For the past year, Volkswagen has been looking for potential locations for its gigabit electric vehicle battery factory in Eastern Europe, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. Among them, Czech officials said they had been working hard to get Volkswagen to build a factory in the country but later said they “could not wait any longer” and planned to provide this factory site to manufacturers from other countries.

Volkswagen Group has previously announced plans to open 6 Gigabit factories within this decade (2020-2030). The locations of three factories have been determined, respectively in Salzgitter, Germany, and Valencia, Spain. West Asia and St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. Obermu has previously claimed that the three plants could produce up to 200-gigawatt hours per year.

▲ Picture source: Volkswagen

Volkswagen Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz said orders for electric cars in Europe were down 50% compared to previous years, to 150,000 from 300,000 last year. Europe is currently Volkswagen’s largest market for electric vehicles, with local sales of Volkswagen’s pure electric models accounting for more than 60% of global sales. However, in China, the second largest market, Volkswagen is “facing risks.” Arno Antlitz bluntly said, “Volkswagen may lose market share in China before the launch of new cars in cooperation with Xpeng Motors.”

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In addition, with demand rising year-on-year, NDT’s capacity utilization rate has also risen compared with the first half of the year, coming in at around 70%. The quarter’s year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter performance was broadly in line with the revenue figures, with gross margins reaching 22.42%, the best level for a single quarter this year, according to NDT.

According to the report, NDT’s German plant is already in production, and construction of the first phase of its Hungarian plant has begun. The project is expected to be completed in about 2 years, with a planned capacity of 100GWh.

CATL said in the conference call, the company released the world’s first lithium iron phosphate 4C Shenxing super-charged battery, to achieve ultra-fast charging, long range and high safety at the same time, can realize “charging 10 minutes, a range of 400 kilometers”, will be the end of this year mass production, the first quarter of next year, loaded with cars. At present, a number of customers have expressed the intention to cooperate, Avita, Chery, etc. has officially announced that it will be equipped with a Shenxing super-charging battery.

CATL released on Friday the third quarter of 2023 financial data showing that the company’s Q3 net profit of RMB 10.428 billion, an increase of 10.66% year-on-year; operating income of RMB 105.431 billion, an increase of 8.28% year-on-year.

CATL 2023 first Q3 net profit of RMB 31.145 billion, an increase of 77.05% year-on-year; the first Q3 of the total operating income of RMB 294.68 billion, an increase of 40.1% year-on-year; basic earnings per share of RMB 7.0958, an increase of 70.97% year-on-year.

According to the data of SNE Research, in January-August 2023, CATL continued to be ranked first in the world in terms of global market share of power battery usage, and its overseas share grew steadily, of which the share of Europe reached 34.9%, up 8.1 percentage points year-on-year. This means that the recognition of CATL in the global mainstream automobile enterprises continues to improve, and further breakthroughs in overseas fixed points.

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Citing industry sources, The Elec said that Samsung SDI will produce 4680 batteries in Europe. To that end, the company has begun preparations for an expansion of its Goed plant in Hungary, which is targeted to begin construction in the second half of the year.

Foreign media discussed the 4680 battery project at the Nano Korea 2023 event. It is said to be the result of cooperation between Samsung and BMW, and production is planned for the third factory in Hungary.

Samsung SDI will reportedly develop and mass-produce the 4680 battery first, and then increase production of the 4695 and 46120 batteries. It is worth mentioning that the 46-series batteries made by Samsung SDI (46 means that the battery diameter is 46 millimeters) have three main versions — 4680, 4695, and 46120, while BMW requires 46120.

As for production capacity, it is officially expected to be around 10GWh. Unlike other batteries, the capacity of cylindrical batteries increases as the PPM speed increases.

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▲ Picture source Pexels

Hans Eric Melin, the founder of Circular Energy Storage (CES) Consulting, which tracks battery quantities and prices, said recently: “Manufacturers always assume that electric vehicle batteries will only last 8 to 10 years, and then the owner will replace them. But this assumption is not true. it is wrong.”

The current solution for secondary energy storage is simple and quite ideal: In theory, as the battery capacity of electric vehicles drops below 80%-85% after eight to ten years of use, they can be reused to power buildings. It can be connected to the household grid as an energy storage device to help users reduce peak electricity consumption.

Circular economy investors who believe in this scheme have already provided about US$1 billion (IT House note: currently about 7.2 billion yuan) in funding to more than 50 startups around the world. In addition, many automakers such as Mercedes-Benz and Nissan have established their own battery secondary utilization business.

The problem with this solution, however, isn’t that it’s technically infeasible, it’s that there is a lack of supply of old batteries, and the problem shows no signs of easing.

The average lifespan of fossil-fuel vehicles on U.S. roads is rising and is now a record 12.5 years, according to S&P, meaning many owners are hesitant to switch for a variety of reasons. By analogy, many electric car owners will still choose to continue driving even if the battery is “running out of oil and the lights are dry”.

“The 80% battery capacity threshold is just an arbitrary number that doesn’t reflect the actual usage of electric vehicles,” said Melin of CES. Formerly produced electric vehicles are still in use, and there is currently “virtually no market for secondary batteries”.

Still, the demand outlook for older batteries remains solid. The Paris-based International Energy Agency previously estimated that global grid storage battery capacity could rise to 680 GWh by 2030, from 16 GWh at the end of 2021. The UK alone spends around £1 billion a year (currently about 9.16 billion yuan) shutting down wind farms when the grid doesn’t need power – and there’s currently no way to store power due to battery shortages. But the UK also often has to buy electricity from Europe when electricity is in short supply.

US start-up Smartville has found a solution by buying batteries from electric vehicles that insurance companies scrap. Because insurers can’t assess the extent of damage to EV batteries, these batteries, which are often still at nearly 100 percent capacity, often end up with the car itself. The company’s CEO predicts that by 2026, more than 1 gigawatt-hour of recycled batteries will enter the U.S. market each year.

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A Seattle-based battery analysis company, Recurrent Motors Inc. recently released a large-scale real-world study that collected battery data from 15,000 different makes and models of electric vehicles across the United States. The data included charging status, battery remaining and estimated range. The company tested each vehicle’s battery multiple times a day through a communication system connected to the car.

The study found that most electric cars with more than 160,000 miles on them still had more than 90 percent of their original range remaining. This means that battery degradation is not significant. Of course, this varies from vehicle to vehicle, and Recurrent’s data is constantly being updated.

In an interview, the study’s author, Liz Najman, a researcher and marketing manager at Recurrent, said she was surprised by the reliability and durability of the batteries. “I was surprised how well the batteries held up and how few people needed to replace them,” She said.

The study also tracked two areas: the battery replacement rate, the percentage of car batteries that fail completely and need to be replaced, and the decline in range as batteries age. In the former case, only 1.5 percent or about 225 of the 15,000 vehicles in the study had their batteries replaced without an official recall. On the latter side, there was significant variation between makes and models, and even between the same models. For example, Recurrent found that Tesla’s Model S 100 kWh battery version lost an average of about 120 kilometers of range after 160,000 kilometers of driving. The Model S 70 and 85 kWh battery versions, on the other hand, lost almost no range after driving the same distance. The earlier BMW i3, both the 2014 and 2017 models, still had an average remaining battery capacity of about 80 percent of its original capacity after 160,000 kilometers. And the Hyundai Ioniq 5, which goes on sale in late 2021, loses about 25 kilometers of range after 32,000 kilometers, but then decays a little further by 130,000 kilometers.

“For electric cars produced from 2018 or 2019, I think it could be 15 to 20 years before they show significant battery degradation.” Najman said, “I guess I’m not the only one who thinks the batteries in modern electric cars should last longer than the cars themselves.”

The Recurrent’s latest study is broadly in line with a number of previous studies, including one published in 2020 by Canadian transportation technology company Geotab, which found that electric vehicle battery decay is fairly mild, with an average loss of 2.3% of capacity per year.

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Thomas Schmall said Volkswagen, Europe’s largest automaker, wants its battery unit, PowerCo, to become a global supplier of batteries for more than just its own needs. Powerco will first supply battery cells to Ford, which will build 1.2 million vehicles in Europe based on VW’s electric MEB platform.

In the long term, Schmall said, Volkswagen plans to build enough batteries to meet half of its global demand for batteries, with most of that capacity located in Europe and North America. “The bottleneck for raw materials is mining capacity — that’s why we need to invest directly in mining,” he said.

The automaker is working with Canadian mining companies on a supply agreement where it will build its first battery plant in North America.

Schmall declined to comment on other locations being considered or where or when Volkswagen might invest directly in mines, saying the company would not disclose that information until the market is more stable. There will be a handful of battery standards in the future,” he said. Through our large-scale and third-party sales business, we hope to be one of those standards.”

For automakers like VW, Tesla and Strandis seeking to make electric cars affordable, manufacturing or sourcing batteries at a reasonable cost is a key challenge.

Only Tesla has committed to investing more in battery production than Volkswagen, according to a Reuters analysis. Few automakers, however, have disclosed direct stakes in the mining industry, but many have struck deals with producers to source materials such as lithium, nickel and cobalt and pass them on to their battery suppliers.

PowerCo was founded last year with the goal of achieving annual sales of 20 billion euros (currently about RMB 146.4 billion) by 2030. That’s an ambitious roadmap for a division that doesn’t yet have mass production, with PowerCo starting production at its plant in Salzgitter, Germany, in 2025, in Valencia, Spain, in 2026 and in Ontario, Canada, in 2027.

That said, Schmall is confident that the automaker can expand quickly, which it will have to do if it wants to make an affordable electric vehicle where 40 percent of the cost comes from batteries.

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CATL said that the cooperation project between the company and Ford is in progress, and the cooperation is based on commercial considerations, with the aim of providing customers with competitive products. The company hopes to adopt a flexible and innovative business model to provide customers with more competitive products and services.

Ningde Times also said that the supply chain of sodium-ion batteries will be more mature in 2023, and both sodium-ion batteries and M3P are expected to be industrialized this year, depending on the progress of customers’ projects. In addition, the company’s Jiangxi lithium resources project is progressing as planned and is expected to achieve mass production this year. At the same time, the company now holds 100% of the shares of Snowwell.

The day before yesterday that industry sources close to Ningde Times revealed that the long-awaited Ningde Times “lithium mine rebate” policy is steadily advancing, and the signing of the agreement with the relevant OEMs has entered the practical stage and is expected to be reached by the end of March at the earliest. The core terms of the “lithium rebate” plan are: in the next three years, a part of the lithium carbonate price of power batteries to 200,000 / ton settlement. At the same time, the car companies that signed this cooperation need to commit about 80% of the battery procurement volume to Ningde Time and need a certain lock-in fee. It is reported that the “lithium rebate” plan will be open to a number of strategic customers such as Ideal Auto, Azera, Huawei, and Extreme Krypton Motors.

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Under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), cars can only receive thousands of dollars in subsidies if a certain percentage of the key minerals in the battery are mined or processed in the U.S. or a country with which the U.S. has a free trade agreement, or if they are recycled in North America.

Volkswagen confirmed last December that it was looking for a site within Canada to build a plant to ensure access to the key raw materials needed for batteries, six months after signing a memorandum of understanding with the Canadian government.

“With the decision to proceed with battery cell production in Canada and to build a Scout-branded plant in South Carolina, we are fast-tracking the execution of our North American strategy.” Volkswagen Chief Executive Oliver Blume said in a statement Monday.

The automaker said last week that its Scout brand will build a $2 billion (currently about RMB 13.88 billion) manufacturing plant near Columbia, S.C., for trucks and SUVs, with production scheduled to begin in 2026.

Volkswagen has long said it is working to build regional supply chains in Europe, North America and China for electric vehicle production, given high transportation and logistics costs, supply chain risks and geopolitical tensions. The company said last week that the IRA incentivized the company’s decision to prioritize investment in North America, adding that plans for a battery plant in Europe are still in the works, but waiting to see if the IRA spurs better incentives in Europe.

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The company’s high-security semi-solid batteries have an energy density of 360Wh/kg, a pack capacity of 160KWh and a range of over 1000km.

When it comes to the impact of the falling price of lithium carbonate, Guoxuan Hi-Tech pointed out that the lower purchase price of lithium carbonate and the falling price of raw materials have brought about a reduction in product costs and an increase in the level of sales gross margin, which is beneficial to the company’s product profits.

Guoxuan High-tech said that the company has sufficient handheld orders, production, and sales, with the new production capacity in the mass production phase, the scale of production capacity continues to improve, and the rapid growth of the scale of shipments. Along with the continuous improvement of the company’s product power, the continuous optimization of customer structure, and the continuous improvement of the layout of the whole industrial chain, the company’s operation is steadily improving, and the company is confident about future development.

In addition, Guoxuan Hi-Tech said that the company has obtained the official mass production point of VW’s standard battery cells, and the relevant products will be used in the customer’s largest new energy platform, supporting VW’s next-generation mass production new energy models, which are expected to be installed in the first half of 2024.

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As a Korean automaker and member of the Hyundai Motor Group, Kia is moving toward zero emissions and carbon neutrality throughout its business, fully embracing electrification. In addition, Kia and Hyundai Motor Group have invested in new technologies such as robotics and autonomous driving to drive sustainable transportation forward.

As electric vehicles become more popular, a major hurdle to overcome is electric vehicle battery recycling. To address this issue, major manufacturers such as CATL and recycling experts such as Redwood Materials have been helping to reduce and reuse precious materials around the world.

In Europe, encore DB has been working with a number of companies to source used batteries and give them a second life as energy storage solutions. Its latest partner is now Kia, whose electric car batteries have been used to help power a miniature smart grid.

Kia announced details of its new partnership with encore DB in a press release today, explaining how its electric vehicle batteries will be removed and repurposed for a second life cycle. Under the new agreement, Kia Europe becomes the first mobility solutions provider to formally partner with encore DB with the goal of expanding the reuse of batteries throughout Europe.

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