The performance of new energy vehicles in 2021 is very eye-catching, and the data from various institutions throughout the year shows that their sales have exceeded 3 million units. As of November 2021, the electrification penetration rate is close to 15%, and the total penetration rate of electrified vehicles is close to 20%.
Passenger car electrification market and development trend
The reason for the rapid improvement of the electric vehicle market is driven by the private consumer car market, from the perspective of products, good products have driven demand growth, and in 2021, Tesla and Wei Xiaoli have brought differentiated product experiences that have driven the growth of consumer demand.
From the perspective of the policy environment, the proposal of the double carbon strategy, the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality strategy, including the support of local industrial policies, also provides a good soil for the development of the new energy automobile industry.
From the cost point of view, the cost reduction effect brought about by technology-driven and scale effects is obvious, the cost of power batteries has dropped rapidly in recent years, and A00-class models can basically achieve parity.
From the perspective of supply chain, the domestic industrial chain of core links such as batteries, motors, and electronic controls basically occupies more than 70-80% of the global share.
From the perspective of capital, it can be found that capital is pouring into the battery industry represented by the lithium battery industry chain, and Ningde Times, BYD and other enterprises have grown into enterprises with a market value of 100 billion trillion.
Therefore, the new energy vehicle market in 2021 occupies a favorable time and place, and has spawned an outbreak under the joint effort.
Gaz Automotive Research Institute Industry Analyst Rochardi
The Gaz Automotive Research Institute believes that the sales distribution of new energy vehicle dumbbell type will undergo structural changes next year, because the A00-class car represented by Wuling Hongguang is the same as last year's proportion, and its market demand has actually reached a saturation point. Next year's incremental points in addition to B and C class vehicles, A0 level, A class products will be a relatively new market segment.
A-class cars will become the focus of many car companies, including joint venture brands and independent brands. Although A-class cars are the largest market segment in the automotive market, new energy vehicles are not outstanding in this regard at present, and many car companies will lay out new products from next year onwards.
Another big change in 2021 is the growth of the share of A-class plug-in hybrid vehicles, with the launch of BYD's DMI technology, these models can be improved in terms of fuel economy and cost performance, and the price of BYD Qin PLUS can be achieved with the same level of A-class plug-in mixed vehicles, A-class fuel vehicles to reach the same price, so the introduction of DMI technology helps to open up the situation in the plug-in mixed market.
Judging from the wave of development trends of new energy vehicles, it has gone through the era of three waves of car-making forces. The first wave of the era is the rise of brands represented by the new forces of Wei Xiaoli, who understand users, including creating products from an intelligent point of view, so it brings a wave of success. The second wave of enterprises represented by the transformation of independent brands into high-end electric vehicles, such as SAIC's Zhiji and Sharon Zhixing, operate these brands. The third wave of car manufacturing influence continues to expand the circle layer, Baidu, Huawei mobile phone Internet company as the representative of the enterprise, but also joined the car industry to bring new variables to the entire industry.
According to the data, independent brands + new forces occupy a total of 75% of the market share in the Chinese market, independent brands include domestic car companies, for China's consumer soil, including the pace of electric vehicles is faster than the pace of joint venture brands. As the BBA begins to transform, after the transformation of joint venture brands represented by Toyota and Honda, it will have a different impact on the market competition pattern, and the competitive landscape of the market will become more and more intense.
At present, the HEV market is still dominated by Honda and Toyota, but with the changan blue whale iDD system, the Great Wall lemon platform, Dongfeng Mach, BYD DMI and so on are also working on the hybrid market. With the breakthrough of independent brands, including the improvement of the maturity of the industrial chain, in the next 2-3 years, independent brands will also seek strong breakthroughs in the long-mix market.
(Image source: Gaz Automotive Research Institute)
The current situation of the core components market and the future research and judgment
The core components of new energy vehicles are three electric, hybrid is a special generator with hybrid, DHT and DHE. In terms of power batteries, with the outbreak of new energy vehicles, the battery market naturally rises. From a global perspective, there are two major new energy vehicle market increments, one is China, and the other is Europe. As of the Q1-Q3 quarter of 2021, the shipment of power batteries is 197GWh, an increase of 128%.
The domestic lithium battery industry is in a very strong position, and the share gap between the 1st-4th and 6-10th places continues to widen. For the 5-10 second echelon of enterprises, they are facing a more intense competitive pattern, how to seek a breakthrough? Some will choose to bind with the top car manufacturers, carry out strategic cooperation, and seek supply guarantees, including breakthroughs in the supply chain.
The outbreak of the downstream of the new energy vehicle market is already the trend of the times, so from the perspective of the support of the policy environment, enterprises are also frantically expanding production. By 2021, the head battery companies are all tens of billions of capital injections. In the case of high-end battery production capacity is very tight, although it is now continuing to expand production, but the battery capacity to expand out of the need for several years, but also need small samples, medium samples, large sample step by step experiments, so the stability of supply, including the quality of batteries, need to have a strong control of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. Therefore, the shortage of high-end batteries will continue for some time.
In terms of battery materials, the battery of lithium iron phosphate in 2021 ushered in a very obvious return. Lithium iron phosphate has a price advantage over ternary materials, and product energy density has made great progress in recent years through process and material innovation, from the perspective of battery material type, the share of lithium iron phosphate in 2021 has increased steadily, from 37.6% in January to 55.8% in November, and after the second half of the year, it exceeded the ternary. The reason is that on the one hand, it is driven by technological progress, and on the other hand, it is driven by the demand perspective.
Power battery safety is very important, whether it is a car company, or a battery company, it will release new products will promote the safety of the battery. From 2020 to 2021, NINGDE Times, Hive, Dongfeng and other companies have launched new batteries, all from the battery structure system, including the battery cell at all levels to explore, how to make the battery safer, these are structural improvements, or improved innovations. This requires a relatively strong control of the battery system from the dimension of the battery cell, from the battery structure, system, life cycle, which has become the direction of long-term efforts.
From the perspective of products, long battery life is very important. The release of models with a thousand kilometer endurance on the market, such as Weilai ET7, GAC Aion LX Plus, the battery pack capacity is basically above 100 degrees, and the future battery pack will also increase with the increase of the mileage. In fact, it is not difficult to reach 1,000 kilometers, but how to balance costs, including performance performance and energy density, car companies and battery companies need to constantly think.
With the development of battery technology, the evolution of battery electrochemical systems will meet the needs of different scenarios to meet the needs of diversified battery applications. Lithium iron phosphate batteries will be widely used at the economic level, while performance and high-end types will be dominated by ternary positive electrode + silicon carbon negative electrode, and solid-state batteries and cobalt-free batteries will become the key technical development directions in the future.
In terms of the electric drive market, the Gaz Automotive Research Institute concluded that there are currently four factions in the motor market, one is the vehicle system as a representative, such as Tesla, in the whole vehicle to make their own supporting motors or electric drive enterprises. The second is a foreign-funded motor supplier. The third is the domestic self-made third-party supplier. The fourth is new entrants like Huawei.
The current share of the integration of the industrial chain is about 72%, relatively speaking, the concentration is not as high as the battery link, and the manufacturing threshold of the electric drive industry will be slightly lower than the battery, so there will be new entrants to join, the current industry concentration has not yet increased, so the industry has the possibility of reshuffling in the future.
From the perspective of car companies, the appeal for electric drive is miniaturization, high efficiency and lightweight, so after the launch of the three-in-one drive, the two-year period has increased from a relatively niche share to nearly 80%, and the compact structure and more conducive to the layout of the vehicle three-in-one electric drive system has become a mainstream product. From January to November 2021, the supporting share of the three-in-one electric drive system in the domestic passenger car market has reached 77.7%, compared with 2019, the supporting share has increased by nearly 52%.
In the future, with the development of electrical and electronic architecture in the direction of domain control, domain fusion and even central controller, the next step in the direction of electric drive assembly integration will be all-in-one and domain controllers. However, the higher the degree of integration, the more challenges of EMC, thermal management and failure will increase, and all-in-one is the future direction, but it still needs time and industry further verification.
In the whole electric drive process, parts manufacturers pay more attention to the MCU, which is the control brain of the motor, including the control board, capacitors and power modules. As the core of the MCU, the power module is currently the most used IGBT, and the third generation of SiC power semiconductors will gradually increase in volume, forming a complementary trend with IGBT.
In addition to the motor electronic control trend, the future of the vehicle is also facing a high voltage trend, now most of the vehicle platform is in 400V, there are now some corporate layouts, such as Porsche, Xiaopeng, ideal are to 800V or even higher voltage architecture to extend. On the one hand, after the 400V rises to 800V, it can greatly help users solve the long charging time and shorten the user charging time. On the other hand, from the perspective of electric drive systems, higher voltages help to reduce losses and improve efficiency.
In the future, car companies will try to develop in the direction of high voltage, the future high voltage and low voltage can coexist, in order to solve the user charging anxiety, in addition to improving the use efficiency and building charging piles, the use of high voltage platform super fast charging has also become the industry's popular solution, the vehicle voltage platform is developing in the direction of 800V and above, will further promote the development of electric drive assembly towards high voltage. The third generation of power semiconductor silicon carbide is favored by the industry, commercial landing began to accelerate, silicon carbide wide bandgap semiconductor devices with high frequency, high efficiency, high temperature resistance, high power density and high reliability characteristics, is the key technology to achieve high efficiency of electric drive system, can optimize the vehicle mileage increased by 5% -10%, reduce battery costs and electric drive system volume.
For hybrid vehicles, most of the domestic enterprises currently use two legs to walk, and the layout of Add-on routes or hybrid special systems is two routes. For example, FORD DM-i and DM-P platforms, DM-i is similar to hybrid systems with hybrid-specific engines or transmissions to compare economical or high efficiency, low-loss operation. For another DM-P route, it is more suitable for use in models with strong power and power performance.
A system that combines DHT with DHE will have a simpler structure. For car companies, it has the advantage of lightweighting. Gaz Automotive Research Institute predicts that in the future, the thermal efficiency of hybrid special engines will put forward higher requirements, and the demand for a wider area of efficiency, with the application of a variety of high-efficiency engine technologies, it is expected that the market size of hybrid special engines (DHE) will exceed 3 million units in 2028.
Sorting out the supply chain supporting system
From the review of parts to the vehicle market, it can be found that from the perspective of car companies and supply chains, new energy vehicles and energy-saving vehicle three-electric systems, as well as hybrid special engines and gearboxes, in the future it can determine the performance of automobiles and the core factors of product price comparison. Most of the vehicle companies do vertical and horizontal integration, such as in the power battery link, on the one hand, through the procurement of resources from multiple suppliers, on the other hand, they will also choose joint ventures or participate in battery companies through capital, and then acquire some upstream industrial chains.
In the electric drive link, like saic and Infineon's joint venture cooperation, BYD embarked on the path of self-production. Most of the car companies in the hybrid system do deep integration in the industry and carry out special engines. Overall, we hope to create a safe and effective, technically controllable and flexible supply chain system by mastering the parts and components of the three electrics, including hybrid technology, to cope with the impact of the post-epidemic era.