The continued rise in the price of lithium is really stirring people's minds. But helpless, who let lithium in the current stage of the most mature technology line of new energy vehicles - lithium battery has such a strong dominant position?

As we all know, traditional lithium batteries include lithium iron phosphate, ternary system nickel-cobalt-aluminum and nickel-cobalt-manganese, lithium manganate, lithium cobalt acid and so on, and all the above kinds of batteries must use lithium element.

And even new battery such as graphene (using graphene as a mixed material to modification of electrode materials, lithium is must use to element), or in the future to realize mass production of solid-state batteries (solid-state batteries are existing liquid electrolyte of lithium battery replacement for solid electrolyte, cathode will also to the theoretical capacity is higher, low oxidation reduction potential of lithium metal development), They all depend on lithium.

This means that, unlike cobalt and nickel, lithium can "ignore" the market share fluctuations of mainstream batteries within the lithium-ion battery system (such as ternary batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries). It is also "immune" to recent innovations in battery technology such as cobalt-free batteries and ultra-high nickel batteries. Moreover, it can "cross generations", and still plays an important role in the next generation battery technology such as solid state battery. It has become the "first brother" of battery raw materials.

With the continuous development of the new energy industry, with no one can shake the position, the demand for lithium materials is becoming more vigorous.

Take lithium carbonate, an important raw material for lithium iron phosphate batteries. According to the relevant institutions, with the continuous rapid growth of the number of new energy vehicles in the next 5 years, it is expected that the global penetration rate of new energy vehicles is expected to reach 20% in 2025, and its sales will exceed 18 million. Considering other lithium carbonate application scenarios such as energy storage, 3C consumer electronics and traditional industries, global lithium carbonate demand is expected to reach 1.24 million tons in 2025, 3.6 times that of 2020.

At one end, there is a large demand for lithium materials, but from the perspective of its supply at the other end, the mines of lithium mining enterprises such as Altura and Wodgina are still closed, while the global traditional lithium giants such as Alpor, livent and SQM have clear capacity expansion plans, but the release of new capacity is still some time away. It is because of the lagging supply of lithium materials that the institute estimates that by 2025, the global lithium carbonate gap will exceed 160,000 tons, accounting for 13% of the shortfall.

It is not difficult to imagine that the price of lithium materials may continue to rise in the future, or even hit a new high, due to the imbalance between supply and demand. In this context, power battery manufacturers, who are planning ambitious expansion of battery capacity, are bound to make ensuring a stable supply of lithium material a priority.