A new report from Rethink Energy forecasts global battery demand, by looking at the current rate of electric vehicle adoption seen in major countries globally, and extrapolating the requirements set by their respective governments in reaching 100 percent new electric vehicle sales.
Within the report, the company has adapted average vehicle battery requirements to scale with time, as battery technology improves and consumer preferences change with the proliferation of charging infrastructure, building in the assumption of price-sensitivity in key markets and the willingness of automakers to reduce battery sizes and vehicle range in favour of fast-charging and cost reductions. The report also looks at the comparably smaller trucking and stationary storage markets, and forecast these according to the need for decarbonisation and to support renewable energy deployment, respectively.
Battery companies and automotive OEMs will need to adapt to the challenges set by the growth of the industry through the adoption of the appropriate technology for their industries, having to make strategic choices which will affect their product pipelines for years to come.
Battery demand from trucking assumes the uptake of broadly electric vans and buses, as well as a majority of long-haul class 8 trucks which require significant batteries in both hydrogen and battery variants. The report has forecast this aggressively due to the need to decarbonise heavy transport under the expectation that policy will become more aggressive in the future through the likes of tightening EPA emissions.
Rethink Energy’s stationary storage estimates are based on the deployment of increasing duration energy storage systems, which is currently dominated by6-hour segment as they drive down costs prior to 2030; this will be a mix of flow batteries and other chemistries like nickel-hydrogen which have superior technical characteristics for supporting the long-duration energy storage sector. The falling cost of these batteries will drive large deployments of multi-GWh projects which directly replace incumbent assets like coal and gas peaker plants globally, though this will initially be focused in China, the US, and then Europe in order of expected capacity by 2030.
The report looks at the primary growth sectors of the lithium-ion battery industry, passenger vehicle markets, trucking, and stationary storage, and details the timelines at which key technologies like all-solid-state-batteries and sodium batteries will make their mark on the industry, and where they are best positioned to do so based on their strengths and weaknesses. It warns companies from making the same mistakes as their predecessors, and details some of the known geopolitical factors affecting the industry, as well as looking at some of the policies set to affect market dynamics in the next few years and how best to hedge against them.
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