GCL Energy is in full swing, joining hands with the Internet giant to lay out power exchange and automatic driving, and also bought a phosphate mine

The author | Deepwater Finance and Economics Agency Jinhe

On the evening of January 19, GCL Energy (002015) successively disclosed a number of cooperation announcements, including companies such as Deep Direction Technology and Energy Technology, and the cooperation direction is mainly the research and development and upgrading of power exchange technology. In addition, another announcement also shows that GCL Energy will acquire phosphate rock resources by acquiring controlling stakes in three companies to reduce costs and increase efficiency.

It is reported that GCL Energy's main business includes clean energy power generation, cogeneration and integrated energy services. In March last year, the company released the development plan for electric vehicle replacement business, seeking strategic transformation of mobile energy, and carrying out power exchange business around taxis, online ride-hailing vehicles and heavy trucks. Since then, GCL Energy has been moving continuously, and this time holding hands with a number of companies, the company's "power exchange map" will be further expanded.

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According to the announcement, the cooperation between GCL Energy and Deep Direction Technology will focus on "product development" and "market cooperation". In product research and development, GCL Energy mentioned that the two sides will jointly carry out research on the technical route and scheme of power exchange station, power exchange module, mobile energy vehicle and charging product to improve the efficiency of power exchange. We will also use our respective advantages to promote the feasibility of autonomous driving technology and automatic power exchange technology for commercial vehicles. In terms of market cooperation, the two sides will promote the implementation of the green logistics project of trunk line driverless heavy truck replacement, and strive to complete the layout of the power exchange network of the beijing-Shanghai high-speed early 1,000 heavy truck service capabilities by the end of 2023, and promote the electrification and intelligent sustainable development of commercial vehicles.

It can be seen that the layout direction of the cooperation between the two is not limited to "power exchange", and there is another keyword that is very noteworthy, that is, the "automatic driving" technology of commercial vehicles, and the cooperation direction is still the level of "product development", which has more gold content.

According to public information, Shenzhen Technology was established in July 2020 as a joint venture between Baidu and Shiqiao, a technology company focusing on autonomous driving of commercial vehicles. In addition, Shenxiang Technology is also the first landing company of Baidu's Apollo X plan, and at present, Shenxiang Technology has deployed in the commercial vehicle high-speed assisted driving, high-speed L4 driverless and limited area unmanned driving business.

Among the current domestic layout of autonomous driving technology enterprises, Baidu can be said to be second to none, although it is difficult to speculate on how GCL Energy will be laid out in the future in this field, but from the content of the announcement, it is indeed worth looking forward to.

Another company announced is "Tongneng Technology". It is understood that at present, Tongneng Technology enjoys the exclusive authorized agent of Dongfeng Liuqi S50 electric version of the model, and Dongfeng Liuqi is a state-owned company controlled by Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd.

The cooperation direction of the two includes vehicle sales, power exchange equipment sales, power exchange operations, technical interaction, financing and so on. According to the announcement, in 2022, GCL Energy co-engineering, Dongfeng Liuqi and Pineng Technology will jointly promote no less than 8,000 S50 replacement vehicles in key cities such as Hebei, Inner Mongolia, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Sichuan, and Guizhou, focusing on taxis and online car-hailing, and it is expected that the number of S50 replacement vehicles will exceed 30,000 units within three years.

Judging from the above content, the company's future mobile energy business is fully prepared for both technology and market layout.

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In addition, GCL Energy's subsidiary GCL Hengneng also signed a cooperation framework agreement with Chenyingjia and Century Tiansheng to acquire 51% of the equity of Yunnan Hongxing Mining through equity acquisition and capital increase and share expansion, while the phosphate ore resources of the phosphate ore project of Jinniu Plant in Huize County, a subsidiary of Hongxing Mining, reached 49.2249 million tons. After the completion of the acquisition, GCL Energy can also obtain stable lithium and phosphorus resources.

At present, as a scarce resource in the upstream, lithium and phosphorus are in short supply in China, there is a significant gap, and the price has soared. Some industry experts have predicted that with the rapid growth of the installed capacity of lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP), by 2025, China's demand for lithium iron phosphate materials will increase by 7 to 8 times compared with 2020.

Therefore, GCL Energy's "buying" can also directly reduce costs, ensure costs, and improve market competitiveness. In fact, as early as September 27 last year, GCL Energy announced that it invested in the establishment of GCL Hengneng, broadened the boundaries of mobile energy, integrated industrial chain resources, reduced the cost of mobile energy raw materials, and extended its business to the upstream raw materials lithium ore and battery materials industry of mobile energy.

At present, only more than 3 months have passed since the announcement date, and the company has reached cooperation with relevant partners, which shows the rapid efficiency.

In fact, since GCL Energy entered the new energy vehicle replacement business, every step of the company has been very "stable".

At the beginning of last year, the company announced the "GCL Energy Co., Ltd. Electric Vehicle Replacement Business Development Plan"; in June last year, GCL Energy co., Ltd. issued a non-public stock offering plan, which intends to raise no more than 5 billion yuan, of which 3.3 billion yuan will be used to build 488 new energy vehicle replacement power station projects, including 313 passenger car replacement stations and 175 heavy truck replacement power stations.

In the third quarter, GCL Energy's power exchange business has gained in product development, car company cooperation, customer cooperation and market development, such as: the company's first independently developed heavy truck replacement power station into testing, the whole process of debugging was successful, and obtained the first software copyright in the field of power exchange; in terms of car enterprise cooperation, GCL Energy has reached strategic cooperation with Sany Heavy Truck, Geely Commercial Vehicle, Foton Commercial Vehicle, Hezhong Automobile and many other OEMs.

In the concept of GCL Energy, through the integration of automobile production, battery manufacturing, travel platform and other industries and government resources, the company will create four major application scenarios of online ride-hailing, taxi, heavy truck and private car, and focus on the key cities in the Yangtze River Delta, greater Bay Area, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Chengdu-Chongqing and northern China to create a convenient, economical and green travel ecology.

The cooperation company of GCL Energy is widely distributed and the business is consolidated, and it is not difficult to guess that the future power exchange business will be expected to open the company's secondary growth curve.

(Exclusively released by the global market value research institute Deepwater Finance and Economics, please indicate the source when reprinting the citation)