Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

"the Japanese battery is standing on the cliff."

The above sentence comes from Akira Yoshino, director of the Yoshino research office of Asahi Kasei Company in Japan, who is a developer of lithium-ion batteries in Japan and has witnessed the rise of Japan's power battery industry, but now, the once-brilliant Japanese power battery industry has gone to the "cliff" of Akira Yoshino.

In 2022, the installed capacity of power batteries in Chinese enterprises has exceeded 60% of the global share, making it truly the first in the world.

More than 20 years ago, China's power battery companies were mainly based on relatively backward Ni-CD batteries and Ni-MH batteries, lagging behind countless positions compared with Japanese companies that have initiated a transition to the lithium battery industry.

It can be said that the Japanese power battery company at that time was a well-deserved giant in the industry at that time, and it was also beyond the reach of Chinese and South Korean enterprises, but by 2022, the global ranking of power battery installed capacity released by SNE Research showed that only one Panasonic Japanese company was on the list, and its global market share had dropped to 7.3%, far behind Chinese and South Korean enterprises.

As the saying goes, "it is more difficult to keep an industry than to start a business", so what kind of process did Japan, once the leader of the power battery industry, go through before it declined so far? Read this article and you will understand:

1. Three nodes of the rise of Power Battery in Japan

two。 Internal and external causes of decline

3. Blow the counter-offensive horn, is it too late?

The three nodes of the rise of Japanese power batteries the rise of Japanese power batteries can be simply summarized into three nodes.

The first time can be traced back to 1973, when the fourth Middle East War broke out, and the major Arab oil producers declared an oil embargo and suspended exports in order to attack Israel and the countries that supported Israel, resulting in a sharp rise in oil prices. The first oil crisis also officially began.

It is understood that after the outbreak of the oil crisis, the price of oil has soared to 11.5 US dollars per barrel, while just a year ago, the price of oil was only 3 US dollars per barrel, nearly quadrupling.

We all know that oil is a kind of non-renewable fuel, which is mainly used to make fuel, gasoline and so on. It is called "the blood of industry". In other words, once the oil supply crisis occurs, it will have a serious impact on the country's industry and economy.

As a result, after the first oil crisis, US industrial production fell by 14 per cent and Japanese industrial production fell by 20 per cent. And the fuel consumption of American cars at that time was so high that the public could not afford it, and they turned to Japanese cars with lower fuel consumption, which directly led to the rise of Japanese fuel cars. On this point, you can check out the article released not long ago, "the crisis of transformation is coming, who is playing the ostrich".

On the other hand, the oil crisis made Japan at that time more aware of the importance of new energy, so it planned to vigorously develop electric vehicles and power batteries. In April 1977, the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Japan set a target of producing 200000 electric vehicles by 1986, but the goal ended in failure because of the limitation of battery technology.

The second node of the rise of Japanese power batteries is closely related to an important figure, Akira Yoshino of Asahi Kasei Company of Japan.

Akira Yoshino began the research and development of lithium batteries in 1981, and in 1983 he built the first prototype of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and established the basic concept of lithium-ion batteries. This invention quickly caused a sensation at that time, but the earliest commercial lithium-ion batteries were not used in cars, but cameras.

Shao Morita, the founder of Sony at that time, announced the official launch of the world's first commercial lithium-ion battery one day in 1991 and installed it in his CCD-TR1 camera, opening the way to the commercialization of lithium-ion batteries, which is the third node of the rise of power batteries in Japan.

Subsequently, lithium-ion batteries were widely used in consumer electronics, automobiles and other products, but because the new energy vehicles did not receive so much attention at that time, the main force of lithium-ion batteries is still mobile phones, laptops and other consumer electronics.

In other words, Japan was a big country in consumer electronics and lithium-ion batteries in the world, with many industry giants such as Sony, Sanyo Motor, Toshiba, TDK, GS YUASA and so on.

In addition, Japan also occupies an absolute monopoly in terms of upstream raw materials. According to a survey report released by Fuji Camry Research in 2006, Japan has the highest share of the four main components of lithium-ion batteries in the world, with positive materials, electrolytes and diaphragms all accounting for 77% of the market. Anode materials account for 96% of the market, and there are almost no competitors in global enterprises.

However, who would have thought that in just a decade or so, the global power battery pattern has undergone earth-shaking changes.

The internal and external causes of decline we can see that Japan has a monopoly position in lithium-ion batteries and raw materials, but in recent years, its dominant position in power batteries has changed to China, even the market monopoly position of the four components of lithium batteries. has also been taken away by China. So what great changes have taken place in Japan's battery industry?

Such a huge industry, from glory to fall, must be caused by many factors, and the author divides it into two aspects: internal cause and external cause.

Let's first talk about the internal factors, that is, the "collapse" of Japan's consumer electronics industry. In 1997, the Hungarian "financial predator" attacked the Thai baht and sold a large amount of Thai baht, which made the Thai foreign exchange market choppy and the Thai baht all the way down.

At that time, the Thai government used US $30 billion in foreign exchange reserves and US $15 billion in international loans to turn the tide, but it was a drop in the bucket in front of powerful international financial speculators. Soon there was a financial storm in Thailand, Indonesia, Japan and many other Asian countries. It was common for workers to be laid off and factories to close down. As a result, global battery prices fell sharply, and Japanese battery manufacturers complained incessantly. Began to abandon the relatively low-end nickel-cadmium battery market.

In the 21st century, Japan's proud consumer electronics market ushered in a "rout". Laptop giant Toshiba's market share in China shrank sharply, while Panasonic and Toshiba announced their withdrawal from China's mobile phone market in 2005. In 2006, Mitsubishi, NEC and Sanyo mobile phones also withdrew from China's mobile phone market one after another. Correspondingly, its upstream lithium-ion battery business has also begun to shrink, while China has sprung up with a localized lithium-ion battery industry chain.

In 2010, Japan released the next Generation Automobile Research and Development Strategy, which established the main research and development direction, while the Japanese giants Toyota and Honda chose to bet on fuel cell vehicles.

At that time, in addition to Panasonic supplying Tesla, most of the Japanese power battery companies gave up or reduced their power battery business, which once again led to its backwardness. The final result is obvious: in today's new energy vehicle market, pure electric and plug-in hybrid models are in full swing, while hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been lukewarm.

In terms of external factors, Chinese and South Korean companies were salivating over Japan's ability to make money in the power battery market, so they also wanted to get a piece of the pie.

At the end of the 20th century, Korean companies such as LG and Samsung SDI began to get involved in the lithium-ion battery industry, and quickly made corresponding technological breakthroughs. The same is true of Chinese enterprises. In 2001, China launched a major project of "863 Program" for electric vehicles, taking new energy vehicles as an opportunity for Chinese automobile industry to overtake at corners, and the matching power batteries also began to be vigorously studied. soon, great breakthroughs have been made in the localization of upstream raw materials, positive materials, negative materials, electrolytes and diaphragms have been localized one after another, and the cost has been greatly reduced.

The market share of the four major components of lithium-ion batteries that Japan used to be proud of are all occupied by Chinese cars, which has become the upstream advantage of China's power battery industry. On this point, you can check out the recently released "from the perspective of industrial chain, why are Chinese power battery companies leading the world?" . The advantage of the huge industrial chain has given birth to a series of power battery enterprises, whose growth rate is beyond the reach of South Korea, which is also a competitor, and Japan has been thrown off countless positions.

Blow the counter-offensive horn, is it too late? It can be said that Japan's power battery industry has experienced a process of "from mountain to valley", and the success of Chinese and American electric car companies has also made Japan realize that the power battery industry must be regarded as an important development goal as soon as possible.

In 2022, Japan's Ministry of economy, Trade and Industry said that "in the future, Japan will vigorously develop new energy and battery industries aimed at China and South Korea, and plans to increase Japan's battery capacity to 600GWh by 2030, occupying 20 per cent of the global market share."

So can the counter-offensive of Japan's battery industry succeed?

On this point, we should first clarify two things: first, Japan has experienced decades of accumulation in the battery industry; second, the backwardness of Japan's battery industry is mainly due to the backwardness of installed capacity.

In terms of technology, in 2018, there were more than 7000 applications for battery patents worldwide, of which Japan applied for 2339 international patents for related inventions, almost twice as many as South Korea. Between 2000 and 2018, there were fully seven Japanese companies in the TOP10 ranking of patent numbers. This means that Japan, as a former giant in the battery industry, is still not to be underestimated in the research and development of patented technology.

Some time ago, David Moss, senior vice president of European research and development of Nissan, said that Nissan has successfully developed an all-solid-state battery with the goal of starting trial production in 2025 and producing a new electric vehicle powered by solid-state battery in 2028.

As we all know, solid-state battery has always been regarded as a "subversive technology" to break through the energy density and safety of lithium-ion battery, but it has not been commercialized and mass produced because of technology, cost and other problems. As a result, many people believe that if technical barriers and costs are knocked down, Japan, which has the advantage of solid-state battery technology, may return to the dominance of power batteries.

And Chinese and South Korean battery companies are obviously aware of this, so they have also laid out the solid-state battery industry in recent years, so it can be seen that this power battery war is still a protracted war.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: automobile News Agency (ID:automobile-news), by Cheng Yu.

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