The development of lithium batteries can be traced back to a hundred years ago, but its real shine time has to start in 1992, as for the automotive field, that time is even shorter.
But the wheel of history rolled in, the trend appeared with electrification, and the Ningde era relied on this small battery to board the stage of "trillion enterprises". In the Ningde era before last year, it was called a spirited one.
But with the growing demand for new energy vehicles, there is a growing demand for diversity. Car companies need to be more cost-effective, consumers need to eliminate mileage anxiety, when the innovation of power battery technology is imperative, and not just limited to the single range of lithium batteries. Pressure has also come to this side of the Ningde era. Inevitably, the Ningde era was a little anxious.
Academician Chen Liquan has publicly stated that the future development direction of batteries is nothing more than two ways: one is the road of solid-state batteries, and the other is the road of sodium-ion batteries. Specific analysis, solid-state batteries belong to the direction of the deep "inner coil" of lithium batteries, and sodium-ion batteries can be used as the establishment of a new battery system. People's energy is limited, enterprises are no exception, even if the Ningde era is quite large, helpless foundation is not deep, it is ultimately necessary to choose a direction to break through. In the face of the unknown, even if the Ningde era has a clear direction, it can't help but be a little dazed.
At the same time, there is not much time left for the Ningde era to choose. Taking solid-state batteries as an example, the time node given by the Ningde era is mass production in 2030, but in stark contrast, WEILAI ET7 will have semi-solid-state batteries mass-produced next year. In addition to solid-state batteries and sodium-ion batteries, 4680 batteries, cobalt-free batteries, high-nickel batteries, and the existence of packaging technologies such as blades and One-stop are various elements that have impacted the leading position of the Ningde era.
It can be said that the emergence of self-built batteries has reduced the dominance of the Ningde era. When the gap appears, all that follows is a swarm of sharks that smell blood. External troubles are not even, and internal troubles are rising again. Taking power battery raw materials as an example, its procurement cost has already made the industry exclaim "high" in 2021, and it may be further higher in 2022. According to industry agencies, further increases in raw material costs will lead to more expensive batteries in 2022, and the industry's expected batteries with a cost of less than $100 per kWh may be delayed by two years. According to the latest data released by the Shanghai Steel Federation, since the end of 2021, some lithium battery material quotations have risen again, electrolytic cobalt rose by 2500 yuan to 3000 yuan / ton; cobalt powder rose by 10000 yuan / ton; lithium carbonate rose by 3500 yuan / ton.
On the one hand, there is the need for a lot of investment in R&D funds, and on the other hand, the high costs that may come. Under the attack of both sides, even in the Ningde era, there was also some lack of skill. Some time ago, the Ningde era spent 1.9 billion yuan to "cut off" Ganfeng lithium industry's Canadian lithium mine incident made a lot of noise, although in the end the Ningde era was also "anti-cut Hu" by the American lithium industry, but whether it is 32 billion to establish the Bangpu Recycling Industrial Park, or in the domestic Yichun and other places, it is not difficult to see the urgency of the Ningde era for the establishment of a "complete" power battery ecological chain.
In order to face the dilemma and the possible encirclement and suppression, the Ningde era must break through before the encirclement is formed. On the one hand, the Ningde era began to integrate resources, trying to open up the upstream and downstream industrial chains and firmly grasp them in their own hands. Of course, such an approach is somewhat "laborious and costful", but it is effective enough. On the other hand, CATL pulled up the stock price and donated it to Shanghai Jiaotong University. Following the joint establishment of the college by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Xiamen University, coupled with a large donation, the purpose of the Ningde era is clear - to establish a pool of talent resources and form an academic self-reserved place.
In addition, in August last year, Deshi launched a sky-high fundraising of up to 58.2 billion yuan, which was announced to be for the purpose of expanding production and capacity, and involved investment in six projects, including Fuding Times, Guangdong Ruiqing Times, and Jiangsu Times. Although the scale of fundraising has also been reduced a lot, it has reached a huge amount of 45 billion yuan, and at this time, it is not difficult to reflect the determination of the Ningde era to borrow capital. In 2021, more and more car companies began to choose "de-Ningization", one of the reasons is the lack of supply and demand caused by production capacity problems, so that more and more OEMs began to choose "PLAN B" and gave up cooperation with the Ningde era. At the same time, when the Ningde era was still in a shortage of supply and demand, the rest of the battery manufacturers had already run wild on the road of expanding production capacity.
Therefore, even though the Ningde era has been desperately trying to catch up, it cannot deny the fact that the start was late. Moreover, in the process of capacity expansion, CATL also took greater risks than other manufacturers. Although some people shout out the slogan of 5 million new energy vehicles next year, according to the current market trend, the proportion of hybrid vehicles will reach a high proportion, and for pure electric models with higher battery dependence, they will not necessarily have the best-selling hybrid models. Therefore, it is difficult to say whether the expanded capacity will really come in handy, or whether it will be like the overcapacity of the market that has faded from the SUV boom. Of course, the Ningde era also has its own killer skills. On January 18, "Times Electric Service", a wholly-owned subsidiary of CATL, officially released the power exchange service brand EVOGO, and launched an overall battery replacement service for consumers, including a unified specification battery named "Chocolate Power Exchange Block", as well as a power station and online APP.
To put it simply, the Ningde era is to try to unify battery standards when their dominance is still strong enough. At present, there are enough brands and products using the battery products of the Ningde era, through the unification of battery standards, the Ningde era can not only tie these enterprises and themselves together into a rope, but also greatly promote the popularity of power exchange technology, which can be described as a win-win situation. From the perspective of industrial policy, the power exchange model of "separation of vehicle and electricity" has been written into the 2020 government work report as part of the "new infrastructure". This means that at least since then, the power exchange is in a new round of policy dividend period. On the other hand, the power exchange mode promoted by the car companies themselves is also obvious, from the battery specifications to the replacement station, they are facing the universal problem that cannot be solved. In contrast, the Ningde era is really a high trick. From now on, the NINGDE era, as a supplier binding the head car company, has become a direct binding user. From the perspective of business model, this is undoubtedly a huge change, and behind it will be a new blue ocean market. (Image source network, invasion and deletion)