The years do not live, the seasons are like a stream. The Year of the Ugly Ox is about to pass away, and the Year of the Tiger is coming. Years later, when we look back at this particular ugly year, we will find that it is crucial to the development of smart cars.
This year, the Chinese market sold 3.545 million new energy vehicles, accounting for more than 13%. This year, Musk jumped up with Tesla's stock price and became the richest man in the world. This year, we have seen the rapid rise of new power enterprises and the resolute transformation of traditional car companies, and we have felt the bone-chilling cold of chip shortage and the huge pressure brought about by market transformation.
The best way to remember the past is to look to the future. Looking ahead to 2022, the smart ev market, like much of the current world, is fraught with complexity and uncertainty. At the dawn of the Year of Ren yin, we did some combing, thinking, and judgment, trying to capture a certain certainty in the uncertainty.
L2+ grade ADAS penetration rate 10%
With the continuous growth of sales of intelligent electric vehicles, intelligent driving assistance systems have also ushered in rapid growth. Autonomous driving is a set of integrated systems, including perception, decision-making and execution. The perception layer perceives the surrounding environment for identification and analysis, including cameras, millimeter wave radar, lidar, ultrasonic radar, etc.; the decision-making layer is responsible for planning paths and navigation; and the executive layer is responsible for the acceleration, braking, and steering of the car.
There are differences in the classification of autonomous driving, according to the degree of participation in the system, autonomous driving can be divided into L0-L5 levels, and intelligent driving at the lower level of L0-L2 can be achieved through the ADAS function. As sales of smart electric vehicles continue to grow, L2+ level ADAS penetration is expected to continue to increase. According to the data released by Roland Berger, China's ADAS assembly in 2020 is mainly L0 and L1 levels, and it is expected that the L2+ level ADAS penetration rate will reach 35% by 2025.
Guotai Junan Securities expects that in 2022, the assembly rate of L2+ level ADAS will begin to accelerate, driving the rapid discharge of sensors such as perception layer cameras and millimeter wave radar, and the application of wire control at the executive end will also accelerate penetration. L2+ level penetration is expected to reach 35% by 2025.
At the same time, the assembly rate of high-level automatic driving continues to increase, driving the continuous growth of millimeter-wave radar and lidar, and the market size of the radar industry is expected to continue to grow. The number of millimeter-wave radars in the L2/L3/L4 levels exceeds 3/6/10 respectively, and from the L3 level onwards, the assembly rate of lidar begins to increase. Guotai Junan Securities expects that driven by high-level automatic driving, the radar market size will usher in rapid growth, and it is expected that the size of China's vehicle radar market will exceed 70 billion yuan in 2025.
Electronic chassis became mainstream
As the ultimate executive end of autonomous driving, chassis electronics are an integral part of the core of autonomous driving and the future evolution direction of intelligent cars, and the key to its technological upgrading lies in mechanical decoupling. The execution end of autonomous driving mainly involves the realization of the vehicle in the lateral and longitudinal movement, mainly through the braking, steering and throttle in the chassis electronics.
In the traditional chassis, braking and steering are mechanically coupled, that is, the power source of braking or steering is the driver's mechanical force, and the force is amplified by hydraulic and other means to achieve the control behavior of the terminal. However, in the process of automatic driving, the key to chassis electronics is to achieve the decoupling of mechanical forces, replace them with motor drives, and improve the accuracy of control while better realizing the combination of people and systems.
Specifically, the brake industry is undergoing an evolution from traditional braking to line control, solving problems such as precision control, vacuum sources and energy recovery. In the traditional braking system, the starting point of braking is the brake pedal, the linear correspondence between the brake pedal and the braking system, the conduction of the braking process is the conduction of mechanical forces (pedal pressure, hydraulics, etc.), and the accuracy and timeliness of the control and the coordination with other systems need to be improved.
Considering the cost, safety and other issues, the integrated electro-hydraulic braking system (EHB) is more feasible in the medium term. Although the electromechanical brake system EMB can better achieve decoupling between the pedal and the brake system, but its cost is high, it is difficult to apply on a large scale in the short term, and the braking force it generates is limited, and it is difficult to apply independently in the short term taking into account regulatory factors; and the electronic hydraulic brake system (EHB) better realizes the decoupling between the pedal and the hydraulic brake system, especially the integrated hydraulic system does a better job in the degree of decoupling, and it is more conducive to energy recovery, while the product cost performance is also higher. In the medium-term dimension, it is a better choice for line control.
From HPS to EHPS to EPS, the steering of the switch is constantly advancing. The role of steering is to adjust the steering wheel by adjusting the steering wheel, thereby controlling the lateral movement of the vehicle. Steering products are constantly being upgraded and electronic: hydraulic power steering is produced by amplifying the force that turns the steering wheel through hydraulics, HPS (hydraulic pressure comes from the engine) and HPS (hydraulic pressure comes from electric pumps); EPS is brought about by replacing the hydraulic system with steering motors, making steering control more precise.
With the advancement of higher levels of autonomous driving, the steer-by-wire system (SBW) is also expected to gradually land. Although the EPS replaced the hydraulic system with an electric motor, it was not really in-line control, as it had not yet achieved mechanical decoupling between the steering wheel and the wheels. With higher levels of autonomous driving (L4, L5 level), the real steer-by-wire products will gradually land.
Smart cockpits create 20 billion output values
The growth of intelligent car sales has led to the development of smart cockpits, and the popularity of smart cockpits will also enhance the overall user experience, and drive the development of the entire upstream and downstream industry chain, creating incremental shares for LCD instruments, infotainment systems and other market segments.
Intelligent cockpit is a human-computer interaction system built from the consumer application scenario, from the perspective of the car cockpit upgrade path, cockpit products are currently in the primary intelligent era, full LCD instruments began to gradually replace traditional instruments, a small number of models of new HUD head-up display, streaming media rearview mirrors, etc., the degree of intelligence has been significantly improved. However, at this stage, most of the cockpit products are still distributed discrete control, that is, the operating systems are independent of each other, and the core technology is reflected in the modular and integrated design.
Compared with power batteries and automatic driving, the threshold of the smart cockpit is lower and it is very explosive. As the theme of driving space, the intelligent cockpit is easier to form intelligent interaction and driving experience with the driver from the two dimensions of vision and hearing, and it is easy to create differentiated selling points; the main applications of the cockpit are multi-screen, acoustic systems, HUDs, etc. The unit price is relatively low, and it can be compatible with mid-range models and thus has a wide range of customer groups; while the safety level requirements of most products in the cockpit in addition to the car machine are relatively low, and the development cycle is relatively short.
The smart cockpit products are diversified, and the value of bicycles is increased by 3-7 times. Traditional cockpit products are mainly mechanical instruments and on-board audio and video players, the overall bicycle supporting value is below 2000 yuan, while the intelligent cockpit products are rich, integrating touch, intelligent voice, visual recognition, intelligent display, etc. to achieve multi-modal interaction, and the overall bicycle supporting value is 6700-13900 yuan, which is 3-7 times that of the traditional cockpit.
The supply side and the demand side are both promoted, and the development of intelligent cockpits has broad prospects. The intelligent cockpit industry chain is divided into three major links: upstream parts suppliers - midstream single product suppliers - downstream integrated product demanders. At present, technical problems such as upstream chips, software and hardware have been gradually solved, the quality of the supply side has been improved, and the cost has decreased; the process of automotive intelligent networking has accelerated, and the demand for automotive electronic products has increased significantly. Driven by both the supply side and the demand side, the smart cockpit product market space is vast.
Guotai Junan estimates that china's full LCD instrument market space will reach 30.1 billion yuan in 2025. In 2020, the market penetration rate of China's front-loading full LCD instruments is 27.2%, and it is expected to reach 55% in 2025. In 2025, China's in-vehicle infotainment system market space will reach 48.8 billion yuan, and the market penetration rate of China's front-loading in-vehicle infotainment system will be 90.2% in 2020, and it is expected to reach 99% in 2025.
The number of auto safety accidents continues to rise
With the continuous improvement of the delivery of smart electric vehicles, the more car safety is more and more concerned and valued. Different from traditional fuel vehicles, smart electric vehicles put forward new standards and requirements for car companies in terms of battery safety, automatic driving safety and data security.
As sales of smart electric vehicles continue to rise, multiple spontaneous battery combustion and autonomous driving assistance system failures have followed. According to incomplete statistics, the number of spontaneous combustion accidents reported by the Media in the Chinese market in 2021 was as high as 276, an increase of 123% compared with 2020.
Among them, Tesla contracted most of the accidents and hot spots. In order to prove its innocence, Tesla began to publish safety reports on a regular basis. In October 2020, Tesla released its third quarter vehicle safety report. According to the report, in the third quarter of 2020, there was an average of one traffic accident per 4.59 million miles (about 7.38 million kilometers) of driving distance with the participation of Autopilot autonomous drivers.
In driving without the participation of Autopilot autonomous drivers but with active safety functions, there is an average of one traffic accident per 2.42 million miles (about 3.89 million kilometers). The latest data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows that the average traffic safety accident occurs in the United States every 479,000 miles (about 770,000 kilometers). Tesla said Autopilot auto-assisted driving allows driving safety levels to reach 9.5 times the average level.
In its "Electric Vehicle Safety Report", the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association has taken safety issues to a new level. They said that safety is the core problem of the development of the electric vehicle industry, and the real solution to safety problems still depends on technological progress and innovation. At the same time, they pointed out that security is a systemic problem, not only consider the product itself, but also from the overall point of view, to study systematic security solutions. This requires accelerated technical research and innovative research, such as the formulation of battery system safety standards, the protection standard of the power battery box in the event of a vehicle collision, the setting of the occupant escape time in the event of a fire, the research and development of on-board fire extinguishing devices, and safety specifications.
Chip shortages eased in the second quarter
When 2021 passes, the shortage of chips will still constrain the automotive industry, and this constraint will not seem to be effectively resolved in the short term. The reason for this dilemma is closely related to the characteristics of the global chip industry, and it is also related to the incremental demand for chips by smart electric vehicles.
The global chip industry has the characteristics of high threshold and dispersed distribution. The chip industry chain covers chip design, chip manufacturing, chip packaging and testing, and each link is mainly distributed in different countries and regions. Upstream chip design companies are mainly distributed in Europe and the United States, midstream manufacturing enterprises are mainly concentrated in Japan and Taiwan, and downstream packaging and testing enterprises are mainly concentrated in Southeast Asia.
Since 2020, the new crown epidemic has swept the world, resulting in the suspension of various factories in the upstream and downstream enterprises of the chip industry chain. Although the control of the epidemic has gradually stabilized and countries and regions have resumed work and communism in an orderly manner, due to the tension of global trade and the recurrence of the new crown epidemic, the supply-side production capacity of chips is still constrained.
At the same time, the growing demand for chips for smart electric vehicles has also exacerbated the shortage of chips. From perception, decision-making to execution, the importance of chips to cars is self-evident. At the perceptual level, the vehicle's multi-sensor fusion includes data acquisition of the surrounding environment through radar systems and vision systems. At the decision-making level, the data is processed by the vehicle in the computing platform and the appropriate algorithm to make the optimal decision, and finally the execution module converts the signal of the decision into the behavior of the vehicle. At the level of control execution, it mainly includes the motion control and human-computer interaction of the vehicle, which determines the control signals of each actuator such as motors and brakes.
Compared with traditional gasoline vehicles, smart electric vehicles have a greater demand for chips. Taking autonomous driving as an example, the higher the level of autonomous driving, the more the requirements for the number of sensors. L3 level autonomous driving is equipped with an average of 8 sensor chips, while L5 level automatic driving requires the number of sensor chips to 20. In the same way, the amount of information that vehicles need to process and store is also positively correlated with the maturity of autonomous driving technology, which further increases the amount of control chips and storage chips. According to statistics, by 2022, the number of new energy vehicle bicycle chips will be about 1459, which is gradually separated from the number of chips in traditional fuel vehicles.
Some analysts believe that the main reason for the shortage of chips in this round is that the market demand for automotive chips does not match the supply in the epidemic environment, so the most effective solution is to expand supply-side production capacity. However, since the cycle of chip production line from establishment to large-scale production is about 1-2 years, this round of chip shortage will continue until the second quarter of 2022.
The scale of the new energy market reached 5 million vehicles
In 2021, China's new energy vehicle market will change from policy-driven to market-driven, showing a good development situation in which market scale and development quality are both improved. In 2021, the production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 3.545 million units and 3.521 million units, respectively, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year, and the market share reached 13.4%, an increase of 8 percentage points compared with 2020. At the same time, the energy density of the power battery cell is close to 300 Wh/kg, and the system energy density is more than 200 Wh/kg; the market for passenger cars equipped with combined driving assistance systems accounts for 20%.
At present, the industry has basically reached a consensus, and China's new energy market is entering explosive growth from a period of steady growth. Fu Bingfeng, executive vice president and secretary general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said that in 2022, China's auto market will continue to grow. Specifically, the total sales of mainland vehicles are expected to reach 27.5 million units in 2022, an increase of about 5% year-on-year. Among them, passenger cars will be 23 million units, an increase of 7% year-on-year; commercial vehicles will be 4.5 million units, down 6% year-on-year; new energy vehicles will reach 5 million units, an increase of 42% year-on-year, and the market share is expected to exceed 18%. This means that for every five vehicles sold, one is a new energy vehicle.
Fu Bingfeng believes that with the gradual easing of chip shortages, the supply capacity of automobiles will be further released. With the gradual functioning of the chip market regulation mechanism, and with the joint efforts of the government, OEMs and chip suppliers, the supply shortage is gradually alleviating. At that time, the release of automobile supply capacity will become a positive factor for the growth of the automobile market in 2022.
At the same time, Fu Bingfeng said that the market demand for new energy vehicles is strong, which will further promote the steady growth of automobile consumption. In the medium and long term, the blessing of intelligent networked vehicle technology and the innovation of business models will greatly promote the popularity of new energy vehicles, especially the implementation of the "double carbon" goal, and accelerate the progress of transformation, and the planning goal of the proportion of new energy vehicles by 2025 is likely to be achieved ahead of schedule, all of which will effectively support the domestic automobile market to maintain a growth trend in 2022.
It is worth noting that whether the demand of the mid-end market can be met will be a key factor for the rapid growth of new energy vehicles. Entering the stage of rapid development of electrification, small and medium-sized cities and rural areas will become the flashpoint of the mainland new energy vehicle market and become an important part of the market increment. In this context, the importance of the mid-range consumer market has become more and more prominent. According to incomplete statistics, in 2022, all kinds of car companies will launch a total of 90 electrified models, and new energy vehicles will usher in a big year of products. While the competition in the new energy vehicle market is becoming more and more fierce, the mid-end market is expected to achieve a breakthrough.
Tesla has sold more than 500,000 vehicles in China
In 2021, Tesla achieved a sales breakthrough in the global market. Tesla delivered a total of 936,000 new vehicles in 2021, up 87 percent year-on-year and the best delivery ever, official data shows.
As Tesla's largest single market in the world, the Chinese market has also set a new delivery record. According to public data, Tesla's Shanghai factory delivered a total of 484,000 vehicles in 2021, of which about 320,000 were delivered to the Chinese market and another 160,000 to Europe and other markets. This means that the Chinese market contributes more than 30% of Tesla's sales.
In fact, for the Chinese market, what currently limits Tesla's sales is not the lack of demand, but the lack of production capacity. Tesla China's official website shows that it is now necessary to wait 12-16 weeks for the model 3 and model Y to pick up the car.
With the completion and commissioning of the Berlin plant, the European market will no longer have to import from China, and sales in the Chinese market will be directly linked to the capacity of the Shanghai plant. Therefore, it is conservatively estimated that Tesla's sales in the Chinese market will exceed 500,000 vehicles in 2022, accounting for 10% of the entire market segment.
On the other hand, Musk said at the 2021 shareholder meeting that Tesla will be able to maintain an annual growth rate of more than 50% for a considerable period of time. He believes that despite the resistance of production and supply chain problems at the Berlin factory, he also expects Tesla's deliveries to grow to 1.3 million units in 2022. If Tesla's sales share in the Chinese market in 2021 is planned, Tesla sales in the Chinese market will also reach 450,000-500,000 vehicles in 2022.
The market value of the Catalonia era fell below 1 trillion
As the power battery company with the highest shipments in the world, CATL has become a phenomenon-level enterprise in China's capital market in 2021. As of the close of trading on January 25, the stock price of CATL was 565.6 yuan per share, with a total market value of 1.32 trillion yuan, ranking fourth in the A-share market, second only to Guizhou Moutai, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank.
According to the financial report released by CATL, the revenue in the first three quarters of 2021 was 73.362 billion yuan, an increase of 132.73% year-on-year; the net profit was 7.751 billion yuan, an increase of 130.9% year-on-year. As of the close of trading on January 25, the price-to-book ratio of the Cataline era exceeded 18, and the price-earnings ratio was close to 128, far exceeding the valuation of manufacturing companies in the A-share market.
What supports the trillion-dollar market value of the Ningde era is its high-speed growth performance and the broad imagination space of the new energy market. However, with the tightening of competitors and the continuous rise of upstream raw material prices, the revenue, gross profit and net profit of the Ningde era are under pressure.
According to the forecast of Guosen Securities, under the condition that the stock price and market value remain unchanged, the net profit of CATL from 2021 to 2023 needs to maintain a growth rate of 104%/56%/25%. According to the forecast of Guosen Securities, the price-earnings ratio of CATL in 2023 will return to about 60 times, and its valuation will also return to a reasonable range.
Battery companies explore power exchange modes
Due to the slow progress of battery technology, the stagnation of economies of scale and the rise in upstream raw material prices, business model innovation is becoming the choice of most battery-related companies.
In January 2022, CATL released the power exchange brand EVOGO and the overall solution of combined power exchange. EVOGO provides a "chocolate battery block", a single battery energy density of more than 160Wh/kg, can provide about 200 km of endurance, and can be adapted to the world's 80% of the world has been on the market and the next 3 years to be launched pure electric platform development models.
Before the Ningde era, new energy companies such as Weilai and Beiqi Blue Valley have taken the lead in trying and exploring power exchanges. It is foreseeable that in 2022, more and more enterprises will join Weilai, Beiqi Blue Valley and Ningde Era to explore new ways to change electricity.
The power exchange mode has two major advantages, one is to provide energy replenishment efficiency, and the other is to reduce the cost of car purchase. Compared with the charging mode, the power exchange time can generally be compressed to less than 5 minutes, which greatly provides the energy replenishment efficiency. After the separation of vehicle and electricity, it can also save the battery cost and reduce the consumption threshold.
In addition, the power exchange mode also has the advantages of using the peak-to-valley electricity price difference to reduce the electricity bill, and to centralize monitoring of the battery to extend the life. It is undeniable that at the moment when the progress of battery technology is slow, the new business model of power exchange can indeed solve many pain points.
However, the power swap mode is not flawless either. The pain point of the power exchange model is heavy assets, low degree of battery standardization, and difficulty in cooperation with car companies. In the past, the pain points of power exchange mainly included high investment in the early stage of power station construction, large financing demand, and low standardization of power exchange batteries, which was difficult to open up and use to form a scale effect, resulting in difficulties in the application and promotion of technology, and requiring strong cooperation between car companies and battery companies.
Traditional car companies all in new energy
Although all traditional car companies claim to find a second growth curve before the first growth curve flattens out, the real situation is that before 2021, no traditional car company is all in new energy, they shout the slogan of electrification transformation, but actually hope for traditional fuel vehicles.
In 2022, with the shrinking of the fuel vehicle market and the decline in their own operating performance, traditional car companies will personally feel the bitter consequences of path dependence. At the same time, this bitter fruit will also be turned into a tool, which will become the basis for professional managers to persuade the board of directors and the supervisory board to promote a comprehensive change, all in new energy vehicles.
Volkswagen announced that by 2022, Volkswagen will launch 27 models based on the MEB platform. By 2023, BMW plans to launch 12 pure electric models. From 2022, Volkswagen will launch the first models based on the PPE platform, and plans to start research and development of the SSP scalable system platform around 2025.
The BMW Group's electrification transformation is equally resolute. BMW expects to launch all-electric X1, 5 Series, 7 Series and MINI COUNTRYMAN in the coming years, which means that BMW will offer at least one pure electric model for each product line in 90% of the market segment.
Volkswagen and BMW are confident in sales in the coming years. Volkswagen expects to deliver 1 million electric vehicles in 2021 and become the global market leader in electric vehicles by 2025 at the latest. BMW expects sales of all-electric models to increase by more than 50% year-on-year in 2025. By 2030, the Volkswagen Group will account for 50% of all-electric vehicle deliveries, and most of the models will be electrified by 2035. BMW plans to deliver about 10 million pure electric vehicles over the next decade. It is foreseeable that in 2022, more and more traditional car companies will be in new energy and compete head-on with new car manufacturers.
In classical physics, there is no absolute stillness, only relative motion. Because of the fear of uncertainty, people worship prediction. But it is in this less accurate prediction and judgment that a new, dynamic picture of intelligent electric vehicles is presented to us. Year of the Tiger Special Edition | 10,000-word long article: Top Ten Predictions for Smart Cars in 2022