Shentucar original
Author | dawn
Edit | Wei Jia
Tesla is so important to the Ningde era that some people say that "the Ningde era and Tesla talked about collapse", and the Ningde era immediately reported to the police.
Recently, there are many rumors related to the Ningde era, in addition to the cooperation with Tesla, there are also sanctions by the United States, excluded from the ChiNext weight index, etc., of course, the Ningde era has all denied, and also publicly developed a solemn statement.
But the Ningde era was in a hurry, but it was true.
On February 14, CATL suddenly organized an investor survey, which was very large, with more than 50 investment institutions participating, and the top institutions such as Hillhouse, Sequoia, Temasek, Fidelity and Tencent were on the list.
An insider of a large fund told Shentu, "As notified in the morning, the recent (stock price) has indeed fallen too badly, so come out and stabilize the military." ”
The location of the investigation was in the 0126 conference room of the Science and Technology Building, and chairman Zeng Yuqun personally came forward to receive it, brought the secretary of the board of directors and the financial director, and responded to some key questions.
There are many issues that the market cares about, such as the technological progress of the Ningde era, cooperation with automakers, and the threat of competitor LG New Energy. But there's one key issue here — the relationship with Tesla.
The Ningde era became the "King of Ning", which began by binding Tesla. In the past, among China's power battery manufacturers, only the CATL era entered the Tesla supply chain. However, in 2022, this list may include a BYD. In addition, there are Panasonic and LG new energy that have long been bound.
How important is Tesla to the Ningde era? In other words, if there is no Tesla, how much will the revenue, market share, and stock price of the Ningde era be affected?
It's not easy to figure out these issues. Shentu flipped through the financial reports, listing materials and past materials of the Ningde era, chatted with industry insiders, and tried to find answers.
How many orders has Tesla contributed to CATL?
The real start of the stock price of CATL began to take off in the second half of 2019.
Two major events have occurred in the industry this year, one is the halving of subsidies for new energy vehicles; the other is the completion of Tesla's Shanghai factory, and the Model 3 will soon be domestically produced.
A bad news, a good news, are all related to the Ningde era. And this second thing is of particular significance to the Ningde era.
Tesla wants to be domestic, inseparable from the localization of parts, especially the power battery with the highest cost. This means that Tesla needs to choose at least one of China's battery factories as suppliers. CATL seized this opportunity and took the opportunity to break into Tesla's supply chain.
The official announcement from Tesla was made in January 2020, and Musk made it clear in his earnings call that he had reached a cooperation with catheter. But before that, the news of the cooperation had been uploaded in the market for two months, and the stock price of the Ningde era had doubled.
At the same time, the domestic version of the Model 3 began to be delivered. The first two months added up to less than 5,000 units delivered, but from the third month, the domestic Model 3 quickly started, basically more than 10,000 units per month, and sold nearly 140,000 units throughout the year, which is the top new energy vehicle sales in the Chinese market in 2020.
The more cars are sold, the demand for batteries is larger, and the battery factories that supply cars also benefit.
The battery of the Ningde era began to appear on the domestic Model 3 in the second half of 2020, and the corresponding model is the standard endurance version. In July 2021, the Model Y standard endurance version was launched, and the supporting battery manufacturers are also ningde times. Model Y is Tesla's second domestic model, which soon dominated the sales ranking for a long time, and the supply volume of the Ningde era also rose with the water.
By this time, the significance of Tesla in the Ningde era is not only to prove product quality, build a brand, and increase stock prices, but also to real orders and performance. After all, in the past two years, there are few new energy vehicle companies that can achieve annual sales of 100,000.
Source / Visual China
According to the information disclosed by CATL, it has signed two cooperation agreements with Tesla, one in February 2020, the locked supply period is July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2022, and the other is in June 2021, which is locked from January 2022 to December 2025. These two times are the time when the batteries of the Ningde era began to be supplied to the domestic Model 3 and Model Y in batches.
There is no doubt that Tesla is a big customer. So, how many orders did Tesla contribute to the NINGDE era?
Neither CATL nor Tesla disclosed this data. One of the most widely circulated statements in the industry is that in the total orders of the Cataline era in 2021, Tesla's total installed capacity reached 13.91GWh, accounting for 20% of the total orders of the CATL era last year.
An insider of a large fund told Shentu that according to his calculations, the shipment volume of the Ningde era in 2021 will be about 75 GWh, and the supply to Tesla will be about 14 GWh, accounting for 19%. "Tesla must be the first major customer in the Ningde era." He said.
Chai Daixuan, director of CIC Insight Consulting, also told Shentu that the current largest customer in the Ningde era is indeed Tesla, and the domestic Tesla installed capacity in 2021 accounts for about 20% of the domestic installed capacity in the Ningde era.
However, this calculation result was not confirmed by the Ningde era.
Catalonia times to Tesla is equipped with lithium iron phosphate battery, this version of the model battery energy is about 60 kWh, in this calculation, 14 GWh battery orders, corresponding to 230,000 vehicles. In 2021, Tesla's total deliveries in China are 480,000 units.
In any case, Tesla is an important customer of the Ningde era, and with the sharp increase in Tesla sales and the explosion of production capacity, the battery loading volume will also increase rapidly, and its importance to the Ningde era is self-evident.
Who is grabbing the market in the Era of Heningde?
The problem is that the battery manufacturers that supply Tesla are not only in the Ningde era.
Before localization in 2020, Tesla's battery suppliers in the world were only One in Japan's Panasonic. After the Shanghai factory began production, Tesla's supply list, in addition to the addition of the Ningde era, there is LG new energy.
Not putting eggs in one basket, to firmly control the right to speak, is Tesla's strategy.
LG New Energy is a subsidiary of south Korean giant LG Group. In fact, it binds Tesla one step earlier than the Ningde era. As early as the beginning of 2019, LG began to invest heavily in expanding its battery factory in Nanjing, in preparation for the supply of Tesla's Shanghai factory.
In 2020, when the Model 3 was domestically produced, LG New Energy took the lead in getting orders, and models equipped with LG batteries began to be delivered in batches in March, and it was in that month that the delivery of Model 3 rushed from 3,000 to more than 10,000. The Model 3, which was equipped with AIND-era batteries, was delivered only a few months later.
The same is true for model Y domestic production in 2021, LG new energy in the front, Ningde era in the back.
In Tesla's eyes, the two suppliers play different roles. LG new energy mainly provides Tesla with ternary lithium batteries, corresponding to the long-endurance version and high-performance version of the model, belongs to the high-end series, Ningde era mainly provides lithium iron phosphate batteries, corresponding to the standard endurance version of the model, the car price is cheaper.
"The lithium iron phosphate cheap version of the lithium iron phosphate battery specially supplied to Tesla domestic Model 3 in the Ningde era is certainly not small, think of the iPhone mobile phone with 32G and 64G small memory in China." Someone analyzed it this way.
According to the data calculated above, the total delivery volume of Tesla Shanghai Engineering in 2021 is 480,000 units, of which 230,000 units are loaded in the Cataline Era, and the rest is supplied by LG New Energy. The Cataline era is slightly behind LG New Energy.
Source / pexels
In the Chinese market, or in the order competition of Tesla's Shanghai factory, NINGDE era and LG new energy close to hand-to-hand combat. In the global market, the two companies have long started a frontal war, and the current Ningde era ranks first, followed by LG New Energy, and Panasonic ranks third.
The change in this industry pattern depends in part on who Tesla's orders are flowing to.
Tesla's earliest battery supplier was Panasonic, which began to cooperate exclusively in 2009, so Panasonic became the number one player in the field of power batteries in the early years. But then the cooperation between the two diverged, Musk believes that Panasonic's production capacity is dragging down Tesla's delivery speed, and Panasonic believes that Tesla's price is too fierce and unprofitable.
LG New Energy has seized this gap, squeezed into the Tesla supply chain in one fell swoop, and squeezed out Panasonic's global ranking. Xin Xuezhe, CEO of LG New Energy, said that entering tesla's supply chain will double the company's revenue in 2025.
Therefore, binding Tesla may not be important, but the consequences of losing Tesla are very serious.
Next, the scope of contention between CATL and LG New Energy will spread to overseas markets.
The overseas market demand is very large, but the production capacity of Tesla's Shanghai factory is limited. In 2021, Tesla sold a total of 936,000 vehicles worldwide, and the Shanghai factory in China alone delivered 484,000 units, accounting for more than half, of which 160,000 units were exported. In 2022, with tesla's Berlin factory put into operation, who will support the battery with these new capacity will directly affect the market share of battery manufacturers.
In May last year, CATL said in an investor research activity that the construction of factories in Germany is progressing smoothly, and due to the slight impact of the epidemic, energy production is expected at the end of 2021. This is all in advance layout.
Direct competition with LG New Energy, the favorable point for the Ningde era is that the lithium iron phosphate battery supporting the Ningde era is getting more and more attention from Tesla.
On an earnings call in October last year, Tesla said it was changing the chemical composition of the batteries used in its standard endurance model, using lithium iron phosphate batteries to replace the previous ternary lithium batteries, while the long-endurance model would continue to use ternary lithium batteries. In the Chinese market, in the past, only the Ningde era supplied lithium iron phosphate batteries for Tesla.
Ningde era and Tesla, is it possible to talk about collapse?
Investors are worried that if there are other manufacturers that can also supply Tesla with lithium iron phosphate batteries?
For example, BYD.
This time with the "Ningde era and Tesla talks collapsed" news appeared at the same time, there is "BYD will supply Tesla blade battery", blade battery is BYD's ace product, belongs to lithium iron phosphate battery.
Shentu learned from a number of industry insiders that BYD has indeed won Tesla's battery supply orders, and the mass production time is most likely in the first half of this year. However, this news BYD did not publicly confirm.
Battery industry in the past has been a line of contention, in the past few years lithium iron phosphate is not optimistic, BYD has been adhering to the lithium iron phosphate route, which is also its strength, ternary lithium battery is the strength of the Ningde era. Interestingly, in Tesla's supply chain, the Ningde era has relied on lithium iron phosphate to gain a firm foothold.
The biggest advantage of lithium iron phosphate batteries is that they are cheap. It is precisely because of the listing of the lithium iron phosphate version of the model that Tesla can frantically reduce prices, and the price of Model 3 and Model Y has been hit below 300,000 yuan.
But now, Tesla seems to have decided to expand the scope of suppliers, and BYD is the most promising.
"Car companies generally for the sake of supply chain security, basically will not let the battery supplier a monopoly, so it is logical to find two supplies of lithium iron phosphate batteries, mainly supplying models with standard endurance." Chai Daixuan said to the deep way.
In China's power battery industry, BYD and NINGDE era are old rivals. The earliest battery brother is BYD, which produces batteries on the one hand and sells new energy vehicles on the other, becoming the hegemon of the industry. Later, the Ningde era relied on the rise of ternary lithium batteries, and only surpassed BYD in the past few years. BYD did not accept defeat, set up a Fordy battery company, began to supply to car companies, trying to expand the market share of batteries, is also a matter of the past two years.
It is precisely because of this relationship, the relationship between the Ningde era and Tesla, that will become delicate because of BYD's "turmoil".
There is also a variable, which lies in the mass production of the 4680 battery.
This is a self-developed battery released by Tesla in 2020, claiming to increase energy density by 5 times, increase mileage by 16%, and reduce cost by 56%, and may be assembled on models such as Tesla Model Y and Cyberlruck.
Once this battery is landed, it will also find a battery factory to produce it. Tesla said on its full-year 2021 earnings call that all of its partners and suppliers are developing batteries in its 4680 form factor.
LG New Energy is very positive about this. News broke in July last year that LG and Samsung may have completed sample testing and production of 4680 battery samples.
If Tesla replaces existing batteries with 4680 batteries on a large scale in the future, the industry pattern may be reshuffled.
However, as far as the current situation is concerned, Tesla must continue to cooperate with the CATL era.
"According to the current demand of Tesla and the production capacity of the Ningde era, the cooperation between the two sides is highly matched, and it is unlikely that the so-called 'negotiation collapse and replacement' situation will occur, or in other words, other suppliers do not have such sufficient capacity to ensure Tesla's continuous growth in demand." There are points of view. After all, the current price, product performance, quality and price given to Tesla in the Ningde era are the most cost-effective batteries in China.
Chai Daixuan believes that the Ningde era has obtained many first-class car companies at home and abroad, and the supporting models are abundant, and the proportion of installed capacity of the top ten customers in the past two years is also in a downward trend, with the gradual diversification of the new energy vehicle market, even if the loss of Tesla this customer, the risk is controllable.
Overall, Tesla is very important to the Ningde era, and the Ningde era is also a great help to Tesla, they are mutually beneficial and commonly make a big cake relationship. But the industry is in a state of dramatic change, with competitors eyeing the tiger and the competitive landscape likely to change at any time. To sit firmly in the position of the global battery brother, the Ningde era can not be taken lightly.
*The caption image is from Visual China.