China can look at the two sessions - new energy vehicles

In this year's government work report, a number of policy information related to the automobile industry is involved, which conveys a new weather vane of the new energy industry, and under the background of the goals of "carbon peaking" and "carbon neutrality", the domestic new energy vehicle market ushers in a new round of development opportunities.

According to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the production and sales of new energy vehicles in mainland China in 2021 were 3.545 million units and 3.521 million units, respectively, an increase of 1.6 times year-on-year; the penetration rate of new energy vehicles reached 13.4%, 8 percentage points higher than that of the previous year.

A number of people's congress deputies and CPPCC members in the automotive industry also put forward relevant suggestions and measures.

Zhou Fugeng, deputy to the National People's Congress and senior engineer of Jiangqi Automobile Group, put forward suggestions such as "Suggestions on Further Optimizing the Environment for Using New Energy Passenger Vehicles". He pointed out that in the use of new energy passenger cars, especially pure electric vehicles, there is a problem of inconvenient charging, especially during holidays, there are fewer charging piles in the highway service area, and the supply is in short supply.

According to data from the China Charging Alliance, as of January 2022, the member units of the alliance reported a total of 1.178 million public charging piles, an increase of 31,000 units from the previous month, and the number of units in January increased by 45.2% year-on-year, and from February 2021 to January 2022, an average of about 31,000 public charging piles were added every month.

However, during the National Day in 2021, there are still 409 charging stations queuing, so it is urgent to increase the construction of high-speed charging infrastructure.

This requires policy support for the use of new energy passenger vehicles, on the one hand, to improve the convenience of charging new energy passenger vehicles, to ensure the endurance of vehicles to meet the long-distance travel needs of consumers, on the other hand, to improve the charging cost, improve the whole life cycle of new energy vehicles.

Only when the various guarantees are perfected, it is possible to increase the enthusiasm of consumers to purchase new energy vehicles, thereby promoting sales.

At the same time, in terms of new energy resource supply, decommissioned battery recycling, and promoting the rise of domestic chips, Chen Hong, deputy to the National People's Congress, secretary of the party committee and chairman of SAIC Motor, suggested that it is necessary to strengthen the layout of the industrial chain and low-carbon technology research and development innovation, effectively integrate and control upstream resources such as lithium and cobalt, and ensure the safety of the industrial chain.

At present, the soaring price of lithium has become the biggest "uneasy" factor in the new energy automobile industry, and the importance of ensuring lithium resources has also been emphasized in this year's government work conference. The general view in the industry is that the value of existing lithium mineral resources in China needs to be strategically assessed, and battery recycling should also be taken as one of the important ways to obtain resources.

Lithium materials for the new energy automobile industry, the more far-reaching impact is that its price may inhibit the popularity of new energy vehicles, The National People's Congress deputy, Chery Automobile Chairman Yin Tongyue also put forward relevant suggestions, should be by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other departments to formulate policies, the new energy power battery materials into the national strategic reserve resource management, set up special funds, support and encourage domestic enterprises to acquire foreign battery material resources, to ensure the safety of the new energy vehicle supply chain.

In the chain of the supply chain of new energy vehicles, in addition to upstream resources, the contradiction between supply and demand of automotive chips is also a major problem restricting the development of the industry. Since 2021, due to many factors, there has been a serious shortage of chip supply in the automotive industry, which not only affects the production and sales of related cars, but also affects the upward breakthrough of the mainland intelligent automobile industry to a certain extent.

Wang Fengying, deputy to the National People's Congress and president of Great Wall Motor, suggested that the state formulate a 5-10-year automotive grade chip industry development plan, led by the state as a whole, to guide China's automotive grade chip industry technology to keep up with the development trend of cutting-edge technology and accelerate development. At the same time, it is necessary to pay attention to the guidance of the downstream application industry to apply Chinese enterprise vehicle-grade chip products, and truly realize the market feedback to promote technology iteration.

Relevant data show that the mainland automotive chip self-sufficiency rate is less than 10%, the localization rate is only 5%, the supply is highly dependent on foreign countries, the rapid coordination and stability of the market and ensuring the chip supply have become the key to realizing the independent controllability of domestic automotive chips, the automotive industry from high number growth to high-quality development of the core, and will directly determine the international competitiveness and status of the mainland automotive industry in the post-epidemic era.

Not only chips, but also technologies related to new energy vehicles include big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, etc. Technological innovation is the most important driving force for energy conservation and emission reduction goals, and the "14th Five-Year Plan for Green Transportation" has also been proposed to promote the integration and development of green transportation and intelligent transportation.

Li Yanhong, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman and CEO of Baidu, believes that intelligent transportation provides a new and effective path to alleviate carbon emissions in transportation, and the electrification and intelligence of automobiles, the networking of roads, and the sharing of travel are the core focus points. He put forward three suggestions: one is to accelerate the promotion of the intelligent transportation operator model, the second is to establish an evaluation standard for the benefits of intelligent transportation to help carbon emission reduction, and the third is to carry out a pilot project of the personal carbon credit incentive system.

According to IDC data, carbon dioxide emissions from the transportation industry account for about 9% of the national total, of which road traffic emissions account for more than 80%, and intelligent transportation technologies such as driverless and operation, intelligent information control, smart parking, and MaaS one-stop travel services contribute more than 40% to energy conservation and emission reduction.

It can be seen that promoting the green and high-quality development of urban transportation is one of the key links to achieve the national "double carbon" goal.

As an emerging industry, the expansion and prosperity of the new energy vehicle market not only needs policy support, the opening up of upstream resources, and the strength of enterprises, but also the bottoming out from downstream links. The market expects that domestic automobile sales will reach 27.8 million units in 2022, an increase of about 6% year-on-year, taking into account the three factors of per capita GDP and population density, China's new energy automobile industry still has a lot of room for improvement.