Shentucar original
Author | Zhou Jifeng
Edit | dawn
The NINGDE era, a battery giant with a market capitalization that surpasses the sum of General Motors and Ford, has recently felt challenged, something that has not been encountered in recent years.
In the Ningde era, the biggest winner in this wave of car manufacturing, whether in terms of installed capacity or market share, it has been ranking first in the world for many years.
South Korean market research firm SNE Research has released the global power battery installed ranking for the first 11 months of 2021. CATL ranked first with 79.8GWh of battery installed capacity, with a market share of 31.8%, far exceeding the second and third places (LG and Panasonic ranked second and third respectively, with installed capacity of 51.5GWh and 31.3GWh respectively)
Since entering 2022, the bad news has been one after another.
36Kr reported that Xiaopeng decided to cut the supply share of the CATL era and introduce a new battery supplier, Zhongxinhang. Before cooperating with Xiaopeng Automobile, Zhongxin Aviation had replaced the NINGDE era as the first supplier of GAC New Energy.
Xiaopeng's installed capacity in the Ningde era accounts for only 6%, which does not have any impact on the performance of the Ningde era. The reputation of China New Air Is not as good as that of the Ningde era, ranking third in the country in terms of monthly installed capacity, and it is recently preparing to go to Hong Kong for an IPO.
But the move sent a clear signal: challengers had emerged.
Another blockbuster rival is also about to land on the capital market, in early January, the biggest competitor of catheter era LG New Energy announced that it began to accept investor subscriptions, and is expected to be listed in South Korea on January 27. Once LG New Energy is successfully listed, the two are bound to usher in a close hand-to-hand battle.
Capital markets are no longer enthusiastic. Since December 2021, the stock price of CATL has been declining. Entering 2022, the situation has not improved, and as of January 11, the stock price of CATL has fallen 22% from its highest point.
For decades, the Ningde era relied on policy protection, stepping on the right outlet, super production capacity, and binding upstream and downstream industrial chains, sitting on the iron throne and dominating the global automotive circle. Today, the enemy has appeared from all sides.
Be enthroned
In 2012, Tesla launched the industry's first electric coupe Model S that can achieve OTA, shocking the world, and since then, a new energy revolution in the name of "electrification and intelligence" has swept the world.
In China, a man named Zeng Yuqun sensed the change, bought the power battery division from a Japanese TDK company, named it Ningde Times, and established the company in his hometown of Ningde.
6 years later, this battery manufacturer from Fujian has become the world's first battery giant. Many car companies have cooperated with CATL, including BMW, Volkswagen, Daimler, Tesla, Weilai, Ideal, Xiaopeng and so on. In order to buy the batteries of the Ningde era, the car giants had to pay huge security deposits, wait in line, and if necessary, the boss personally visited the site.
In May 2021, the Cataline Era ushered in a historic moment, with a market value of more than 1 trillion yuan, becoming the first trillion-dollar market value company on the ChiNext board. In November, CATL became the leader of A-shares with a market value second only to Moutai in market value.
Battery systems are key to the performance of electric vehicles, with batteries accounting for 35%-50% of the total vehicle cost. If the battery has become the main artery running through the entire new energy industry, then there is no doubt that this major artery is now tightly grasped by the Ningde era.
The Ningde era was embraced on the throne, during which countless people wanted to surpass, but they failed.
Source / Visual China
For a battery manufacturer, the key to victory lies in large-scale mass production capabilities and control of the supply chain. When Volkswagen Group built its own battery factory, it said that in the era of electric vehicles, the importance of scale far exceeds its importance in the era of fuel vehicles.
According to catheter times, the production capacity in the first nine months of 2021 is about 106.41GWh, and the lithium-ion battery production line that has been completed and put into production will reach a total annual production capacity of 220GWh to 240GWh after completing the ramp-up of production capacity and running stably. This production capacity far exceeds that of BYD, which ranks second in China.
Since its listing, the Ningde era has begun to throw money into the upstream and downstream industrial chains. In the past ten years, the Ningde era has quietly established its own empire. From the most upstream lithium ore, lithium salt, to the positive and negative electrode materials of the battery, manufacturing equipment, and then to the car-related chips, chassis, automatic driving, and lidar technology, the Ningde era has a layout. Even now, investment has not stopped, according to the data disclosed by the Ningde era, since the beginning of 2020, the giant has invested a total of 11.9 billion yuan in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.
Because the procurement scale of the Ningde era is large, and the upstream raw material supply is bound, the same is procurement, and the Ningde era can get raw materials at a lower price. Huaan Securities pointed out in the research report that the ternary cathode, which accounts for the highest proportion of battery costs, is more than 10% in the Price Discount of NINGDE Era compared to other customers in 2017-2019.
As a battery giant, the patents of the Ningde era are numerous, from the material system to the design and manufacturing of all aspects.
By opening up the upstream and downstream industrial chains and reducing costs, the Ningde era can obtain greater bargaining space, and then maintain technological innovation through continuous investment in research and development, and obtain more stable production capacity and scale.
Amazing production capacity, stable supply chain, and continuous innovation of technology, the combination of the three, helped the Ningde era to build an airtight wall in the battery market, no car company can bypass.
Car companies look for Plan B
In 2021, the global new energy market exploded, and domestically, from January to November, the production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 3.023 million units and 2.99 million units, respectively, more than doubling the growth of 2020.
The production went up, but the battery was not enough. Factories around the world are running at full capacity, and there are still about 30%-50% of battery gaps.
There may be more gaps in the future. SNE Research previously predicted that by 2023, the global demand for power batteries for electric vehicles will reach 406GWh, while the supply of power batteries is expected to be 335GWh, a gap of about 18%.
"Battery famine" has become the new Achilles heel of electric vehicles after the "core famine".
The lack of batteries stuck in the neck of car companies, and it is not only one, but also a giant. On the January 2021 earnings call, Tesla CEO Musk said that battery supply has become a bottleneck in the popularity of electric vehicles.
Even leading companies cannot meet the needs of OEMs. Zeng Yuqun once revealed that the company's products have a tight supply problem, and the customer's urging has made him "almost unbearable".
For car companies in the rising period, especially for new car-making forces, the lack of batteries is almost a fatal blow. But in this fatal problem, the main engine factory has no right to speak, and it is the battery manufacturer that really holds the right to speak and take the initiative.
In April 2021, at the 100th anniversary celebration conference of Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shen Nanpeng of Sequoia Capital raised a question to Zeng Yuqun: So many car companies want batteries, your amount this year has been fixed, how to distribute batteries in the Ningde era?
The answer is, distributed by "money".
Zeng Yuqun explained very frankly at the meeting that there were two specific distribution methods in the Ningde era:
Buy production line package production line: Car companies can package production lines, but can not only package for one year, need long-term cooperation. For example, 5-10 years of cooperation, the amount of cooperation reached 100GWh.
Lock volume: If the output of car companies fluctuates within plus or minus 15% every year, then CATL can also cooperate with them, but if the output of car companies is low, it is necessary to make up for the difference in the middle.
According to the chairman's words: "A promise without money is not serious." ”
In the era of traditional fuel vehicles, the main engine factory is the absolute king, usually the car company will have multiple suppliers on a component, and the cooperation model is to arrive first and pay later. But the Ningde era is different, car companies need to pay a deposit first, and after the money is in place, the goods can be produced. Sometimes, even if the money is in place, the goods are not necessarily in place.
There have been rumors that He Xiaopeng, the founder of Xiaopeng Automobile, in order to successfully get the battery of the Ningde era, did not hesitate to go to the front line of the Ningde era factory for a week.
In the face of a growing and aggressive supplier, there are more and more voices of dissatisfaction. Li Bin, the founder of NIO, said on the third quarter of 2021 earnings call that CATL exclusively supplies NIO's batteries, and although it has spent a lot of investment to increase production capacity, the battery supply still determines the ceiling of NIO's delivery.
The NINGD era was once the absolute Plan A for OEMs, and now, they are eagerly looking for Plan B.
It is not that there have been no cases in history of replacing battery suppliers. A classic example is that Tesla once had a good relationship with Panasonic. However, because Panasonic's production capacity could not keep up with Tesla's demand, in the end Tesla chose to abandon Panasonic and cooperate with catheter times.
In 2022, the replacement will come again, only this time it may be replaced by the Ningde era.
There is more than one enemy
OEMs look for Plan B. Battery players, who have been suppressed by the "King of Ning", have finally ushered in an opportunity.
There was more than one family that besieged the Ningde era, and the enemy attack overseas was the fiercest.
LG New Energy, the world's power battery installed capacity has long occupied the second place, the biggest opponent of the Ningde era, and recently sacrificed a big killer - IPO listing.
In December 2020, LG New Energy was spun off from LG Chemical and began to develop independently. A year later, LG New Energy launched its first IPO in South Korea, preparing to go public on January 27. According to the Wall Street Journal, LG New Energy's valuation will be between $51 billion and $59 billion. It will be the largest IPO in South Korean history.
In the prospectus, LG New Energy plans to invest part of the funds in research and development of new products, as well as the establishment of smart factories to improve product quality and processes, and the rest of the funds will be used to expand production.
After the listing, LG New Energy, which has the help of capital, may become the most difficult enemy in the Ningde era.
The leading players in the global power battery market are mainly concentrated in China, Japan and South Korea. South Korea's LG New Energy and Japan's Panasonic Electric are both heavyweight players in the battery industry. The Ningde era can overtake in curves and grow into a battery giant, which has a lot to do with the protection of policies.
In 2015, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Automotive Power Battery Industry Specification Conditions". Only when the new energy model is equipped with a power battery that meets the conditions and enters the prescribed list catalog, can it enjoy the subsidy for new energy vehicles, which is called the "white list" policy in the industry.
This document directly shuts out international giants such as LG Chem and Samsung. The policy restricts the production of automotive power batteries by wholly foreign-owned enterprises, which creates a unique development environment for domestic power battery companies. In 2019, the document expired, and overseas battery companies finally had the opportunity to enter the Chinese market.
In recent years, LG New Energy has grown rapidly. The global installed capacity of LG New Energy in 2020 is 33.5GWh, which is very weak compared with the 34.3GWh of the Ningde era. On January 10, 2022, LG New Energy announced that considering LG's battery order backlog, it is expected that its global market share will exceed that of the Ningde era.
Domestic predators have also surfaced, and the biggest predator is BYD.
The world's power battery players are automatically divided into two major technical schools - lithium iron phosphate and ternary lithium. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. BYD chose to bet on lithium iron phosphate, and the Ningde era was more good at ternary lithium. For a long time, ternary lithium batteries have become the mainstream choice of the majority of car companies with their low temperature resistance and high energy density.
It is also with the outlet of ternary lithium batteries that the Ningde era has stepped on BYD, the leader in the field of lithium iron phosphate batteries.
Who would have thought that in 2021, the subsidies in the new energy vehicle market will fall sharply, raw materials will rise sharply, and lithium iron phosphate batteries will return to the outlet. BYD has once again ushered in its own era.
In the past, whether in terms of installed capacity or market share, there was a lot of gap between BYD and Ningde era. In November 2021, the installed capacity of the NINGD era reached 11.45GWh, and BYD installed capacity was 3.46GWh. But BYD's production capacity is rapidly increasing: 2.8GWh in 2019, 3.88GWh in 2020, and 13.4GWh by January-September 2021.
In 2020, BYD launched a "blade battery", which uses CTP grouping to increase energy density by 50%, but the price is only two-thirds of the 811 ternary lithium battery in the Ningde era.
Many OEMs are optimistic about blade batteries and have begun to extend an olive branch to BYD, and the Financial Associated Press said that BYD may supply blade batteries to Tesla in the second quarter of 2022.
The "Warring States Era" is coming
In order to grasp the initiative, generous car companies began to choose to walk on "two legs", both in cooperation with battery factories in research and development, but also in the choice of self-built factories. For example, Volkswagen plans to invest 3.5 billion yuan to build its own battery factory at the same time, announced the investment in the domestic second-tier brand Guoxuan Hi-Tech.
For example, Tesla is looking for new battery partners on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is building its own battery factory in Kuaima, with a total investment of about 5 billion euros (about 38.1 billion yuan). Tesla's battery factory in Germany may become the world's largest battery factory after completion, with an annual production capacity of 100GWh.
Relatively less generous car companies, began to look for new partners.
Xiaopeng is ready to introduce a new main battery supplier in The Innovation Airlines, and WEILAI has also chosen to develop semi-solid-state batteries with Weilan New Energy.
In addition to the BYD and Ningde era, there are actually a large number of second-echelon battery manufacturers lurking in China, such as Zhongxin Airlines, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Yiwei Lithium Energy, Fu energy, Sunwoda, Ruipu Energy, Hive Energy and so on.
These second echelons have long been suppressed by the Ningde era, and innovation has given them the possibility of overtaking in curves.
In addition to conventional lithium iron phosphate and ternary lithium batteries, second-tier battery manufacturers can provide more differentiated battery technologies around battery materials, battery structure, battery safety and other aspects.
Source / unsplash
Fu Neng Technology has developed a soft pack battery with an energy density of 330Wh/kg, which can be cycled more than 1500 times; the current 300Wh/kg battery technology of Ewell Lithium Energy can reach more than 3000 times; And Zhongxin Airlines plans to launch a 350Wh/kg power battery product that can be mass-produced within 3 years...
Willing to innovate in technology and able to actively cooperate with the needs of the main engine factory, the second echelon began to gradually obtain the recognition of the main engine factory.
Perhaps with the case of "20 times the stock price has risen in three years" in the Ningde era, the recent capital has also turned its attention to battery manufacturers such as Zhongxin Airlines that have begun to emerge.
The official website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission recently posted the news that China Innovation Airlines has submitted a prospectus, and the scale of the listing fundraising is 1 billion US dollars. Great Wall Motor's Hive Energy has also implemented three rounds of financing since 2021 and recently prepared to go public.
With the investment of capital, second-tier battery companies are accelerating their expansion. Since 2021, there are incomplete statistics from the media, such as BYD, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Yiwei Lithium Energy, Hive Energy and other power battery companies announced nearly 30 battery expansion projects, with a total investment of more than 300 billion yuan.
According to the sales volume of new energy vehicles, BOC Securities is expected to reach 500GWh and 1020GWh by 2025, and 1100GWh and 2600GWh in 2030, and the market scale will be further expanded.
In the Ningde era, it was not enough to swallow such a huge market.
Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, pointed out at the beginning of 2021 that 2021 will be the first year of the rapid development of electric vehicles in China, the industry pattern will be adjusted at an accelerated pace, and the century-old changes will begin to enter the "Warring States Era" from the "Spring and Autumn Period".
Nowadays, it seems that the "Warring States Era" belonging to the power battery industry has also arrived. The Ningde era, which occupies half of the battery market, not only has to face the competition from Japanese and Korean companies and domestic second-echelon battery manufacturers, but also has to face the potential threat of car companies building their own battery factories.
At present, the technology of power batteries is not yet mature, Zeng Yuqun's supervisor during the doctoral period - Academician Chen Liquan has publicly stated that the future development direction of batteries is nothing more than two roads: one is the road of solid-state batteries, and the other is the road of sodium-ion batteries.
But there is still a long way to go to the endgame. Ouyang Minggao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and vice chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, pointed out that the real time for solid-state batteries to be put into large-scale commercial applications is between 2025 and 2030. He pointed out that lithium-ion batteries will be used for a long time.
Before the solid-state battery really landed on the ground for mass production, it was not known whose hand the deer died.
*The inscription is from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.