reducing battery production costs and improving cruising range.

Although contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. has not disclosed the research and development process and cost details of the new battery, the new "rare metal-free battery" is definitely on the way. In addition, "Car Circle" also learned that Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. is still developing a separate technology to directly integrate batteries into the frame of electric vehicles to expand the driving range.

Take back the first throne with a new battery?

Prior to this, Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. ranked first in global battery shipments. Due to the epidemic situation, the stable performance of Panasonic and the innovation of LG's chemical performance, in the first quarter of this year, Panasonic and LG surpassed Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. in the global market share of power batteries, ranking first and second respectively, of which Panasonic accounted for 27.6% of the global market and LG accounted for 22.9% of the global battery market. Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. and BYD ranked third and sixth respectively. In addition, in the domestic market, although Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. is still significantly ahead of BYD, compared with the data of the same period last year, it decreased by 74.8% year-on-year.

Under such market performance, it is undoubtedly the best way out for contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. to reoccupy the market highland with a new generation of "non-rare metal batteries".

Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd.

Although "no rare metal battery" will be the next trump card of contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd., LG Chem and Panasonic are also intensively developing new drive batteries with low content or no nickel and cobalt. Tamura Jian, head of Panasonic's automotive battery department, said before: "We have greatly reduced the cobalt content in the battery, and the proportion of cobalt in the ternary battery has dropped to 3%. Now our goal is to achieve cobalt-free, and this technology is already under development.

In addition to traditional battery giants such as LG Chem and Panasonic, Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. will also face BYD, which has just launched blade batteries in the domestic market. Byd, whose sword is biased, raised the lithium iron phosphate battery to a new height, and had its own production line, and soon put the blade battery on the real car and went on the market. In addition to BYD, Tesla also began to build its own battery factory, and its first battery factory will be located in Berlin, Germany, in cooperation with Tesla's local super factory.

According to the top ten automobile circles in China, although the future "no rare metal battery" of Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. will once again lead a new round of development of driving batteries, it is still quite difficult to make Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. return to the first place while facing new and old rivals. In the future, the drive battery market will no longer be dominated by one or two companies, and the brands will be equally divided, and the product competition will be more intense.

This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.