"New energy vehicles are huge energy storage devices," Yang Hongxin,
general manager of Honeycomb Energy, said at the event. "In the energy ecology
with electricity as the core, batteries have become an important part of it."
And Honeycomb Energy plays an important role in power batteries. The field has
placed its treasure on the "stacked era".
According to Honeycomb Energy’s explanation, the “stacking era” refers to
an era in which new processes, new standards, new materials, and new
technologies, characterized by lamination technology, emerge in large numbers
and are specifically designed for electric vehicles. Of course, this era has not
yet arrived.
The predecessor of Honeycomb Energy is the Power Battery Division of Great
Wall Motors established in 2016. It has been completely separated from Great
Wall Motors' system. Although Great Wall Motors is still Honeycomb Energy's only
current customer, the company has begun exploring the possibility of cooperation
with a number of external car companies, including overseas car companies.
This press conference is the first large-scale media event held by
Honeycomb Energy, and it attempts to show its thinking and planning for the
future. However, the new quaternary and cobalt-free material battery products
released at this conference are still a long time away from mass production, and
it will take at least four to five years to be put into cars.
Is high-speed lamination process the future?
From the perspective of Honeycomb Energy, the creative launch of square
aluminum shell laminated batteries with high-speed lamination technology as the
core can partially solve the current practical problems such as fires, battery
life anxiety, battery attenuation, and long charging times.
High-speed lamination technology and the so-called "new technology" of
honeycomb energy. In Honeycomb Energy’s view, cell width will have to increase
as market demand develops. Under this trend, the current mainstream winding
process battery cells can no longer meet the form requirements of automotive
grade power cells. At the same time, due to the flexible size of the laminated
battery cells, which are not limited by the winding needle structure, and the
interface of the pole pieces is highly flat, leading companies in the power
battery industry such as Panasonic, Samsung SDI, and CATL also have plans to
introduce the laminated process. .
At present, Honeycomb Energy has completed the development and introduction
of 45-degree rotating high-speed lamination, with a lamination efficiency of up
to 0.6s/pcs/single station. At the same time, the company has completed the
verification of 0.45s/pcs/single station lamination speed and the development
and production of prototypes. According to its predictions, the development of
0.25s/pcs/single-station lamination equipment can be achieved in 2023, and by
then it will surpass the winding process in terms of production efficiency.
Of course, to achieve a "new process" that can be commercialized, strong
production capacity is essential. At this press conference, Honeycomb Energy
announced its plan to set up factories in Europe, and will spend 2 billion euros
to build a 24GWH large-scale power battery factory, supporting cathode material
factory and battery technology center in Europe.
Cellular energy's European battery factory will use high-speed lamination
technology to produce batteries, with the ability to quickly change models. At
the same time, the company also plans to equip the new factory with intelligent
systems such as AI intelligent detection and quality prediction and analysis.
The total land area of the park is 400 acres. The project will be implemented in
two phases. The first phase of construction will start in 2020 and will be
completed and put into operation in 2022.
There is another "intelligent chemical factory" in Changzhou, Jiangsu
Province. This factory covers an area of 800 acres, has an investment of 10
billion yuan, and has a planned total production capacity of 20GWH. Currently,
the factory is under construction. According to Honeycomb Energy’s plan, the
company plans to invest a total of 26 billion yuan in a power battery factory
with a total production capacity of 76GWH in China by 2025.
Quaternary and cobalt-free material batteries will see you next year
In existing ternary system lithium-ion batteries, the cost of cathode
materials accounts for 30% to 45%. Among them, taking the 523 system as an
example, cobalt accounts for 20%. As a strategic resource, cobalt’s Price
fluctuations will directly affect the cost of the final battery cells.
Therefore, international mainstream power battery companies such as Panasonic,
LG, and CATL are focusing on low-cobalt and cobalt-free batteries as research
and development directions.
At this conference, Honeycomb Energy officially released a battery cell
product based on cobalt-free materials. According to the company, the
performance of cobalt-free material batteries can reach the same level as
NCM811, but the cost will be reduced by 5 to 15%, and the corresponding BOM cost
of the battery cell can be reduced by about 5%.
Honeycomb Energy expects that the cobalt-free battery will complete
material development before the end of the year, further optimization of the
material system will be completed in March 2020, the system will be finalized in
August of that year, and the SOP for cobalt-free batteries will be implemented
in November 2021.
Also making its world debut at this conference is the quaternary material
power battery cell developed by Honeycomb Energy. The company's quaternary
material battery is doped with Mx based on the NCM system. This will strengthen
the boundaries between primary particles and reduce the formation of micro-voids
during harmful phase transitions. According to him, compared with NCM811
material, this quaternary material power battery has higher capacity, longer
life and better safety.
The quaternary material battery cell is expected to achieve material SOP in
December 2020, and battery SOP based on quaternary material in November
2022.
Since the above-mentioned two global debut products are still a long time
away from SOP, the real "stack era" still needs us to wait for a while.
At present, the most advanced power battery product that Honeycomb Energy
can mass-produce is still the NCM811 ternary material lithium battery, and the
market in four or five years is still difficult to predict. This means that the
company may still need to face very fierce competition in the market for a long
time.
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