The market size in 2025 is 35.41GWh
Electric ships have the advantages of environmental protection, zero pollution, safety, and low cost of use, and their operating costs are significantly lower than diesel and LNG fueled ships. In addition, the electric ship has simple structure, stable operation, low maintenance cost, and is more suitable for the future trend of environmental protection.
At present, electric ships are mainly used in the civilian field. In the future, there will be more purely electric ships operating in scenic cruises, passenger ships and ferries.
Electric ships need to carry a large number of batteries, and have higher requirements on battery discharge rate, cycleability, and cost
In terms of battery type selection, compared with lead-acid batteries, lithium iron phosphate batteries have obvious advantages in terms of safety, energy density, and cycle performance. However, lithium iron phosphate batteries are currently more widely used in new energy buses and energy storage. The lithium iron phosphate batteries used in electric ships will face more technical verifications, require stricter specifications and higher product prices.
In terms of specific applications, lithium batteries are currently only used on a small number of hybrid-powered ships. It is difficult for medium and large ships of more than 5,000 tons to be fully lithium-ionized, and it will increase year by year in the future.
Data show that the penetration rate of lithium-ionization for electric ships in 2019, 2022 and 2025 is calculated at 0.035%, 0.55%, and 18.5%. By 2025, the lithium battery market for electric ships will reach 35.41GWh.
Based on the judgment of the huge potential for the future development of the marine lithium battery market, companies such as Yiwei Lithium Energy have already begun to deploy ahead of schedule.
Industry difficulties and bottlenecks are obvious
The country also attaches great importance to the development of ship power batteries. On July 9, 2019, the Ministry of Science and Technology responded to the recommendation No. 5889 of the Second Session of the Thirteenth National People’s Congress as follows:
The improvement of power battery technology and industrial level will quickly promote the transformation process of transportation electrification, and the development and application of electrification technology in related fields such as road transportation, rail transportation and air transportation are highly valued. In recent years, due to the influence of policies such as environmental protection and reduction of harmful gas emissions, technologies such as liquefied natural gas, lithium batteries, fuel cells, solar energy, wind energy, shore power and other clean energy and waste heat power generation have been applied on ships. The types of ship energy vary from The situation dominated by fossil energy is gradually shifting to low-carbon energy. The integration of multiple energy sources has promoted the development of ship power systems in the direction of electrification. In the future, the types of energy for ships will be diverse, and the forms of energy applications will be diversified and mixed.
The safety of high-power pure battery power, the increase of energy and power density, and the high one-time cost will be problems in the promotion and application of pure battery power in ships. It is necessary to strengthen technical research and development, conduct sufficient testing and verification to ensure safe and reliable application and economy . The Ministry of Science and Technology will continue to strengthen the research on key core technologies such as power batteries and fuel cells, and continue to carry out in-depth research on the transformation of transportation electrification, so as to provide scientific and technological support for energy conservation and emission reduction in the transportation sector and reduction of pollutant emissions.
Lithium iron phosphate prismatic power batteries with better overall performance in terms of safety, cycle and rate are the mainstream. And as the proportion of lithium iron phosphate batteries used in the field of electric ships increases in the future, the price of products will show a downward trend.
Relevant agencies predict that the overall development of the electric ship market will show two stages. The growth rate will be slow from 2018 to 2021, and the growth rate will accelerate from 2022 to 2025. If the lithium battery penetration rate in the lithium battery market for electric ships reaches 50%, it will drive the lithium battery market to a scale of more than 90GWh.
In the future, the trend of ship lithium battery will mainly focus on ferry boats and sightseeing boats in coastal cities along the river; inland cargo ships; port tugboat market, etc. Some large and medium-sized ships use lithium batteries instead of lead acid, which will promote the acceleration of lithium batteries for marine use.
However, the current marine battery testing is still at the cell level, and the testing items are similar to the on-board power battery project. The perfect safety standard system for marine batteries and the standardized operation system of the Neihu and Neijiang small ship markets also need to be further improved.
