Japan loves to "gamble on the fortunes of the country"
In recent history, Japan has gambled three times on national fortunes and is a veritable adventurist country.
In 1894, Japan launched the Sino-Japanese War against the Qing Dynasty under the condition of a serious shortage of its own finances, and Japan won.
In 1904, Japan made a second big bet against Tsarist Russia, then a European power. The total strength of the Standing Army of the Russian Army is as high as 1.05 million, the reserve force is as high as 3.75 million, and Japan can only mobilize up to 2 million reserve troops.
Under this absolute disadvantage, Japan still chose to go to war against Tsarist Russia, and the Russo-Japanese War was won again. However, the third time was not so lucky, Japan angered the undeserved United States, and a turning point in history began.
In the early morning of December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor with carrier-based aircraft and mini-submarines, causing heavy losses to the U.S. Pacific Fleet. As a result, Japan lost World War II and completely lost all its interests.
A country and a nation, some things contained in the historical genes, must still be vigilant at all times.
Nowadays, in the development direction of The Automobile Industry, Japan has bet on the 4th national fortune in the development of lithium battery vehicles or hydrogen energy vehicles. If the gamble is won, Japan may be able to prosper in the auto industry for decades.
Unfortunately, Japan seems to have lost the gamble again this time, and the goddess of destiny does not seem to be on Japan's side.
In 2018, automobile manufacturing, as a pillar industry of the Japanese economy, contributed 40% to industrial output value. Automotive-related industries provide at least more than 5.3 million jobs in Japan, or about 10 percent of Japan's total working population.
However, pure electric new energy vehicles are selling hot in China and the United States, the world is paying attention to the development of new energy vehicles, and even when German Volkswagen announced that it would stop developing internal combustion engine vehicles in 2026, Japan remained indifferent to it.
This is too strange, is Japan holding back any big tricks? How does China dominate the world step by step in the lithium battery industry? As the hegemon who once monopolized the manufacture of lithium batteries, how did Japan gamble on the national fortune?
A Japanese company that has taken the lead
The key to battery technology is volume, energy density, life, and other issues such as safety and manufacturing costs.
That is to say, the same volume of batteries, who can store more electricity, who has a longer life, who has a shorter charging time, who has an absolute technical advantage. Battery technology, like chips, is moving in the direction of small but powerful.
After traversing the periodic table and trying countless options, the researchers found that the only thing that fit best was the lithium battery. Under the premise of the same volume and capacity, lithium batteries not only have the largest energy density, the lightest weight, but also have the longest life.
That is to say, whoever masters the commercialization of lithium batteries can become the king of consumer electronics.
In 1991, Japanese scientist Akira Yoshino and American scientist Goodenough jointly completed a breakthrough in lithium battery technology. Lithium-ion batteries have the advantages of large capacity, light weight, no memory effect, etc., and the Japanese battery manufacturing industry has begun to take off.
In the same year, Sony released the first commercial lithium battery, and the world's first 18650 lithium battery that set the industry standard was born.
In the 1990s, Big Brother had just entered China, and the price was as high as 20,000 yuan, and the cost of batteries alone accounted for thousands of pieces. Not only is it huge and costly, but you can't even put your purse on the road, and you don't know it, and you think you've taken a brick.
The iterative development of lithium battery and chip technology has led to the miniaturization of consumer electronics including mobile phones, MP3/MP4, pagers and other products. Big Brother and pagers were quickly eliminated, and the era of mobile Internet began.
At this time, the production capacity of lithium batteries in Japan reached 400 million per year, occupying more than 90% of the global market share and monopolizing the mobile phone and notebook markets. China relies solely on producing cheap nickel-cadmium batteries and picking up a little scrap of the battery market.
At the same time, giants such as LG Chem and South Korea's Samsung have also laid out lithium batteries. If China's battery manufacturing industry wants to eat meat, it must be "tough" with these giant companies in terms of technology, cost, performance, etc., and kill a blood road.
The rise of China's battery industry
In 2000, Wang Chuanfu, as a high-caliber student who graduated from the department of metallurgical physical chemistry, led BYD to develop his own lithium battery. Compared with Japanese and Korean manufacturing, the biggest advantage of BYD's lithium battery is that it is cost-effective and the technical level gap is not large.
Relying on this advantage, BYD got the order of Motorola, becoming the first Chinese enterprise to win the order of the international big-name mobile phone battery, and later successively won Nokia, Ericsson, BYD's battery technology has been continuously recognized.
I saw that the migrant workers who had picked up leftovers to eat had broken into their own territory all the way. Japanese companies can't sit still and have launched a patent blockade war in an attempt to pin China's battery manufacturing industry to death in the cradle.
In 2002, Japan's Sanyo accused BYD of infringing on several of its patents in the United States, demanding that BYD be banned from selling lithium batteries to the United States. A year later, Sony repaired the knife, accusing BYD of infringing its patents and demanding a halt to its battery sales business in Japan.
These two industry giants have launched a patent lawsuit against BYD, and one shot is a fatal move, how did BYD survive?
Wang Chuanfu, who has a profound technical background, has long been prepared for this, and the so-called soldiers will come to cover the water.
For example, Sony's patent requires that the lithium battery liquid capacity must be 0.4 ml or more, and BYD controls the capacity within 0.4 ml. Sony requires the thickness of the metal edge of lithium batteries to be 80 to 250 μm, and BYD will do the thickness beyond this range.
Relying on the support of excellent technology and professional team, BYD first forced Sanyo to settle, and then won the lawsuit against Sony. So far, Japan has monopolized the lithium battery market for decades, and Chinese companies have barely occupied a place.
However, the application of lithium batteries is still limited to consumer electronics, and the technical application in automobiles is still out of reach.
Japan was kicked out
As a pioneer of new energy vehicles, Tesla has its own advantages in three electric technologies (batteries, motors, and electronic controls), but battery technology is relatively immature and expensive, accounting for more than 40% of the total car manufacturing costs.
Domestic new energy vehicles have also experienced a period of gloom for several years, and even once made consumers think that this is a century of scams.
Early lithium battery vehicles, there are a variety of technical barriers to be broken, short endurance, high production costs, charging pile construction is lacking, low retention rate, expensive replacement battery cost, each is a fatal defect, some problems have not been solved so far.
There are also some car companies that use the reputation of new energy vehicles to "cheat compensation", so that many consumers who dare to eat crabs pay IQ tax, which seriously deceives consumers' feelings. The future of the development of new energy vehicles is bleak, and Tesla has almost gone bankrupt several times.
Therefore, in this context, Japanese companies resolutely gave up the research and development of lithium battery vehicles and switched to the research and development direction of hydrogen energy vehicles.
"Mountains and rivers have no way out, willows and dark flowers and bright villages", the Japanese enterprises' tumultuous operation of seeing the wind and turning the rudder, finally made Chinese companies become the hegemons of the new energy vehicle battery market, and also let Japan miss the era of lithium battery cars!
On January 7, 2019, Tesla and Shanghai jointly announced the heavy news that Tesla Gigafactory officially started construction in Shanghai Lingang. This also means that the United States has left the two younger brothers of Japan and South Korea, and Japan has been officially kicked out of the field of lithium battery cars.
Just like the Apple industry chain, the United States produces creativity, design, and technology, and China helps it reduce the manufacturing cost of new energy vehicles with the most comprehensive upstream and downstream industrial chain, thus achieving high and low complementarity and partnering to earn global money.
At present, the gross profit of model Y made in China is 29.4%, and the gross profit of Model3 is as high as 39%, which is a profit margin that is really amazing in the automobile manufacturing industry, but it still cannot stop the Chinese people's yearning for new energy vehicles.
It can also be seen that China "rescued" Tesla, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Musk became the world's richest man.
However, it seems that Tesla has made a lot of profits in China, but the manufacture of new energy auto parts, as well as most of the upstream and downstream industrial chains on the whole vehicle, have remained in China, and the Cataline era has monopolized about 30% of the global power battery market.
In this way, perhaps in a few years, China's automobile manufacturing will be like mobile phone manufacturing, achieving the evolutionary process from quantitative change to qualitative change. Thus through the new energy vehicles to achieve the automotive industry curve overtaking, causing a dimensionality reduction blow to internal combustion vehicles.
Dishes and gambling
In 1977, Japan proposed a plan to build 200,000 electric vehicles, while China only proposed the development of new energy vehicles in 2008, which is 31 years later than Japan. Unfortunately, Japan gave up halfway and lacked the courage to carry out technological reforms to the end.
"When the heavens and the earth are all working together, the heroes are not free", the national fortune is an illusory thing, credible, but also unbelief.
But obviously Japan's gamble on national fortunes this time has lost again, just like when giving science and technology some skills, lithium battery cars and hydrogen energy cars choose one or the other. Japan, however, desperately chose hydrogen energy, thus losing the opportunity to chase the deer, shi also, luck also!