Selection of Lithium-ion Battery Technologies for Electric Vehicles under China’s New Energy Vehicle Credit Regulation

Abstract Electric vehicle, as the most promising innovative solution for energy transition, has gained high priority globally. The newly issued Chinese new energy vehicle (NEV) credit regulation is expected to have a dramatic impact on the development of Chinese and even global electric vehicle market as well as energy structure. This paper focuses on the development of Li-ion batteries for electric vehicles under the regulation and establishes a bottom-up model to compare different batteries from the perspective of credit cost-effectiveness. The results suggest that small BEVs will always have the highest credit cost-effectiveness and midsize BEVs can obtain the highest credit quickly before 2020. As for different Li-ion batteries, the LFP battery is losing superiority compared to NCM batteries, and the NCA battery is slightly inferior to NCM811 because of the technical difficulties through 2020. Under the guidance of policies, the larger the vehicle and AER, the higher nickel batteries will be applied. It’s predictable that with the rapid development of batteries, the credit cost-effectiveness will be higher and higher. Moreover, the capacity of high nickel batteries will continue to expand, which will have a great influence on the demand and price of different materials.