Shangpu Consulting: Magnesium alloy industry usher in development opportunities

Magnesium alloy is considered to be the third largest metal structural material after steel and aluminum alloy. It has high rigidity, high seismic resistance, and high bending resistance, and is widely used in aerospace, automobiles, motorcycles, and bicycles. Currently, vehicles such as automobiles have used the magnesium content of bicycles as one of the criteria for measuring the advanced nature of automobiles. The biggest advantage of magnesium alloys lies in their light weight, and magnesium alloys will increasingly be used in all parts of electric vehicles in the future. In the era of “green economy” deepening, the magnesium alloy industry has broad prospects for development.

China is a country with a large magnesium resource and its reserves ranks first in the world. Under the circumstances that traditional metal materials have caused cost and price to continue to be scarce due to scarce resources, magnesium alloys have received increasing attention from the industry. At present, the promotion and application of magnesium alloys has been listed as a major technical innovation project, and the application of light alloys such as magnesium alloys in electric vehicles has been expanded, providing a good market opportunity for the promotion of new materials. The magnesium alloy industry has already gone through the concept product stage and entered a period of rapid development.

In the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan", the new energy automotive industry was defined as "the leading industry of the national economy" and as a vanguard of new energy vehicles - electric vehicles placed high hopes on the industry and the automotive market. The National Science and Technology Development Plan for the 12th Five-Year Plan clearly stated that during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, the development of electric vehicles and new energy industries will be vigorously promoted. By 2015, there will be 1 million electric vehicles. With the vigorous promotion and application of electric vehicles by the state, the magnesium alloy industry will grow rapidly before the quality of battery technology has risen.

Champ Consulting industry analysts pointed out that a major problem for electric vehicles is that bulky batteries increase the weight of the car, thereby constraining the performance of electric vehicles, and developing and applying lightweight new engineering structural materials and high-performance batteries to improve electric vehicle products. Quality performance, reducing the "carbon footprint" has a ** significance. At present, there are still many constraints on the scale of magnesium alloys applied to electric vehicles. First, the propaganda is not enough, consumers have insufficient understanding of the advantages and characteristics of magnesium alloys; Second, the price is expensive, magnesium alloy prices are close to 1 times the price of aluminum alloys, and Market segmentation and positioning are ambiguous; Thirdly, investment in materials, processing, and R&D is relatively large. Cold processing technology has yet to be matured and corporate investment risks are high.

The “2011-2016 China Magnesium Alloy Product Market Analysis and Development Prospects Study Report” published by Champion Consulting shows that with the maturing production technology in the magnesium alloy industry and the rapid development of the electric vehicle industry, and the government’s new materials such as magnesium alloys, With the increase in innovation and application support for new processes, China's magnesium alloy industry has great potential for development.