Greenwing resources, an Australian mineral exploration and development company, announced on September 26 that it entered into a strategic financing transaction with BlueNorthstarLimited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of nio, to advance its exploration plan for the lithium project in the SanJorge SanJorge salt lake in Argentina's catamarca province. And make NIO a potential joint venture and off-take partner for the company.
It is reported that the total amount of NIO may exceed 600 million yuan. With the financing, the company will accelerate the development of its SanJorge lithium project in Argentina. In response, NIO said, "We will evaluate and layout the upstream areas related to core components of smart electric vehicles to ensure long-term competitive advantages."
It is understood that the SAN Jorge project is located in the south of South America's Lithium triangle, exploration rights area of 360 square kilometers. The SAN Jorge project, with 34 samples and an analysis of up to 285mg/ L lithium, has been subjected to TEM geophysical exploration and preliminary drilling is planned for SeptemberOctober.
Nio is also after BYD, Tesla, another car companies spread the layout of lithium ore news.
Why should car companies actively promote the layout of lithium ore?
Previously, Zeng Qinghong, chairman of GAC Group, even joked publicly about "working for a battery factory". It can also be seen from here that the current battery has become the main cost of new energy vehicles, even more than 50% of the vehicle cost, which also makes the majority of car enterprises suffering.
The high cost of batteries and the ability to control production capacity have led to delays in the delivery process of car companies, resulting in a decline in sales. Due to the scarcity of lithium resources, it is difficult to alleviate the shortage of battery supply in the short term, so car enterprises rush to the upstream lithium field, which is the only way to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
With the recent announcement of Guangzhou Auto, Honda, Toyota and other car companies will invest in battery production capacity, once again triggered the market to power battery supply and demand pattern discussion. In order to consolidate the subsequent supply chain position and discourse power of automobile enterprises, it is believed that there will be more automobile enterprises to the upstream lithium mining field in the future.
Car enterprises into the battery field, can this road go through?
The advantages and disadvantages of the battery production line established by the Oems are obvious. The advantage is that there are independent orders, which can ensure the rapid quantity increase of the project and form a closed-loop industrial chain in terms of adaptability and quality management. The disadvantage is the lack of battery manufacturing experience and professional talent team.
It is not difficult to invest in lithium mines, but to build a battery factory, you still have to overcome the technical barriers, scale effect two mountains.
At present, in the mainstream electric vehicle batteries on the market, Ningde Times three yuan lithium battery and BYD lithium iron phosphate battery almost occupy half of the market, overseas brands, LG and Panasonic are also established battery manufacturers. In addition, in the head battery factory, Ningde Time has developed kirin battery; Tesla has developed 4,680 batteries; Byd is holding two ACES, blade battery development is in full swing, six prism battery is about to roll off the line.
Dozens of battery production process is relatively complex, the conventional process, a link to process the control does not reach the designated position, will affect the finished product performance, production out experiment for new incoming car companies are not difficult, but to achieve a line of battery level still have a long way to go, along with the old battery technology is rapid progress, really running out of time for traditional car companies.
