To reduce the use of rare metals, battery makers and automakers are accelerating the development of next-generation batteries. Panasonic has set a timetable for the practical use of high-capacity batteries that do not use cobalt, and China’s CATL, the world’s largest vehicle battery company, is actively developing batteries that use easily sourced sodium.

CATL actively develops lithium-ion batteries

As a sodium-ion battery, this is the highest level in the world at this stage – an executive of the R&D department of CATL emphasized this at a press conference at the end of July 2021. Na-ion batteries are charged and discharged by the movement of sodium ions between electrodes. As an alternative to lithium, cheap sodium, which can be extracted from seawater, will be used.
CATL plans to be practical in 2023. The capacity per kilogram is now 160 watt-hours, but will increase to 200 watt-hours in the future. Although the capacity is smaller than that of lithium-ion batteries, “in addition to the advantages such as fast charging, it is expected to reduce costs,” said Professor Juno Yamada of the University of Tokyo.
CATL will also actively secure rare metals. In addition to its intention to acquire Canadian companies engaged in lithium development, it announced in April that it would invest in a Chinese company with interests in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and it also decided to invest in Australian lithium resource company Pilbara Minerals Limited. Tesla of the United States has acquired rights to a clay deposit containing lithium in Nevada, South Korea, Hyundai Motor of South Korea and LG Chem will build a new battery factory in Indonesia, a nickel-producing country, and world-class large companies are actively taking action.

“No Mine” Panasonic Can Achieve High Capacity Without Cobalt

Panasonic, on the other hand, has distanced itself from investing in mining interests. A Panasonic executive said, “I won’t buy a ‘mine’ because it has suffered a big loss in silicon mines.” In the past, Sanyo Electric, a subsidiary of Panasonic, signed a long-term purchase contract due to the shortage of silicon for solar cell materials, but then the market declined, and the high purchase price squeezed profits. If the price of rare metals falls, they will face the risk of shrinking the value of equity.
What Panasonic is actively developing is a unique high-capacity battery that does not use cobalt, and plans to put it on the market in 2 to 3 years. A senior executive of Panasonic’s battery business, Zhi Xinsheng, said, “Technology development has been completed, and mass production can be started as long as customers need it.”
Toyota and Nissan will develop “all-solid-state batteries” that change the electrolyte to solid. Due to improved safety, difficult-to-process parts such as cathode materials that reduce cobalt can also be used. If the capacity is increased, the amount of rare metals used per unit of capacity will also be reduced.
“Strive to enter the market in 2028, and are developing all-solid-state batteries independently,” Nissan President and CEO Makoto Uchida said at a briefing held on November 29. Nissan plans to invest a total of 2 trillion yen to launch 15 pure electric vehicles by 2030, positioning all-solid-state batteries as the trump card.
However, from the perspective of all-solid-state batteries, there are many issues such as the increase of resistance at the junction of electrodes and electrolytes and the undetermined manufacturing process. Professor Yamada Juno of the University of Tokyo pointed out that “it will take a long time for practical application.” “All-solid-state batteries will advance basic research, but will first focus on the development of (existing) liquid batteries,” Panasonic’s Noshin Yisei also said.
Companies in other industries have also dabbled in the development of next-generation batteries. Nippon Electric Glass will develop an “all-solid-state sodium-ion battery”. The charging and discharging mechanism is the same as the sodium-ion battery in the CATL era, but changing to an all-solid-state battery will improve safety. On November 18, it was announced that it had developed a negative electrode material, and then the stock price rose by 10% from the previous day to 3,010 yen.
Nippon Paper is striving to promote the practical application of “wooden batteries”. Charge and discharge are carried out by utilizing the property of attracting electrons on the surface of fibers extracted from pulp, which is a raw material for papermaking. By 2030, it will be practical for smartphones, etc., and it will also be applied to pure electric vehicles.
Stable procurement is more important than capacity. Tesla and BYD are targeting lithium iron phosphate batteries. “Models with standard range will all turn to iron cathodes,” Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla in the United States, said at the October shareholders meeting Said above. The iron-based positive electrode refers to a positive electrode made of lithium, iron, and phosphorus, and is called “iron phosphate (LFP)”. The capacity of the battery becomes smaller, but it does not use cobalt and is inexpensive. Although it is slightly inferior to nickel-based positive electrodes for batteries that can travel a long distance on a single charge, it is increasing its presence due to rising resource prices.
Goldman Sachs in March gave a “buy” rating to BYD (BYD), a major Chinese pure electric vehicle company. BYD is also a battery company and has proposed a policy of concentrating operating resources on LFP batteries. As of 2020, only about 20% of in-vehicle batteries using LFP cathodes will be used in the world, but analyst Yuzawa Kota believes that “by 2030, the adoption rate of cheap LFPs in pure electric vehicles sold in emerging market countries will reach 50%”.

BYD will also target lithium iron phosphate batteries

LFP cathodes are mainly used by Chinese battery companies, and CATL supplies Tesla with LFP cathodes. It is said that the cathode material accounts for 30% to 40% of the battery cost. Tesla and others hope to increase the number of models equipped with LFP batteries and reduce the manufacturing cost of pure electric vehicles. Types of nickel and cobalt have fire accidents one after another, which also brings eastward wind to LFP batteries with relatively high safety.
From the perspective of cathode materials, Japanese companies such as Sumitomo Metal Mining and Nichia Chemical Industry have a relatively high market share, but batteries using nickel and cobalt have an advantage. Sumitomo Osaka Cement is involved in LFP batteries, but Chinese companies such as Defang Nano Technology Co., Ltd., the largest LFP battery manufacturer, have advantages.
On the other hand, there is also a tendency for Japanese companies to get involved in iron-based cathode materials. Pacific Cement is developing a cathode material called lithium manganese iron phosphate (LMFP). The capacity of the battery can be increased by about 20% compared to LFP. The technology accumulated through the production of concrete products is utilized. Demonstration equipment has been built, and supply to data centers and pure electric vehicles is being explored.

Europe Pulled Reuse: JX Metals and Sumitomo Metal Mining Actively Promoting

The European Union (EU) issued a new regulation on battery management for pure electric vehicles (EV) in December 2020, which has caused a shock to the world. The reason is that a policy to increase the ratio of recycled materials has been proposed for rare metals used in lithium-ion batteries. The requirement is to increase cobalt for cathode materials to 12% by 2030, and lithium and nickel to 4% each. Intended to incorporate valuable resources into supply chains within the European region.
JX Metals, which is owned by Japan’s ENEOS Holdings, will act in response to developments in Europe. In August, a new enterprise for recycling lithium-ion batteries was established in Germany, and it is planned to put into operation verification equipment for extracting rare metals as early as the fall of 2022. A “wet” technique using chemical reagents to extract the relevant metals will be used.
In Japan, JX Metals has begun to supply nickel sulfate extracted and reused from batteries as a battery material, and has begun to build a system that focuses on the era of mass elimination of automotive batteries. Toshiaki Sato, director of the Battery Materials and Recycling Business Promotion Office, said it “contributes to resource recycling and stable procurement.”

JX Metals has been advancing the verification of battery reuse

European companies are also actively promoting recycling. The Swedish battery company Northvolt, backed by Germany’s Volkswagen and BMW, plans to start operating a plant with a capacity of 125,000 tons per year of waste batteries within a few years. It is said to be able to produce 30 gigawatt-hours (GWh) per year, equivalent to half of the battery factory’s capacity, from recycled resources.
In North America, there is active activity by start-ups involved in battery recycling. The American company Redwood Materials, established by the co-founder of Tesla in the United States, strives to use recycled raw materials to manufacture battery materials for 1 million cars by 2025, and cooperated with Ford Motor in September on recycling. General Motors (GM) of the United States has cooperated with Li-Cycle of Canada to promote measures that contribute to the stable procurement of recycled materials.
Japanese companies are not inferior in terms of technological prowess. Sumitomo Metal Mining, a large-scale cathode material company, is the first in the world to master the technology of heating and crushing vehicle battery powder to extract copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium at low cost. By adjusting the oxygen concentration and temperature, etc., the corresponding metal can be selected. Lithium separated with impurities can also be efficiently extracted by chemical treatment.
Taking lithium as an example, even if the transaction price of mine-extracted material drops to 5-6 US dollars per kilogram, it can maintain cost competitiveness, and in the case of nickel and cobalt, even if the price drops to the same level as in the past market downturn, reuse Materials also have advantages. Asano, the company leading the research and development, believes in the prospect, “(After the implementation of the new European battery management regulations) there will be competition for recycled raw materials. We will continue to work hard to win the competition.”
The International Energy Agency (IEA) believes that global sales of pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids will reach 145 million by 2030, a surge from the current 10 million. After 10 years of use, the capacity of batteries for pure electric vehicles will drop to 70% to 80% and need to be replaced. Toyota has cooperated with China’s CATL (CATL), the world’s largest vehicle battery manufacturer, including recycling, and will also focus on recycling battery materials for hybrid vehicles in Japan.
Lithium-ion batteries are dominated by types using nickel, manganese, and cobalt. Including copper for the negative electrode, the distribution of metal origins is uneven and the price is unstable. If secondary raw materials can be widely recovered, there is also the advantage of reducing carbon dioxide emissions compared to mines. Recycling is also important from the point of view of economic security, and it is also an area where Japan’s technological strength is showing its strengths.