There are only ten rechargeable lithium battery cell manufacturers all over the world. A large proportion of Japanese manufacturers are engaged in the production of laptop battery cells, while South Korean and Chinese manufacturers mainly focus on producing battery cells for cell phone and other portable electronic appliances, the unit prices of which are far lower than laptop battery cell's. Therefore, Japanese manufacturers have smaller rechargeable lithium battery cell shipment but higher unit prices, new era chicago white sox hats as compared with South Korean and Chinese manufacturers.
BYD is the only manufacturer witnessing drop in both shipment and income for three consecutive years, and it has attached more importance to automotive than to rechargeable lithium battery. In the meantime, South Korean manufacturers have made rapid progress. Samsung SDI is projected to top the world by shipment and rank the fourth place by
Shipment & new era chicago white sox hats Income of World's Major Lithium Secondary Battery Manufacturers, 2009-2010
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Motive rechargeable lithium batteries have aroused wide attention due to the popularity of low-carbon economy concept. However, the shipment of motive rechargeable lithium battery is still low, and manufacturers are suffering serious loss. For example, A123 Systems and ENER1 have suffered deep loss, and the gross margin has dropped for five consecutive years. Thus, investing in these companies is highly risky, like gambling. The performance of downstream enterprises is not good, and the investment mainly concentrates on the upstream of the rechargeable lithium battery industry. In China, any stock with a few relations with the rechargeable lithium battery upstream will gain dramatically.
The rechargeable lithium battery industry chain is long and extensive. The four major raw materials for rechargeable lithium battery by cost attribution are anode material, separator, electrolyte and cathode material.
At present, anode material is the hottest topic. Non-power rechargeable lithium battery batteries usually adopt LiCo2O4 as anode material. However, the anode material of motive lithium battery is categorized into LiMn2O4 and LiFePO4. Japanese manufacturers mainly specialize in LiMn2O4, and have successively issued several electric cars with LiMn2O4 battery. Nevertheless, the United States and China's manufacturers focus on LiFePO4, and A123 is a LiFePO4 leader. LiFePO4 is excellent in performance and safety, but it is inferior to LiMn2O4 in terms of industrialized maturity, cost and consistency. The rechargeable lithium battery of an electric vehicle is connected by tens even hundreds of cells, and hence has high consistency requirement which is rather difficult for LiFePO4 to achieve. Thus, nearly all large auto manufacturers select LiMn2O4 due to its higher maturity. Even A123, the leader in LiFePO4 battery field, also failed to win the Chevrolet tender. However, LG Chemical, a big LiMn2O4 battery manufacturer, had won the bid. Now, the frequent auto recalls make auto manufacturers behave extremely cautious that they won't have a test for LiFePO4 battery manufacturers. Furthermore, the maturity of LiMn2O4 is no more than five years, let alone LiFePO4.
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