In recent years, the hottest thing in the investment circle is the new energy track.
Power battery manufacturers represented by "Ning Wang" are sought after in the secondary market, and the Ningde era has broken the trillion market value, followed by BYD, not only the secondary market, the primary market has also become the focus of capital attention.
Recently, the second-tier battery manufacturer Hive Energy announced the completion of a B+ round of financing of 6 billion yuan, investors include: Chuanneng Investment, Han's Laser, Xingyu Shares and other industrial chain partners, CDH Investment, China Mobile Capital, Industrial Bank and other industrial investment institutions, Huzhou, Yancheng, Shangrao and other state-owned platforms.
Honeycomb Energy has completed four rounds of financing since April 2020, with a cumulative amount of more than 20 billion yuan, including many well-known investors such as BOC Investment, Country Garden Venture Capital, Xiaomi Group, Sany Heavy Industry, IDG, etc. Behind the frequent financing actions, what kind of ambition does Hive Energy have?
1
Differentiated products hit the market
In 2012, the Great Wall Motor Power Battery Project Group was established and began to carry out pre-research work on batteries until December 2016, when the Power Battery Division was established, the predecessor of Honeycomb Energy.
Coinciding with the cold industry at that time, GGII data shows that by the end of 2017, the price of power batteries fell by 20%-25% compared with the beginning of 2017. The price of lithium iron phosphate power battery packs fell from 1.8-1.9 yuan / Wh at the beginning of the year to 1.45-1.55 yuan / Wh at the end of the year, and the development of hive energy once fell silent.
Until October 2018, Hive Energy was spun off from the Great Wall Motor system to Great Wall Holdings, and was listed as a brother company alongside Great Wall Motors, and there was little news in the market. At present, there are also untaxed energy sources responsible for the hydrogen energy sector business.
Fortunately, since 2020, the new energy industry has ushered in the dawn of development, and many lithium battery manufacturers have been pushed into the market spotlight, including Ningde times, BYD, etc., and even the obscure hive energy has begun to emerge.
From January to November this year, domestic new energy vehicle sales reached 2.99 million units, an increase of 166.8% year-on-year, and the market penetration rate has reached 13.9%, which is significantly higher than the penetration rate of 5.8% in 2020.
As the core component of new energy vehicles, the battery largely determines the cost, mileage, and safety performance of electric vehicles. The data shows that batteries, electronic controls and automotive electronics account for about 65% of the total cost of electric vehicle materials, of which the cost of battery materials accounts for up to 35%, which is the majority of the cost of making cars.
Therefore, the dynamics of lithium battery manufacturers have always been one of the focuses of attention of people inside and outside the industry.
All along, Hive Energy has adopted a diversified battery technology development route, not only on the road of NCM high nickel, but also in NCMA, NMx cobalt-free, and solid-state batteries to follow up on multiple technical routes.
Among them, the highlight is its cobalt-free battery research and development.
At present, the power battery on the market is mainly divided into two major systems: lithium iron phosphate and ternary materials. The battery of the lithium iron phosphate system is mainly low-cost and cost-effective; the battery of the ternary system is mainly high-quality and high-performance, and is generally used in medium and high endurance models. The original ternary material refers to NCM (nickel, cobalt, manganese) as the positive electrode, due to the small reserves of cobalt, the production is unstable due to the battery cost has not been reduced, even Tesla will also set its sights on the "cobalt-free battery".
At this point, Hive Energy is one step ahead. Starting in 2018, it began to study cobalt-free batteries; in July 2019, it debuted the world's first NMx cobalt-free battery; and by December 2020, the company announced that cobalt-free batteries were officially accepting global reservations. At present, The cobalt-free battery of Hive Energy has been officially mass-produced off the production line, and the energy density can reach 265Wh/Kg, and the total cost has dropped by 5-10%.
In addition, its 2019 began to develop NCMA quaternary batteries, the current energy density can already be achieved 280Wh / Kg, with heat resistance, low high temperature gas production, higher safety and other characteristics; CTP battery system also has a lower cost, higher efficiency than the traditional PACK scheme.
In terms of process innovation, Hive Energy uses a high-speed lamination process, which is indeed somewhat similar to BYD's blade battery. On this basis, the company also proposed a more advanced ultra-high-speed lamination 3.0 technology, the target speed of 0.125s/pcs, compared with the current 0.25s/pcs, the efficiency is greatly improved, and can be used for large battery cell production greater than 600mm, is expected to be mass production in 2023.
In general, Hive Energy has certain differentiated advantages in battery materials and production processes. By the end of 2020, the company has 2100 domestic patents and 50 overseas patents.
Ambitions for 2600GWh expansion
With a certain technical foundation, the customer base of Hive Energy is not bad.
Backed by Great Wall Motors, Hive Energy is currently mainly equipped with all the models of its electric vehicle brand Euler. With the outbreak of new energy vehicle sales in 2020, the sales of Euler automobiles positioned as young people are also growing, with the total sales of Euler vehicles in 2020 being 56,300 units, an increase of 44.76% year-on-year; from January to November 2021, the cumulative sales volume increased by 162.2% year-on-year to 114,000 units.
After the verification of the supporting Great Wall Euler, the customer base of Hive Energy has also begun to expand. At present, the company has obtained 25 sales points from mainstream automobile manufacturers at home and abroad, such as Geely, Dongfeng, PSA, Tianji, and Zero Run.
Yang Hongxin, CEO of Hive Energy, also revealed on the second battery day on December 8 that the company has received more than 400GWh of passenger car orders.
However, with orders in hand, the bottleneck of power battery production capacity has become an urgent problem for the company to solve.
In November this year, the monthly loading volume of power batteries in the country exceeded 20GWh for the first time, reaching a scale of 20.8GWh, up 96% year-on-year. Among them, CATL occupies 55% of the entire market with an loading volume of 11.45GWh, dominating the market.
In terms of total vehicle loading from January to November, CATL also led by BYD in second place by 16.6% with a market share of more than 50%, compared with 2.61Gwh of Hive Energy, ranking 6th, with a market share of only 2%.
Expanding production is a direct way for battery manufacturers, including Honeycomb Energy, to catch up. Since the end of 2020, Hive Energy has set up bases in Saarland, Sichuan Suining, Chengdu, Huzhou, Zhejiang, Ma'anshan, Nanjing Lishui, Jiangsu Changzhou Jintan, Jiangsu Yancheng, planning new production capacity will reach 229GWh, it can be said that there are new expansion projects almost every month.
However, this is not satisfied with the ambition of expanding the production of hive energy.
Just on December 8, Battery Day, Yang Hongxin said that the production capacity of Hive Energy under construction has increased to 297GWh, and it is planned to achieve 600GWh of battery production capacity in 2025, corresponding to an effective output of 450GWh.
Source: Network
What is the concept of 600GWh battery?
The current battery boss Ningde era, it is expected that the design capacity should reach at least 520GWh by 2025; AVIC lithium battery plans to have a production capacity of 500GWh by 2025; and Guoxuan Hi-Tech plans to have a production capacity of only 300GWh in 2025.
Overseas manufacturers, LG Chem plans to expand battery production capacity to 300GWh by 2023, and SKI plans to have a production capacity of 200GWh by 2025.
That is to say, Hive Energy plans to compete for the largest share of the market in the benchmark Ningde era within 4 years.
However, the expansion of power battery production is not achieved overnight, requiring a lot of funds and a long time cycle, in this process, the market pattern changes at any time, hive energy aggressive expansion target to achieve a difficult time.
Even if the expansion of production is successful, not all companies can ride the wind. Most institutions predict that the demand for power batteries in 2025 will be around 1TWh, while the capacity planning of domestic mainstream power battery manufacturers in 2025 is close to 3TWh, which means that there may be two-thirds of the production capacity that will be unpaid.
3 summary
Driven by new energy vehicles, power batteries have undoubtedly become one of the most lively segments this year, not only the major power battery manufacturers are fighting and secretly competing, but even capital wants to bet.
However, the competition of power batteries will not end in the short term, and expanding production capacity and reducing costs have become the common development goals of major manufacturers. In this context, second-tier battery manufacturer Honeycomb Energy proposed large financing and promoted the ambition of 600Gwh production expansion plan, trying to compete for this huge cake.
Expansion is necessary, but the market demand will eventually be saturated, if the company can not rely on this expansion to enter the head of the enterprise, I am afraid that what remains is the chicken feathers of overcapacity.