In line with the global initiative to reduce energy consumption and carbon emission, leading countries have set not only carbon emission limits but also timelines to ban production and sales of gasoline cars.
According to the statistics from automobile associations around the world, a total of 6.58 million EVs were sold worldwide in 2021, growing 101.3% from the prior year. The volume not only wowed the market but also led to surging battery installations as well as tight supply and soaring prices of battery materials.
DIGITIMES Research expects EV sales to come close to 30 million units in 2025 and the total battery capacity installed for EVs to approach 1,700GWh, at 5.7 times of the 2021 volume. Battery materials will be in huge demand.
The costs of major battery components – cathode material, anode material, electrolytic solution and separator – are on the rise along with soaring battery demand. Among them, the prices of lithium salts (lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide) are showing the most significant increases as they are used in cathode material, representing the largest share of battery cost, and electrolytic solution.
Chart 3: Average capacity of batteries equipped on EVs, 2018-2025 (KWh)
Table 1: BEV production volumes from 1GWh battery capacity (units)
Table 2: Battery capacity needed for making 20,000 BEVs (GWh)
Table 3: Strong EV demand's influence on battery cell and material supply
Chart 6: Prices of lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide, Dec 2020-Mar 2022 (CNY10k)
