SK Innovation, one of the South Korean lithium battery giants, said recently that it has commercialized the world's first NCM9 battery with a nickel content of 90%. Ford's F-150 electric pickup truck, which Ford plans to release in 2023, is expected to carry the battery to the market.
According to SK Innovation, the NCM9 battery refers to a lithium battery with nickel, cobalt, and manganese as the cathode material. The content of the three elements is 90%, 5%, and 5%, respectively. Research data shows that, generally speaking, the higher the nickel content in the battery, the greater the energy density of the battery, but too high nickel content will cause the stability of the battery to decrease, and cobalt mainly plays a role in stabilizing the structure in the ternary structure.
For this reason, even if the price of cobalt has become an important factor restricting battery cost reduction, so far, ternary batteries still mainly adopt NCA and NCM811 solutions.
The NCM9 battery developed by SK Innovation this time has improved the diaphragm technology to enhance battery stability. While increasing the nickel content to 90%, it also reduces the cobalt content to 5%, thereby increasing the range of electric vehicles. The increase to 700 kilometers reduces the charging time and more importantly, greatly reduces the cost.
At present, SK Innovation's second US factory broke ground last month, and the factory will be dedicated to the production of high-nickel NCM batteries. Its first US plant is used to produce NCM811 batteries and supply 200,000 electric vehicles from Volkswagen. Both factories will be built before 2023. By then, SK Innovation's annual production capacity in the United States alone will reach 21.5GWh, and globally it will reach 71GWh.
It is worth mentioning that LG Chem, which has just ranked first in the world in terms of installed lithium battery capacity in the first half of the year, announced last week that its NCMA high-nickel battery mass production plan jointly developed with General Motors is expected to advance to next year; in addition, Musk has recently been in the The second quarter earnings call said: “If you mine nickel efficiently in an environmentally friendly way, Tesla will provide you with a huge contract for a long period of time,” once again emphasized the importance of nickel for power batteries.
The data shows that starting from 2018, the penetration rate of high nickel has continued to increase. Gaogong's lithium battery is expected to account for 26.29% of the domestic high-nickel NCM811 and NCA market applications in 2020, corresponding to the demand for cathode materials of about 70,000 tons, which will account for 2025. It is expected to exceed 60%, corresponding to nearly 400,000 tons of cathode materials.
Caitong Securities analyst Li Shuaihua pointed out in a research report on July 23 that Tesla and domestic mainstream battery manufacturers are promoting the development and application of high nickel battery materials. High nickel cathode materials will be the major trend in the development of power batteries in the future, and predicted The demand for nickel in power batteries will increase from the current 40,000 tons to 800,000 tons in 2030, with an average annual compound growth rate of 35%.