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Recently, an article "Ningde Era: Cracks in the Trillion Battery Empire" pushed the Ningde era to the cusp of the storm. Even believed to be the culprit that triggered the sharp decline in the stock price of the Ningde era, on December 24, the Ningde era went all the way down after the opening, falling nearly 9.5% at one point, falling 7.28% by the close, and the market value evaporated by 105.6 billion yuan compared with the previous trading day.
According to the electric knower, this article broke a lot of unknown insider information about the Ningde era, which seems to let everyone see a Ningde era of "the world is bitter for a long time" and an "arrogant" Ningde era, and the "crack" began. The Ningde era, which was once "proactive" and "customer-centric" and created today's brilliant achievements, may be changing step by step. The Ningde era is addicted to rapidly expanding orders can not extricate themselves, the demand for innovation is more and more ignored, in terms of technology is not advancing or retreating, and the "customer-centric" for customer service is slowly becoming "me-centered", and the production capacity is unconsciously being chased or even exceeded by other battery companies.
Technically unenterprising. It may feel a bit exaggerated to say that the Ningde era was "not thinking ahead", but through some things behind it, everything seems to be happening again. In recent years, new technologies in the new energy power battery industry have emerged, whether it is from safety, reliability, etc. or mileage have made great progress. For example, the blade battery launched by BYD, the One-Stop battery technology and products launched by China New Air (formerly AVIC Lithium Battery), and the "short blade" battery launched by Honeycomb Energy, etc., each battery company is constantly innovating, and there is not much gap in the technology of the current mass-produced battery itself. Take the current installed capacity of the third ranked Zhongxin Airlines, its launch of a high degree of functional integration, minimalist structure, high safety, high reliability One-Stop battery technology and products, ternary battery system energy density has exceeded 280Wh / kg, technically has surpassed the Ningde era, in the premise of 80% of the capacity maintenance, can do more than 3,000 cycles, support 10 years 800,000 kilometers.
Before 2020, GAC Aean used the battery of the Ningde era, and the frequent spontaneous combustion incidents made GAC Aian anxious, in April 2019, GAC launched the flagship electric vehicle Aion S, which was positioned as the electric vehicle with the longest cruising range at that time, thanks to the NCM811 battery of the Ningde era high-nickel product. However, after the vehicle was listed, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse, and the car had many fire accidents within 4 months. Since then, GAC Ae'an has gradually switched the battery of the Ningde era to the battery of China New Aviation, and so far, there has been almost no case of spontaneous combustion of GAC Ae'an. With the delivery of 14,566 units in November, GAC Aeon became the third new power car company to successfully exceed 100,000 yuan in cumulative sales this year, in addition to Xiaopeng and Ideal.
Some people believe that China's power battery industry has been leading the world by relying not on technology, but on policies and large-scale production. In fact, technology for power battery companies is the lifeline, no excellent technology is unable to gain a foothold in the industry, Jun does not see that baiqi new energy vehicles that have been relying on policies and markets for many years to sit on the champion of new energy vehicle sales are now where?!
In terms of service, what we used to feel the most was "customer-centric", and now everything is centered on the Ningde era.
A leading car company is developing new battery pack technology and requires the weight of the battery pack to be controlled, but the Ningde era is negative. "We designed it ourselves and told them what to do (in the Ningde era), and they weren't willing to implement it." The engineering staff of the car company said bluntly. Because new process execution involves the development of new supply chains and machining technologies, this has the potential to increase costs and slow down project delivery.
And a start-up car company engineer said, "We feel that the battery pack is not rigid enough, want to adjust, they (Ningde era) said that this is the standard program, can not move." "They said something was wrong, they would go down."
Weilai prepared for the 150-degree semi-solid-state battery pack project, and the first thing to find was the Ningde era. At that time, the WEILAI engineering team spent almost half a year looking for leaders at all levels in the Ningde era, including Lin Yongshou (president of the passenger car solution department), Wu Kai (chief scientist) and other leaders at all levels, but they were rejected. "They think it's impossible, no one in the industry is doing it." No one wants to mobilize engineering resources.
These are the three cases of CATL service customers mentioned in the article. Interestingly, in stark contrast, China Innovation Airlines expresses its sense of service. According to the members of the GAC New Energy team, in the process of introducing China New Energy, although it is very hard, but the cooperation of China New Air is very tacit, because GAC is located in Guangzhou, Guangdong, AVIC Lithium Battery in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, GAC personnel often work in Changzhou on weekends, sometimes things are urgent, midnight arrives, it is also common to call AVIC Lithium Battery to work, and all of this will actively cooperate with China New Air. In the end, GAC put forward more than 2,000 rectification opinions to Zhongxin Airlines, and Zhongxin Airlines quickly completed the rectification according to the requirements and established a mass production quality system that met the requirements.
This is very similar to the story of the rise of the Ningde era in cooperation with BMW, but today's Ningde era is no longer the Ningde era, and battery companies like Zhongxin Airlines are staging the story of the Ningde era.
In addition to technology and services, some people think that the advantages of the Ningde era are still in terms of production capacity, if it was two years ago, it is no problem to say so. And now everything is changing rapidly. Catallic times said in its previous reply to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange's inquiry letter that the company's design capacity should reach at least 520GWh by 2025 according to the current market share. BYD mainly self-supply is not mentioned, to the third largest installed capacity of China New Air, for example, in 2025 the company's planned production capacity will exceed 500GWh, 2030 is expected to reach 1TWh. At this rate, there will be a fundamental change at some point in the near future.
The patent war between the Ningde era and Tafil and Zhongxin Aviation may accelerate the cracking of the "crack", and eventually make the former "King of Ning" go to mediocrity. As netizens commented on the Ningde era, "leading enterprises have lost themselves in large orders." Although the faucet saw the progress and innovation of others, the faucet convinced itself with a large number of orders: its own products are the mainstream. As everyone knows, when the quantitative changes of others' continuous progress and innovation produce qualitative changes, the dragon head has lagged behind a long way. "Weakness and ignorance are not obstacles to survival, arrogance is."
Let's summarize some of the insider details in this article that are not known. People can't help but sigh that the Ningde era has finally become the nasty way it once was, and the Ningde era that was once there can never go back.
According to the sources of the capital, in 2019, Weilai fell into the quagmire of funds, and the Ningde era implemented the principle of "having money to ship" for new cars, and there were Weilai executives who once auctioned out real estate certificates before persuading the other party to ship.
At the end of last year, the vice president of procurement of a domestic car company took an acceptance draft of 600 million yuan to visit the senior management of the Ningde era many times, without success, "The other party wants a wire transfer, the kind that arrives in 15 days." "The arrival time of an acceptance draft is usually 60 days.
In the agreement signed between the car company and CATL obtained by 36Kr, the car company needs to make expectations for battery demand in the next 5 or even 10 years, and pay a deposit in advance to CATL for "production line construction, manpower expansion, material reserves, etc." This kind of agreement is similar to a bet, only if the car company completes the annual procurement outline (quota) according to expectations, the Ningde era will return this deposit year by year and in batches. It should be noted that the nature of the security deposit is similar to the deposit, not the advance payment, and the money for the battery still needs to be paid separately. However, in the traditional supply chain, car companies rarely experience this kind of "overlord clause" - a large number of suppliers in front of the car companies posture is to endure up to 60 days to 90 days of payment cycles, and to be pressed to less than 10% gross margin.
Zeng Yuqun, chairman of the Ningde era, said bluntly in the celebration of his alma mater, Shanghai Jiaotong University, that the effective way for car companies to buy batteries from the Ningde era is to buy the production line in advance. ”
But what's worse is that even if the car company pays, it may not be able to buy a full amount of batteries. Weilai's passenger car battery procurement in the Ningde era is second only to Tesla, but in the third quarter earnings meeting, Li Bin admitted that even if an exclusive supply cooperation is established with the Ningde era, the battery is still a big constraint on the delivery.
After the fire of GAC AionS, it involved the determination of liability and compensation, and the NINGDE era as a supplier "did not recognize and did not lose money". Since then, the relationship between GAC and the Ningde era has taken a sharp turn for the worse. Also from 2019, AVIC lithium battery gradually replaced the Ningde era as the first supplier of power batteries for passenger cars of GAC. Since the second half of last year, the new models declared by GAC New Energy brand Ean are no longer equipped with CATL batteries, and the suppliers have been replaced by AVIC lithium batteries and Fu Neng Technology.
According to the disclosure of the 36Kr article, the CATL era is still pursuing the founding team of Tafil, and several tafil executives were taken away by the police a few months ago for investigation on the grounds of infringing trade secrets.
According to the observation of people who have contacted the top level of the Ningde era, there are hundreds of middle and high-level personnel who joined the Ningde era in 2015, and most of them are currently worth hundreds of millions, "Some senior managers have bought Porsches to play, and the stock speculation is ten million (yuan) level in and out, what else does he have in mind to work?" ”
Here, more details will not be enumerated, interested friends can check the original text (Ningde era: the cracks of the trillion battery empire| krypton). This crack in the Ningde era may have already appeared, and this stems from the Ningde era indulging in rapidly expanding orders, ignoring the need for innovation, not thinking of enterprising technology, and self-centered in service.
The times have changed, and the Ningde era has not kept up with the times, once for car companies, there is no more high-quality battery suppliers to choose, cultivated an "arrogant" Ningde era, and now, whether from technology, production capacity or service, car companies have more choices of high-quality battery suppliers, and for car companies no longer have to put eggs in a basket. In addition, as a customer's car company, being led by the nose of the battery supplier is certainly not what they want, what they want is customer-centric, not the Ningde era.
Source: Electric Zhijia