The new decade of new energy vehicles: crossing the inflection point and ushering in a big test

Today, when carbon peaking and carbon neutrality have become the global consensus, new energy vehicles are becoming the future vane of the automotive industry.

Whether it is the policy support at the government level, the focus of enterprise innovation and development, or the purchase choices of consumers, especially young consumers in the "Z era", they have focused on new energy vehicles as never before. The accumulation of traditional car companies and the strong entry of new car-making forces have catalyzed the transformation of the automotive industry and the development of the new energy automobile industry.

There is no doubt that after the policy-driven cultivation period, new energy vehicles are about to enter a new stage of market dominance. Technological change has accelerated, and market competition has intensified, but the industry has gone up after the big wave of sand and sand, leaving more room for imagination at present.

Since the development of the new energy automobile industry, different characteristics have been formed in the main body of the market, which is not only affected by the attributes of the enterprise, but also shows a variety of development paths, highlighting the active vitality.

Hyperactive, or self-motivated, this type of enterprise or brand is prominently manifested in three "accelerations". The first is to speed up the volume, monthly sales increased year-on-year, and exhausted all tricks to increase market share. The second is to accelerate the launch of new products, accelerate innovation and change in terms of appearance, mileage, and intelligence, and promote the iterative upgrading of products. The second is to accelerate the improvement of influence, timely attention to market feedback, social evaluation.

Anxious businesses. Its anxiety is mainly reflected in the weak product strength and low sales volume; the mismatch between input and output; the layout of the industrial chain is inherently insufficient, and there are shortcomings and strengths that are not strong. The key to its development is to face up to the problem, find the root cause, come up with practical and effective measures, and truly answer the "no product power, where is the brand power?" "There is no consumer-centricity, where are the consumers to pay?" "Without being down-to-earth and working hard for a long time, where is the hit and the product sells well?"

Step-by-step. Such car companies generally perform well because of their fuel vehicle sales, good economic benefits, "big head" is still fuel vehicles, the current proportion of new energy vehicle sales is relatively low. However, as new energy vehicles become the direction of industrial development, they are also accelerating the layout of new energy, which contains strong development potential.

"Pass three levels" and master the core code of development

The development of new energy vehicles requires the common progress of technical products and enterprise operations. To drive the industry upward with technological innovation, to ensure sustainable development with enterprise benefits, and to bravely pass the "three passes", one is indispensable.

The key to technology is the innovation and evolution of power battery technology. Through measures such as material technology, structural design, and process improvement, batteries need to achieve key breakthroughs in the dimensions of improving performance, improving safety, and improving ease of use in the next decade. In terms of energy density, it is expected that in 2030, the energy density of energy-type lithium-ion power batteries will exceed 400Wh/kg and the life will exceed 1500 times; Both energy and power take into account the energy density of lithium-ion power batteries exceeding 300Wh/kg and the life expectancy exceeding 5,000 times. In terms of improving convenience, 4C and 6C high-rate fast charging technologies will be more used, and the battery system can operate normally in a wide temperate zone of -30 °C to 60 °C. At the same time, as an important solution to solve the high energy density and high safety balance, semi-solid-state batteries and solid-state batteries will gradually mature, and realize large-scale loading applications around 2030. In short, making new energy vehicles have a longer range, stronger environmental adaptability, and more convenient charging and replacement will be the technical barriers for the first breakthrough in the industrial examination.

Safety clearance, that is, it is necessary to further reduce the risk of spontaneous combustion and heat diffusion of new energy power batteries and vehicles, to ensure that even if the heat is out of control, it does not smoke and does not fire, and the worst is to only smoke and not fire. In the next decade, it depends on the breakthrough change of the battery material itself: large-scale applications such as solid-liquid mixed electrolyte combination technology, all-solid-state batteries and new high-safety material systems will greatly reduce the risk of thermal runaway of the battery cell; on the other hand, it is necessary to rely on more intelligent battery systems: battery safety early warning technology, battery safety alarm technology, battery thermal diffusion inhibition technology, etc. The rapid development of key safety performance parameters such as battery temperature will be monitored in advance, timely monitoring and safety suppression after thermal runaway. Effectively solve the bottleneck of "safety barrier" of new energy vehicles.

Benefit pass, to be precise, is the benefit of new energy vehicle enterprises, which is in the completion of the switch from policy-driven to market-driven, the new energy automobile industry must crack the proposition, the key factors have three aspects: First, the cost of power batteries, the current cost of power lithium-ion batteries has dropped to about 0.7 yuan / Wh, the future with material optimization, scale growth and other changes, it is expected that the cost of energy-based lithium-ion power batteries in 2030 will be less than 0.45 yuan / Wh, the cost of the vehicle will be truly comparable with traditional fuel vehicles The second is the scale effect, after crossing the 10% market share critical point this year, new energy vehicles are expected to achieve the market share target of 20% in 2025 in advance, which will accelerate the release of the scale effect of the new energy automobile industry, reduce the cost of enterprises, and improve profitability; the third is low-carbon policy support, such as ZEV points trading to contribute most of Tesla's profits, double integration, carbon market and other policies for corporate profit support will be further highlighted.

"Attack the four cities" and create a green travel life

Low carbon is the basic background of a better life, and green travel has become an important component. In addition to the self-development of enterprises and technologies, it is also necessary to build an ecosystem to provide guarantees for green travel life.

Convenient realization of charging and replacing. By the end of 2020, the national vehicle-to-pile ratio has reached 3:1, but there is still a big gap from the construction target of 1:1 vehicle-to-pile ratio in 2030. In order to achieve further rapid growth in the scale of the new energy vehicle market, in addition to the improvement of bicycle mileage and the progress of charging and replacing technology, it depends more on the developed and convenient charging and replacing infrastructure, and on whether consumers can easily replenish and quickly replenish electricity. In the next ten years, it is necessary to solve the problem that private distribution cannot be installed and is not easy to use, and at the same time, further solve the problems of imperfect and unreasonable layout of public charging and replacing facilities, improve the utilization rate of facilities, and truly establish and activate a convenient, fast and intelligent new energy vehicle power supply system.

Scene applications for shared travel. In the next decade, public travel areas such as public transportation, taxi, and logistics will accelerate the comprehensive new energy, especially in the shared travel field represented by online ride-hailing, which will become a key position for new energy due to its high use intensity and low comprehensive operating costs. Relevant data show that by the end of 2020, the scale of online ride-hailing users in China has reached 365 million, and the proportion of young people has increased year by year. In the face of huge market demand, the scale of online ride-hailing will also gradually grow, and it is expected to reach 3 million in 2030. It is worth noting that the new energy sharing travel platform will gradually present "urban agglomeration", and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Chengdu-Chongqing, etc. as the core areas for the development of new energy network ride-hailing, will form their own independent operating platforms with a high probability.

The deep integration of intelligent networking. The accelerated development of new energy vehicles and the popularization and application of intelligent networking are interacting and empowering each other, and it can be said that the most critical competitive element of new energy vehicles in the second half is intelligent networking. Under the background that it is difficult for new energy vehicles to generate consumption premiums, intelligent networking has a high value bonus for new energy vehicles. In the next decade, with the continuous investment of traditional car companies and new car-making forces in the field of intelligent networking, as well as the gradual implementation of cross-border forces such as the Internet and ICT around the layout of the automobile industry, intelligent cockpits and automatic driving will further accelerate the mature introduction and large-scale application, and new energy and intelligent networking will also move towards deep integration.

The improvement and coordination of the industrial chain. With the continuous improvement of new energy vehicle production and sales and the continuous accumulation of stock scale, we are about to usher in the decommissioning tide of power batteries, and related research forecasts show that in 2022, the theoretical decommissioning of China's power batteries will be close to 25GWh, entering the large-scale decommissioning period, and will exceed 150GWh/year in 2030; at the same time, it is foreseen that after entering the TWh era, the supply of key resources for upstream lithium, cobalt, nickel and other power batteries will remain tight for a long time. These all require that the industrial chain supporting the battery cascade utilization, dismantling and recycling industry can form an effective synergy.

The past is gone, the future is coming. The new energy automobile industry that has crossed the inflection point is about to usher in a real test in the new decade, and no matter how fast or slow the process is, we have already seen the blue sky and white clouds of "net zero emissions" through the window of new energy vehicles. (Zhang Xiyong, General Manager of BAIC Group)