Nothing shows the limitations of the chaebol

Nothing shows the limitations of the chaebol system and the decline of the government’s industrial policy as much as the nation’s battery industry. The nation’s commerce ministry has done worse than nothing for the past decade or so. It was nothing but a chaebol subcontractor that sets industrial policies to suit the taste of an idiotic chaebol owner who went under third-generation management.

Look at LG. They lose the opportunity to take over Hynix, entangled in redemption that semiconductors have been taken away. Samsung’s so-called QLED marketing, which still maintains large-area OLED technology, ended up allowing both Samsung and LG to catch up with China. However, OLED is better than staying strong.

Batteries are a series of failures. I couldn’t learn the lesson when I burned down electric cars and ESS. When ESS was installed with the existing ternary batteries for the first time, they started to burn up here and there. All of them closed their ESS businesses. However, there were no proper reports. Battery companies, KEPCO and business operators all made mistakes, but they didn’t reflect on what kind of mistakes they made and what kind of improvements and industrial policy changes should be made based on them. They all covered up.

This is where China’s LFP hit. Everyone laughed. I thought who would use the low-power, low-density battery. The possibility of cost reduction and safety are the basis of batteries. The rest of the performance needs to be improved on that basis, but the battery industry in Korea has almost collapsed in recent years due to the belief in output and density and neglect of cost and safety. Due to the increased density and output due to the improved performance of LFP, Chinese cars are leading the mid- to low-end electric vehicles. Tesla and BYD from China are selling like hot cakes. ESS market was completely lost to China. Can our battery survive in a market where density and output do not matter, only price, safety and life are important?

Our battery industry was over when the Yoon Suk Yeol regime leaned on the IRA of the United States to build dozens of ternary battery factories while just spreading them to the United States. Those factories are not factories in Korea, they are factories in the United States. It was to give all of our technology, manufacturing capabilities, and jobs to the United States. When Trump came in, it was now trash. There is no way to survive in a place where they use anti-war train policies without giving much subsidies.

Even now, the battery policy must be completely revised. We must not abandon mass production in Korea. To do so, it is necessary to build battery manufacturing capabilities that guarantee the most important cost, safety, and lifespan of batteries.

Samsung has started to lag behind LG in battery technology, coincidentally, with the time when it started to lag behind SK Hynix in semiconductors as well. This may mean that Samsung’s corporate culture, talent training, and leadership system are no longer compatible with Korea. First of all, I am worried about the news that Samsung is focusing on all-solid batteries for luxury cars.

The company will try to supply the batteries to the Genesis brand, a luxury car from the three German companies. Would these companies adopt expensive batteries? The real concern is silver to be used in these batteries. Samsung’s all-solid battery uses lithium metal directly for the cathode, but in this case, a sharp lithium rod grown there can destroy and cause a fire, and thus lithium is isolated by applying a silver-graphite composite to the solid separator. The problem is that there are so many silver to be used.

With the current technology, each 1 kWh battery costs 10 grams. For every 100 kWh that will be used for one car, 1 kg is used. The current market price is 3.5 million won. It is too expensive. Now 100 kWh of LFP batteries will cost around 10 million won. If 35% of that cost is used for silver, no matter how many German companies can use this battery? The price of silver continues to rise. What if the price of silver goes from $75 today to $200?

When Samsung SDI produces a 100 GWh battery equivalent to 10 million vehicles with an all-solid battery like this, the amount of silver it needs will reach 1,000 tons. The price of silver will go up all over again if there is still a shortage of silver and thousands of tons of additional silver demand is added. The world produces only 25,000 tons of silver. Silver also mostly comes from mining other metals such as gold, zinc, lead, and copper. A lack of silver makes it unlikely that production will suddenly increase.

Does Samsung go all-in on all-solid batteries even after seeing such structural problems? Is there a way to drastically reduce the silver content from the current 1 kg?