In 2022, the power battery market is surging and the hegemony of the Ningde era is being more and more challenged. LG New Energy was previously listed, setting the largest IPO in South Korea's history. In China, the third largest China Innovation Airlines (AVIC Lithium Battery) also plans to land on the capital market.
The development momentum of Hive Energy is even more ferocious, and it has obtained four huge financings in the past year, with a valuation of up to 46 billion yuan, behind which it has gathered well-known institutions such as Shenzhen Venture Capital, IDG, CDH, Xiaomi, Sany Heavy Industry, and Country Garden. It is reported that the emerging battery manufacturer plans to seek a listing this year.
First of all, a brief introduction: it was originally the power battery division of Great Wall Motors, which was split into an independent company in February 2018, and its headquarters was located in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, focusing on power battery research and development, testing, manufacturing, assembly and sales. According to data from SNE Research, a South Korean market research firm, Honeycomb Energy ranked among the top ten in the world for the first time, with an installed capacity of 3.1GWh, an increase of more than 400% year-on-year.
The establishment of Hive Energy can be said to be the second entrepreneurship of Wei Jianjun, the head of Great Wall Motors. According to the "2021 Hurun Rich List", Wei Jianjun and Han Xuejuan are worth 218 billion yuan, climbing the throne of the richest man in Hebei and ranking among the top ten in the country.
At the age of 26, Wei Jianjun gave up his dream of becoming a racing driver and took over the car modification company Founded by his uncle Wei Deliang, Great Wall Industry (the predecessor of Great Wall Motors). In just three years, not only did it pay off 2 million yuan of debt, but also made millions of net profits.
After getting out of the predicament, Wei Jianjun set his sights on the pickup track. The launch of the Great Wall Pikadil (Deer), with the quality of Pi Shi Resistant manufacturing, 60,000 to 70,000 yuan of people-friendly price, is sought after by self-employed and township business owners. In 1998, more than 7,000 vehicles were sold, taking the top spot in the Chinese pickup truck market. In 2002, we began to lay out the low-end SUV market that was rarely discussed at that time.
Today, pickup trucks and SUVs have become the backbone of Great Wall Motors' sales. The former has maintained the first domestic and export sales for 24 consecutive years, and sold 233006 vehicles last year, up 3.6% year-on-year. The Haval brand sold 770,000 vehicles in the whole year, an increase of 2.6% year-on-year, and won the first place in China's SUV brand sales for 12 consecutive years, with more than 7 million vehicles sold worldwide.
With the release of the "Ten Cities and 1000 Vehicles" plan, the prelude to the development of New Energy Vehicles in China has begun. As the core of new energy vehicles, power batteries have naturally become a place where soldiers must compete. Wei Jianjun is keenly aware of this trend, so he set up a power battery project team internally ten years ago to carry out pre-research work on power battery cells. At that time, the Ningde era had just been established for one year.
In 2016, the project team was upgraded to the power battery division and became independent two years later. Backed by Great Wall Motors, coupled with the help of capital, Hive Energy began to soar. Not only in Chengdu, Changzhou, Huzhou, Ma'anshan, Shangrao, Nanjing and other places to build factories, but also in Germany layout, as of now under construction capacity of 287GWh.
Its "ambition" is not small, and the global capacity planning target for 2025 has been increased from the original 200GWh to 600GWh. To this end, an average of 100GWh will be added annually in the next three years. It is worth mentioning that CATL expects that the production capacity by the end of 2025 is also expected to be 600GWh.
Some industry insiders believe that as a latecomer, the technical starting point of Hive Energy is high, there is no burden of historical production capacity, and it is not impossible to achieve overtaking in curves. It is reported that its products use a high-speed lamination process, which can avoid the risk of thermal runaway caused by the internal short circuit caused by the traditional winding process that is easy to break.
However, there are also views that the company's orders have exceeded 400GWh, but the actual production capacity is only 5GWh, and the delivery pressure is obvious. A few days ago, Hive Energy was also sued by CATL for unfair competition. The cause was that nine former employees violated the non-compete agreement by providing services to competitors.
epilogue
In January 2022, the domestic power battery load volume was 16.2GWh, up 86.9% year-on-year. The loading volume of catheter era is 8.13GWh, accounting for 50.2%. It is followed by BYD, Zhongxin Airlines, guoxuan hi-tech, and Hive Energy ranks among the top five, with an installed capacity of 0.44GWh. Whether the "one big" industry pattern will change, we will continue to pay attention to.