On April 25, according to Drew Baglino, Tesla's senior vice president of engineering, half of Tesla's vehicles are now shipped with lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries.

This echoes Tesla CEO Musk's statement at the July 2021 earnings conference. At that time, Musk said that Tesla will gradually turn to the solution of using lithium iron phosphate batteries in the future. From the perspective of battery composition, two-thirds of Tesla cars in the future will use lithium iron phosphate, and one third may use lithium iron phosphate. Nickel battery.

Tesla's transformation is actually following the market trend and consolidating the market trend. In the Chinese market, according to statistics from the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, the proportion of domestic lithium iron phosphate batteries in the installed capacity of power batteries will increase from 38% in 2020 to 52% in 2021. The installed capacity of lithium iron phosphate batteries has already More than ternary battery.

Tesla's Shanghai plant, which features LFP batteries as standard models for the Model 3 and Model Y, will soon expand to its Fremont, California, plant as well. In fact, Tesla may be planning to build a dedicated lithium iron phosphate battery factory in the U.S. closer to home, and may have been exploring assignments for the Chinese manufacturer.

Looking forward to the future, according to Xinyu information data, the total domestic production of lithium iron phosphate materials in 2021 will lead ternary materials, and considering the progress of enterprise capacity expansion, it is expected that the annual compound growth rate of lithium iron phosphate production capacity from 2022 to 2025 is also higher than that of ternary materials. at an advantage.

According to TrendForce, lithium iron phosphate batteries are expected to account for more than 60% of the installed capacity of the global power battery market by 2024 due to the cost-effective advantage of lithium iron phosphate batteries.

In fact, vehicle-grade power batteries are only one aspect of the application scenario of lithium iron phosphate batteries. In the field of non-power batteries, lithium iron phosphate batteries are also promising:

In terms of energy storage for 5G base stations, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology stated in August 2020 that promoting the use of lithium iron phosphate energy storage batteries in communication base stations is of positive significance for promoting the green and high-quality development of the communication industry. Officially, it confirmed the dominant position of lithium iron phosphate energy storage batteries in the field of 5G base station energy storage applications.

From the perspective of network coverage, by the end of 2021, my country has built and opened 1.425 million 5G base stations, building the world's largest 5G network, covering all prefecture-level cities, more than 98% of county towns, and 80% of townships. The total number of 5G base stations in my country accounts for more than 60% of the world's total, and the number of 5G base stations per 10,000 people has reached 10.1, nearly doubling from the end of the previous year. Over 300 cities have started the construction of gigabit fiber optic broadband networks. It is estimated that by 2025, the number of 5G base stations in my country will exceed 7 million. The demand for LFP material is about 35,000 tons.

In terms of energy storage at the power generation end of new energy, from the current domestic energy storage projects, pumped water storage is the most important energy storage technology. The proportion of pumped hydro storage in my country accounts for 91.6% of the total energy storage projects, and electrochemical energy storage only accounts for 6.8% of the installed capacity of existing energy storage projects, of which about 85% are lithium batteries.

At present, the power-side energy storage projects that have been put into operation in China mostly use lithium iron phosphate energy storage batteries. Considering the economy of lithium iron phosphate batteries, it is expected to become the main direction of domestic energy storage batteries in the future. The newly installed capacity of electrochemical energy storage in 2021 will be 2.5/3.4GW, and the cumulative installed capacity is expected to reach 35.52/55.88GW by 2025. And in 2025, there will be an additional demand space of 13.0-23.1Gwh in the field of electrochemical energy storage, corresponding to the demand for lithium iron phosphate materials of 30,000-54,000 tons.

In terms of lead-acid market replacement, the energy density of lithium iron phosphate batteries can reach 4 times that of lead-acid batteries, the cycle life is also 3-4 times that of lead-acid batteries, the energy conversion efficiency can reach 97%, and it is more environmentally friendly. In the past, the biggest advantage of lead-acid batteries was low cost, but now the price of lithium iron phosphate batteries is close to that of lead-acid batteries. Considering the cost of single cycle use, lithium iron phosphate batteries are less than 1/3 of lead-acid batteries. The replacement of lead-acid batteries is The general trend.

In 2020, my country's lead-acid battery output will be 227.36GWh, corresponding to more than 130 billion replacement space. About 33% of them are used for light power batteries, which are mainly used in the power system of electric two-wheelers. The average selling price of lithium batteries is already lower than 0.6 yuan/Wh in 2020, while the price of lead-acid batteries is 0.3-0.4 yuan/Wh, but lithium batteries are significantly superior in terms of energy density, service life, mass and volume, etc. Lead-acid batteries, so the market penetration rate has increased rapidly. In 2020, the output of lithium-ion electric two-wheelers in China will reach 11.36 million units, and the overall penetration rate will reach 23.5%, a year-on-year increase of 84.7%.

It is estimated that the market penetration rate of the entire lithium battery version of electric two-wheelers will be close to 60% by 2025. With the rapid growth of the production of lithium-ion electric two-wheelers, the shipment of lithium-ion batteries for electric two-wheelers has also grown significantly. Statistics show that in 2020, the shipment of lithium batteries for electric two-wheelers in China will reach 10.7Gwh, a year-on-year increase of 91.1%. It is estimated that by 2025, the demand for lithium batteries for electric two-wheelers will reach 45.9Gwh.