The boom of the new energy automobile industry has made power battery companies accelerate the pace of development. On February 24, 2022, Sunwoda electric vehicle batteries increased their capital by 2.43 billion yuan, introducing 19 enterprises, including Jiangsu Chehejia, a subsidiary of Ideal Automobile, Weirui Investment, SAIC Jinshi, Huayou Holdings, and Shenzhen Venture Capital, with a valuation of 12.4 billion yuan.
According to public information, Sunwoda Auto Battery is a subsidiary of Sunwoda that conducts power battery research and development, production and sales, and its customers include Renault, Nissan, Geely, Dongfeng, GAC, Xiaopeng and so on. According to the plan, the production capacity will reach 140GWh by 2025.
Sunwoda takes the research and development, design, production and sales of lithium battery cells and modules as its main business, and is involved in 3C consumer batteries, intelligent hardware, power batteries, energy storage systems and energy Internet and other industries. After more than 20 years of development, it has established eight production bases such as Shenzhen Baoan/Guangming, Huizhou Boluo, Jiangsu Nanjing, Zhejiang Lanxi, Shandong Zaozhuang, Jiangxi Nanchang, and New Delhi, India. As of February 25, the company's market value reached 64.925 billion yuan.
Wang Wei (left) Wang Mingwang (right)
In the early 1990s, 24-year-old Wang Mingwang came to Shenzhen to break through, entered the Hong Kong Jingsen (Shenzhen) Electronics Company to do product sales, and began to contact the battery industry. Every day, it was necessary to work from 8 a.m. to 1 a.m., and even for half a year without rest.
He felt that there was no hope for part-time work, so he partnered with others to start a business, making molds and plastics. But when the business has just picked up, the partner in charge of customer resources and business market proposed to split the family, leaving him only raw materials and molds. At the most difficult time, Wang Mingwang only had 2,000 yuan in cash left in his hand. He was not discouraged, and after discovering the big brother business opportunity, he immediately pulled up his younger brother Wang Wei and ran to Huaqiang North to sell big brother batteries.
Wang Mingwang knows that selling batteries is not profitable to manufacture batteries, so after saving enough capital, he founded a Jialida electronic processing factory, mainly engaged in mobile phones and pagers lithium batteries. In 1997, Sunwoda was officially established. At that time, the domestic mobile phone industry began to rise. The brothers learned that Konka Group was ready to produce its own brand mobile phones, so they took the initiative to seek cooperation, and after 21 days and nights of hard work, tailor-made battery samples were recognized.
Since then, Sunwoda has reached cooperation with Philips, NEC (Nippon Electric) and Haier to enter the Lenovo and ATL supply chains. With the advent of the smart phone era, with the strict control of product quality, it naturally obtains customers such as Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO and so on. Riding on the industry's east wind to become the world's largest supplier of mobile phone batteries, with a market share of 30%. Its lithium-ion battery module for smart phones has also been recognized as a national "manufacturing single champion" product.
In 2008, Sunwoda began to lay out the power battery business, doing the power battery pack business. With years of technology accumulation and brand effect in consumer battery modules, it has won the favor of high-end customers in the fields of power tools and medical equipment. Six years later, through the acquisition of Dongguan Liwei into the battery cell business, it gradually formed an electric vehicle battery system (battery cell, module, BMS and PACK) as the core of the product.
The company focuses on ternary lithium batteries and also has the ability to deliver lithium iron phosphate power battery products in batches. In recent years, it has begun to extend to key links such as upstream mineral raw materials, battery cell positive and negative electrode materials, and downstream electric vehicles, energy storage power stations, and power battery echelon utilization, forming the integration of the whole industrial chain.
There is still a long way to go to catch up with the head manufacturers. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, its power battery loading volume last year was 2.06GWh, with a market share of 1.3%, ranking tenth in the industry. Moreover, Sunwoda auto batteries have not yet achieved profitability, with losses of 324 million yuan and 254 million yuan in the first three quarters of 2020 and 2021, respectively, and revenue of 475 million yuan and 1.542 billion yuan in the same period.
South Korean market research firm SNE Research predicts that by 2023, the global demand for electric vehicles for power batteries will reach 406GWh, while the supply is expected to be 335GWh, and the "battery shortage" will continue for a long time. A few days ago, the news came out that Sunwoda will become the A supply of a certain version of the G9 medium and large SUV that Xiaopeng Automobile will launch soon, with a supply share of more than 50%. Subsequently, the relevant parties responded that the specific information filed by the Ministry of Vehicle Industry and Information Technology shall prevail.
Some industry insiders believe that in order to impact the annual sales target of 300,000 vehicles, it is impossible to put all the eggs in the basket of the Ningde era, and it is not surprising to choose Sunwoda (previously a Pack supplier of Xiaopeng G3 batteries). For Sunwoda, if it can bind the head car company, it not only means to obtain stable orders, but also to further improve its technical level.