Ninety times larger in five years ... The Li-ion rechargeable battery market is on the verge of a massive transformation. With their adoption in electric vehicles (EV), the Li-ion rechargeable battery market is expected to surpass three trillion yen in five years. An era of intense competition in technology development has begun, embroiling a host of newly entered companies.
In the fall of 2010, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. will release its Leaf electric vehicle (EV), implementing an ambitious plan to manufacture 50,000 units in fiscal 2010 and 200,000 in fiscal 2012. Viewed in terms of Li-ion rechargeable battery production volume, this is 24kWh of capacity per Leaf, which works out to 4800MWh for 200,000 units. This alone is far larger than the 3000MWh market for Li-ion batteries in mobile telephones today. In other words, a single car model will totally change the market environment.
Nissan Motor is not the only one: Major automotive manufacturers around the world have announced large-scale production plans for EVs mounting Li-ion batteries. General Motors Corp. plans to sell 50,000 to 60,000 plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEV) from the second half of 2010, and 100,000 hybrids a year.
Honda Motor Co., Ltd. will begin manufacture of Li-ion rechargeable batteries at its Blue Energy Co., Ltd. joint venture in Japan with GS Yuasa Power Supply Ltd. from the second half of 2010, and hopes to ¡Èboost the percentage of hybrid new car sales in industrialized nations to 50% in 2020.¡É Battery manufacturers are feeling the pressure of burgeoning demand from automotive companies around the world: ¡ÈIf we booked all those orders, production would never be able to keep up,¡É says Ken Sawai, Manager, Corporate Strategic Planning Division of GS Yuasa Corporation (Note 1).
Note 1: GS Yuasa is the parent company of Lithium Energy Japan, which supplies Li-ion rechargeable batteries for the i-MiEV electric vehicles for Mitsubishi Motors.
The massive production of EVs is bringing about significant chance in the Li-ion battery industry. The market for EV Li-ion rechargeable batteries will far surpass the existing market for the same batteries in mobile phones in only a few more years... and they will not be miniature cells, but rather primarily large-size, large-capacity cells.
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