NIO's Battery Swapping Station in Denmark Provides Grid Frequency Regulation Services

Second-life battery market prices remained stable this week. Cost side, spot lithium carbonate surged earlier this week before pulling back rapidly, while cobalt sulphate and nickel sulphate prices largely traded sideways and held steady, with raw material futures showing clearly divergent trends. Supply side, the market overall maintained a regular shipments pace, with supply circulation proceeding smoothly and orderly. There were no signs of new capacity ramping up or concentrated inflows of supply, lacking significant incremental support, and the overall industry supply side remained neutral and stable. Demand side, the small power market has fully banned the use of second-life disassembled battery cells. The small power application channel that previously supported part of the demand for disassembled products was directly shut down, and there is currently no new substitute demand to fill the gap, forcing large volumes of disassembled products to be redirected to disassembly recycling channels for absorption. Although prices of disassembled products temporarily remained stable, overall transaction volume was extremely sluggish. For the Grade A and B market, earlier expectations for price hikes had emerged, driven by the sharp rise in lithium carbonate prices, but downstream acceptance of high prices remained low, and no effective high-price transactions materialized. As lithium carbonate prices pulled back rapidly, expectations for price hikes quickly faded, and the overall trading pace slowed down further.