Lithium and life – Autoreview

The Ministry of Industry and Trade intends to allocate almost a trillion rubles to stimulate the production of domestic electric vehicles. Where to get traction batteries for them – and what is the most difficult thing for import substitution in them?

PElectric vehicle manufacturers almost never make their own batteries. Unless some, especially advanced ones, are just being assembled – for example, Tesla. Because the development and production of traction batteries are complex, knowledge-intensive and expensive processes. It is easier to buy ready-made from specialized manufacturers.

And today they are almost entirely concentrated in Asia. And first of all, these are a dozen Chinese firms led by the giant CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology), which owns half of the Chinese and regarding 30% of the entire world market. For example, CATL products are used by BMW, Volkswagen, Tesla and Volvo.

In second place are the “big three” from South Korea: LG, SK and Samsung together provide more than a third of the needs of electric vehicle manufacturers – Hyundai and Kia, General Motors, Ford, Renault, Tesla, BMW, Volvo, VAG and Stellantis. And Japan is represented by Panasonic with a share of more than 13% and the popularity of the main supplier not only for the “home” company Toyota, but once more for Tesla electric vehicles.

And in each of these companies there are huge scientific centers. After all, it just seems that assembling a battery for an electric car is simple. But batteries are not just grouped into modules and inserted into a common case – you need to connect controllers, integrate a thermal control system with sensors, valves and heating and cooling circuits, create software that, among other things, controls the state of each cell and optimally redistributes the charge. Difficult. And long — development can take years.

And lithium-ion batteries themselves are not as simple as they seem. It seems to be a cathode with lithium, an anode with graphite and an electrolyte containing lithium salts – what is so difficult regarding a battery? First of all, chemistry! Each company has its own secrets with the exact composition, consistency and set of materials. There is a real arms race here, because if ten years ago the specific capacity of the best batteries rarely exceeded 250 W / h per 1 kg of weight, today it reaches 350-380 W / h / kg. Work is also underway on the ability of batteries to quickly take a charge or to increase the number of charge-discharge cycles.

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