Author: Wen Yu, Editor: Xiao ShiMei
In the global market, CATL and LG New Energy together account for half of the country; in the domestic market, CATL and BYD together control nearly 70% of the territory.
We always have a judgment, this extreme oligopolistic differentiation pattern may be unsustainable, the next five years, the power battery will be divergent.
【Waist Company Counteroffensive】
Regarding the current situation of the global power battery industry, the latest data comes from SNE.
▲The image is taken from SNE
According to the data, from January to November 2021, CATL ranked first in the world with a market share of 31.8%; LG New Energy ranked second with a market share of 20.5%; the third and fourth were Panasonic and BYD, respectively, and CR4 together occupied more than 70% of the market.
The formation of today's oligopolistic pattern is both the result of market choices and the components of policy intervention.
A new technology in order to roll iteration must have market support, before the electric vehicle industry for a long time to maintain Tesla a dominant situation, for the battery factory, hold this thigh to make a difference, such as LG new energy and Panasonic, are Tesla's "raised" hand.
The origin of the Ningde era benefited from the "white list" policy with Chinese characteristics, Samsung, LG and other enterprises were barred from the country, and the Ningde era took all the independent brands such as BAIC, SAIC, Dongfeng, and Changan into the arms, thus completing the early original accumulation, and then continuously iterating, entering the core circle of new energy vehicles such as Tesla and the new forces of Chinese car-making, and finally having today's "Ningwang" status.
BYD is the predecessor of the Ningde era, before 2016, the "scoop handle" of the domestic power battery industry, but because of the bet on lithium iron phosphate, it gradually fell out of favor in the face of the policy of subsidies according to the mileage. Fortunately, the company's products are mainly used for internal supply, and in the period of technical loneliness, they still rely on self-transfusion to continue to attack, and they re-emerge after lithium iron phosphate re-".
2021 is a dividing line, when traditional car companies have opened the road of electrification transformation, power batteries will enter the 2.0 stage, the divergence of the competitive landscape is an inevitable.
In the past two years, whether it is toyota, general motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Daimler and other traditional foreign giants, or great wall, Geely, Changan and other independent brands, have begun to carry out a drastic electrification transformation. In the context of downstream car companies blooming, there is a serious production capacity gap in power batteries, and the outside world even circulates rumors that He Xiaopeng is squatting in the Ningde era factory.
Considering the issue of supply chain security and discourse power, automakers have to "start another stove" to support their own forces.
GAC, Changan, Geely, etc. pushed AVIC lithium battery, Xiaopeng has also decided to reduce the share of the Ningde era, and introduced AVIC lithium battery as a new supplier; EWELL Lithium Energy has successively entered the supply chain of Daimler and Kia, and successfully entered the list of BMW's 20 billion euro battery order suppliers in September last year; behind the hive energy stands Great Wall Motors, and Guoxuan Hi-Tech has obtained a public stake.
These companies will fully benefit from the electrification transformation of traditional car companies and are already ready, including technology and production capacity.
From 2016 to 2020, the average annual compound growth rate of R&D investment of second-tier enterprises such as Fu Neng Technology, Yiwei Lithium Energy, Sunwoda, Penghui Energy, and Guoxuan Hi-Tech was 69.3%, 44.1%, 42.6%, 28.6%, and 8.6%, respectively, which was even worse than the 28% growth rate of the Ningde era. There are technical barriers to power batteries, but they are not as high as chips that cannot catch up, and now that the technology is not mature and solidified, second-tier companies still have opportunities.
At the production capacity level, the small target of the Ningde era in 2025 is 600GWh, Ewell Lithium Energy and Guoxuan Hi-Tech have planned 300GWh, and the long-term production capacity planning of AVIC Lithium Battery, Hive Energy and BYD is 250Gwh, 260Gwh and 200Gwh respectively.
It is an indisputable fact that the leading position in the Ningde era is difficult to shake, but in the context of the second-tier manufacturers rising up to attack, its leading edge and the decline in market share are also the general trend.
According to the latest data from the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, the installed capacity of CATL in December in China was about ten times that of AVIC Lithium Battery and Guoxuan Hi-Tech, and dozens of times that of Honeycomb Energy, Fu Neng Technology, Sunwoda and Yiwei Lithium Energy.
▲The picture is taken from the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance
With the release of electric vehicles by traditional car companies, the competitive pattern of power batteries will inevitably diverge, and new dark horses will inevitably emerge in second-tier enterprises.
Compared with the state-owned background of AVIC lithium battery, as well as the Guoxuan Hi-Tech and Honeycomb Energy with the platform of the automaker, the innate conditions of Ewell Lithium Energy are obviously shortened by half, but this company is the one that should not be forgotten the most.
【Technical Moderation】
Optimistic about Ewell Lithium Energy, it is not to say how strong the company's product strength is, but the strategy is appropriate.
According to the different packaging structure, the battery can be divided into three forms: square, soft pack and cylindrical; according to the difference in cathode material, the battery is divided into ternary lithium battery and lithium iron phosphate battery.
In the face of different technical routes, most second-tier manufacturers have adopted the strategy of choosing sides.
In terms of battery structure, Fu Neng Technology and Jiewei Power mainly produce soft pack batteries, and Sunwoda, Ruipu Energy, Zhongxin Airlines, Tafil, etc. are concentrated in square cells; at the material system level, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Ruipu Energy, penghui Energy mainly focus on lithium iron phosphate, and Zhongxin Airlines, Fu energy technology, Sunwoda and other enterprises mainly focus on ternary batteries.
Unlike my peers, the answer that Ewell Lithium can give is that I want it.
It is involved in both ternary and lithium iron, and has both square and soft bags and large cylinders. Soft pack ternary supply Daimler, Hyundai Kia, square ternary supply BMW and Jaguar Land Rover, lithium iron batteries for commercial vehicles, buses and energy storage, last year also planned 20Gwh of "4680" large cylindrical battery production capacity, keeping up with Tesla's pace.
Purely from a technical point of view, the idea of EWELL lithium energy is clever.
Taking a long-term view, the development of technology is not an infinite advance along a straight line, but a spiral characterized by reincarnation and recursion.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the earliest batch of steam ships were driven by paddle wheels, and then propellers replaced paddles to become the mainstream of ship technology, and the high-speed ships born in recent years returned to paddle wheel drive technology; before Carl Benz invented fuel vehicles, cars were first driven by electricity, with the intensification of energy consumption and pollution problems, human beings resorted to electric vehicles again after entering the 21st century; before the 20th century, the semiconductor industry was dominated by IDM mode, but with the exponential explosion of technology, IDM was gradually replaced by the Fabless route. In recent years, in order to build a self-built ecology and better adapt to the characteristic process, the head technology company has risen to seek integration of self-built fabs.
In essence, all technical routes are imperfect, and the industry does not prematurely pronounce the death penalty on a certain route, but constantly looks for the optimal solution in dynamic changes. When one path is bottlenecked, another sequence of technologies is reconsidered and improved, resulting in alternating evolution.
Power batteries also confirm this.
Before 2016, lithium iron phosphate was the absolute mainstream route, with a market share of more than 60%; then the ternary lithium battery quickly overtook with the advantage of endurance, and by 2019, the market share of ternary lithium batteries soared to 65%. However, with the improvement of the energy density of lithium iron phosphate and the exposure of the safety disadvantages of ternary lithium batteries, lithium iron phosphate will recover strongly again in 2021.
Another example is the encapsulation structure. In the 1990s, with cylindrical batteries as the mainstay, Samsung SDI first used the square structure in the field of power batteries at the beginning of the new century, and gradually realized the replacement of cylindrical batteries. With the landing of Tesla's "4680" battery, the cylinder has a tendency to rise again.
At present, the power battery technology has not yet entered the silent period of mature curing technology, and the drift and transformation of the route will still be inevitable in the future.
In this context, taking an impartial and moderate road, not betting on a single technical route, but rain and dew are evenly dipped, which can effectively meet the diversified needs of the downstream, and can change lanes at any time, avoid being eliminated due to changes in technical routes, and Ewell Lithium Energy, which does not make a choice, actually makes the best choice.
This is in line with the background of the family.
Contrary to Zeng Yuqun's "strong gambling" life credo, Liu Jincheng of Yiwei Lithium Energy always believes in not putting eggs in the same basket, and in terms of operation, it is manifested as an attempt to hedge the impact of a single business risk exposure through diversified layout.
From the earliest PHS to two-wheeled electric vehicles, balance cars, and then to ETC, e-cigarettes and TWS headphones, power batteries, in the past few years, every hot outlet seems to have to be mixed with Billion Wei Lithium Energy. Translating this strategy to the field of power batteries is embodied in the parallel of multiple technologies to cover as many downstream scenarios as possible.
But that's not all.
【Vertical integration】
2021 is a turning point for EWELL Lithium Energy.
The power battery must be a cost competition in the end, which has been confirmed in the development process of mobile phone batteries. In order to infinitely approach the theoretical cost, in addition to relying on technological progress, the last resort is to carry out the integration layout of the whole industry chain, which is why the photovoltaic giants have rushed to integrate in the past two years.
For the power battery industry, price competition may come in advance.
Only the above-mentioned domestic top head power battery companies will exceed 2TWh in 2025. The demand data given by the agency is that by 2025, the demand for power batteries in China and the world will reach 500GWh and 1020GWh, respectively.
In the face of excess capacity, cost will become the life and death line of enterprises.
In the past year, Yiwei Lithium energy has been able to operate as fiercely as a tiger and achieve full coverage of the industrial chain.
In the upstream raw material link, it participated in the fixed increase of Huayou Cobalt industry and indirectly laid out cobalt resources; cooperated with Yongrui Holdings, Huayou International Cobalt, LINDO, etc. to develop nickel in Indonesia; acquired 34% of the equity of Dahua Chemical and 40.59% of the equity of Jinkunlun Lithium to lock in lithium resources.
In the middle reaches, it cooperated with German Nano to lay out the lithium iron phosphate project; established a joint venture with Bertry and SKI to lay out the ternary cathode; built an integrated production base of anode materials with an annual output of 100,000 tons with Zhongke Electric; laid out the diaphragm with enjie shares; and laid out the copper foil with Tongling Huachuang. Among them, the planned production capacity of joint venture projects such as separators and copper foils can meet the needs of hundreds of GWh batteries.
Downstream, it established a joint venture with Tlaidian, which ranks first in the market share of charging piles, to enter the new energy vehicle charging business, and cooperated with Grimme to recycle nickel-containing power batteries and related waste.
Looking at all second-tier manufacturers, Ewell Lithium Energy is the most integrated layout of the enterprise, this advantage has not formed absolute competitiveness at present, but it will gradually appear with the continuous development of the industry.
In general, the second-line battlefield of power batteries is still in the stage of warlord melee, accompanied by the swing and bumps of the technical route, some one-sided enterprises are bound to be tossed around, or even eliminated.
In contrast, Ewell Lithium Energy has consciously or unconsciously entered an "anti-fragile" state, that is, it can benefit from uncertainty.
Horizontal diversification provides flexibility of choice, and vertically integrated layout ensures supply chain stability and locks in low costs. In the asymmetrical risk and return of the shuluo field, can be done with less harm in exchange for greater benefits, every turbulence in the industry for Ewell Lithium Energy may be an opportunity to grab the land.
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This article involves the content of listed companies, which is the author's personal analysis and judgment based on the information publicly disclosed by listed companies in accordance with their statutory obligations (including but not limited to temporary announcements, periodic reports and official interactive platforms, etc.); the information or opinions in this article do not constitute any investment or other business advice, and Market Value Watch does not assume any responsibility for any action arising from the adoption of this article.
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