According to the data, as of the end of December 2023, the output of lithium-ion batteries in China is as high as 178770,000 tons, accounting for 79 percent of the world's total production capacity38%, ranking first in the world, but the rapid increase in production capacity has also brought the problem of overcapacity, or last year's data as an example, the total number of domestic batteries in the whole year is only 794820,000 tons, that is,Half of the batteries produced are not "marketable"., and this phenomenon is particularly evident in the field of automotive batteries.
At present, China's power battery production capacity is planned to be as high as 5000GWh, while the actual sales volume last year was only 6163GWh, even after completing 32The year-on-year growth rate was 4%, but there is still a relatively large quantitative gap between production and sales.
In this regard, Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at the press conference of the State Council Information Office:
Recently, Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at the press conference of the State Council Information Office that the development of the automobile industry last year was full of bright spots and handed in a very good answer, but there are also some disorderly competition in the field of new energy vehicles.
In other words, the rapid development of the new energy vehicle industry has stimulated the blind expansion of many downstream enterprisesAmong them, the industry with the most imbalance between production and sales is the power battery industry.
Last year, China's newly announced battery industry projects were as high as 403, of which the announced investment amount was as high1.4 trillion yuanBehind these investments, it is a signal of the active expansion of major battery manufacturers.
Specifically, around 2025, CATL's goal is to increase its annual production capacity to about 670GWh, while BYD and Honeycomb Energy's goal is 600GWh, Zhongxinhang's target is 500GWh, and the production capacity targets of Guoxuan Hi-Tech and EVE are 300GWh respectively, which means that only these 6 battery companies will provide the market with power battery products close to 3000GWh at this point in 2025, which has far exceeded the market needs.
In this regard, Zeng Youpeng, an analyst from TrendForce, said:
From the perspective of capacity expansion and demand growth rate, domestic power battery production capacity will increase by about 60% year-on-year in 2023, but the year-on-year growth rate of demand (loading volume) has slowed down to about 32%. The decline in demand growth has led to the aggravation of the imbalance between supply and demand, and the phenomenon of capacity mismatch persists, which is reflected in the first aspect of power batteries. ”
The structural imbalance of such production capacity has also brought about a sharp decline in the utilization rate of the lithium battery industry, and its overall capacity utilization rate has rapidly fallen from 87% in 2022 to 40%, and there is a tendency to get lower and lower, and the overcapacity has also led to the cost of the entire battery, which has dropped from 1 yuan Wh at the beginning of 2023 to 0$4 wh.
Interestingly, for most battery manufacturers,The sharp decline in the cost of battery manufacturing is not a good thingAfter all, to a certain extent, this represents the battery products they produce, and there is no way to use supply and demand to increase the price, but car companies can take advantage of the opportunity of declining battery costs to increase the bargaining chips of the first war, so as to obtain sales and profit growth.
In the long run, of courseThe problems caused by overcapacity in batteries are not good for the health of the entire automotive marketWhen battery manufacturers are crazy to expand production, they are more inclined to invest resources in the production of existing products rather than in the iterative research and development of battery products, which means that in the next few years, the power battery industry will not emerge too many new technologies, and the endurance level of new energy vehicles will not be significantly improved.