Strong country strong core, raw material supply and price reduction, subsidy delay, a detailed number of new energy vehicle related proposals
Text/Zeng Jia
On March 5, in the government work report deliberated at the Fifth Session of the 13th National People's Congress, new energy vehicles were mentioned again, and the delegates also launched various proposals around the difficulties of their industry development, so it is better to sort out the relevant proposals than to focus on the difficulties encountered by new energy vehicles in recent years.
Raw materials soared, and subsidies retreated to induce a wave of price increases in the opening year
With the gradual expansion of the market scale of new energy vehicles and the expansion of demand for energy storage batteries, the scale of lithium battery production in mainland China has expanded year by year. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the output of lithium-ion batteries in mainland China has reached 18.845 billion in 2020, an increase of 19.87% year-on-year.
Lithium battery production
However, when the new energy vehicle market is expanding rapidly, the price of the four main materials of lithium batteries (positive electrode, negative electrode, diaphragm, electrolyte) continues to rise, and the research of Industrial Securities shows that from the beginning of 2021 to February 27, 2022, lithium iron phosphate rose by 332%, the price of electrolyte rose by 189% driven by lithium hexafluorophosphate, and ternary cathode materials generally rose by more than 100% during the year driven by metal prices.
At the same time as the raw materials soared, the policy Dongfeng is also quietly leaving, after the multi-department issued a notice that the subsidy policy for the purchase of new energy vehicles will be terminated at the end of 2022, and the vehicles licensed after December 31 this year will no longer be subsidized.
New energy vehicles in the market the main price concessions, the method of losing money under the dual pressure is obviously unable to continue, recently, Tesla, Xiaopeng Motors, GAC AION S Plus, Volkswagen's ID.6 CROZZ and ID.4 CROZZ and other new energy models have announced the news of price increases.
The delegates made the following suggestions on the two topics of subsidy deferral and raw material supply guarantee:
In response to the current situation of the market, Ding Shiqi, deputy to the National People's Congress and deputy general manager of Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group, said in an interview with China Securities News: "At present, the new energy vehicle market is still greatly affected by subsidy policies, and has not yet developed to a stage of development that is completely dependent on the market. He suggested extending the subsidy policy for the promotion and application of new energy vehicles and continuing to exempt the purchase tax from the vehicle and vessel tax until 2025.
Zeng Qinghong, a deputy to the National People's Congress and chairman of THE GAC Group, who holds a similar view, believes that the state subsidy for new energy should be postponed for one to two years, the procedures for receiving subsidies in the early stage should be simplified, the financial pressure of enterprises should be alleviated, and the strategic direction adjustment of the subsidy policy for the promotion and application of new energy vehicles should be considered from the national level.
In response to the soaring prices of raw materials, Zeng Yuqun, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of Ningde Times New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., suggested that a new type of energy storage capacity electricity price mechanism be established with reference to pumped storage, and multiple measures should be taken to ensure the safety of lithium resource supply.
In addition to the price increase, the chip problem that has plagued the new energy automobile industry for nearly a year has also been repeatedly mentioned.
Strong country first strong "core"
Affected by a series of factors such as the new crown epidemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war, the chip shortage crisis has lasted for more than a year, it is said that the international consulting company AlixPartners expects that the global automotive industry will lose 60.6 billion US dollars in 2021 due to the "chip shortage", and as far as the country is concerned, the chip field has long been subject to foreign companies, according to the ICinsights report, by 2020, Chinese mainland companies will only account for 5% of the global IC market.
China's chip share
As Wang Fengying, deputy to the National People's Congress and president of Great Wall Motors, said, in the short term, we must give priority to solving the problem of "lack of core", but as far as the domestic situation is concerned, in the medium term, it is necessary to improve the industrial layout of chips and achieve independent control, in the long run, to build a long-term mechanism for the introduction and training of industrial talents to achieve long-term sustainable development, Wang Fengying proposed "Improve the overall layout and promote the rapid development of China's automotive grade chip industry". She recommends:
Short-term priority to solve the problem of "lack of core";
Improve the industrial layout in the medium term and realize independent control;
Construct a long-term mechanism for the introduction and training of industrial talents to achieve long-term sustainable development.
Zeng Qinghong, secretary of the party committee and chairman of the board of directors of GAC Group, also put forward 1 bill and 5 suggestions on amending the relevant provisions of the Road Traffic Safety Law and promoting the rapid development of intelligent driving cars, and he believes that China's automobiles should first be "strong core" to strengthen the construction of the industrial chain of key auto parts.
Chen Hong, secretary of the party committee and chairman of SAIC Motor, said that through policy guidance and multi-party coordination, it is necessary to establish unified technical specifications and standards for vehicle-grade chips, and set up a third-party testing and certification platform; it is recommended that the state take the lead in setting up special funds to encourage chip companies and automobile companies to participate together and accelerate the formation of research and development, manufacturing and application capabilities of domestic large-scale chips. He put forward the "Proposal on Promoting the Localization of Vehicle Regulation-level and Large Computing Power Chips and Supporting the Coordinated Development of the Domestic Automotive Chip Industry Chain", focusing on "industrial chain replenishment chain and strong chain".
In addition to policy guidance, to improve the market competitiveness of electric vehicles, we must also start from the "electricity" itself.
Battery safety, battery life, charging pile, power exchange system one-stop
In recent years, new energy vehicles have been caught on fire, and the reasons can generally be divided into short circuits in electrified lines or short circuits inside batteries causing spontaneous combustion of vehicles.
Wang Fengying, deputy to the National People's Congress and president of Great Wall Motors, suggested that in order to improve the safety performance of power batteries and promote the healthy development of the new energy automobile industry, it is necessary to strengthen the top-level design to do a good job in battery thermal runaway protection technology to promote the promotion of power battery safety issues: First, carry out top-level planning at the national level, promote the application of thermal runaway protection technology for power batteries, and boost it to become an essential configuration for new energy vehicles leaving the factory; second, gradually equippe the existing new energy vehicles with thermal runaway protection technology for power batteries.
"Find pile trouble, charging difficulty" has always been the most distressing problem for new energy vehicle users, according to the data of the Charging Alliance, the national vehicle-to-pile ratio in January 2022 is basically at the overall level of 3.8:1.
Charging Alliance
Lei Jun, founder, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, believes that the current proportion of fast charging in public charging piles in the mainland is only 40%, and the fast charging power is generally low, resulting in slow charging speed, long queuing time, low turnover efficiency and other issues are still prominent, and it is difficult to adapt to the rapid development of the current new energy automobile industry.
In this regard, he put forward three suggestions: strengthen policy guidance, coordinate and promote the planning and layout of high-power fast charging networks; establish a national innovation cooperation platform to strengthen joint research on core technologies; strengthen construction service guarantees, and promote the popularization of high-power charging infrastructure.
Relative to the charging pile, Li Shufu, a deputy to the National People's Congress and chairman of Geely Holding Group, believes that the power exchange mode of vehicle and electricity separation has the advantages of efficient energy replenishment and cost reduction compared with the traditional charging pile power supply mode, in addition, he also put forward the "Proposal on Promoting the Application of Methanol Vehicles to Help Carbon Neutrality in the Transportation Field".