Global battery supply shortage affects Tesla's production

On April 4th, according to foreign media reports, after nearly monopolizing the electric car market for many years, Tesla will usher in fierce competition from Volkswagen, General Motors and other companies in the next few years. At the same time, commercial vehicles such as buses and light trucks are expected to begin large-scale electrification. Of course, Tesla did not sit still. The company is also moving forward at high speed to prepare for the upcoming CyberTruck and Semi. All these trends indicate that electric vehicles are about to become mainstream. However, the surge in demand for electric vehicles will require a large number of batteries, and the existing battery supply chain is obviously unable to meet this demand. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in October last year that battery shortages prevented Tesla from increasing Semi production. In the earnings call in January this year, he reiterated this point and said that battery supply has become 'the current bottleneck in the popularization of electric vehicles.' Recently, Musk commented on the Tesla Semi production schedule on Twitter. , Said 'We have too few batteries and may be able to meet demand next year.' He later clarified on Twitter: 'Demand is not a problem, but the recent battery supply makes it difficult to increase Semi production. This restriction next year It will be less serious.' Celina Mikolajczak, vice president of battery technology at Panasonic Energy North America, said: 'We are expanding the supply chain to be able to supply the transportation industry.' She explained: 'A mobile phone is only You need a battery, a laptop computer requires 12 batteries, and an electric car may require thousands of batteries. How to rapidly expand an industry 100 times? You need more raw materials, skilled personnel and machines to extract raw materials, and factories Process raw materials into battery components and load them into electric vehicles.” James Nicholson, a partner of consulting firm EY-Parthenon, said in an interview that batteries are a key component of electric vehicles, accounting for approximately 40% of the cost. This is why automobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), including Tesla, General Motors, and Toyota, are increasingly producing batteries and components in-house. Nicholson said: 'You don't want these values u200bu200bto flow elsewhere.' In addition, the electric car battery market is currently dominated by Asian companies. Nicholson said that 97% of electric vehicle batteries are currently supplied by battery companies in my country, Japan and South Korea. The European Commission recently approved a multi-billion dollar investment to increase battery production in Europe, and US policymakers are also moving in this direction. Further upstream, battery raw materials, especially lithium, nickel, and cobalt, pose other supply problems. Nicholson said: 'There is a large amount of lithium buried underground. This substance is not scarce, but there is a shortage of supply. The price of lithium cannot support the mining investment required for profitable mining. North America, Finland and Russia, as well as the Far East and my country There is an abundance of nickel, but it must also be refined. The places where this can be done are limited, and most of them are located in our country.' As for cobalt, its reputation is so bad that automakers are trying to completely eliminate it from production. . Mikrazka said: 'Panasonic has established a technology to produce cobalt-free batteries, and it is expected to be commercialized in the next two to three years.' Recycling batteries is also imperative, not only to prevent waste batteries from damaging the environment, It is also to ensure that the raw materials have a reliable source. Redwood Materials, a battery recycling company founded by Tesla's former chief technology officer JBStraubel, is a pioneer in this field. The company is working to establish a recycling supply chain for batteries. Straubel recently joked: 'The largest lithium mine is in the waste drawer of the United States.'