"After the market penetration rate of new energy vehicles exceeds 5%, it will enter an accelerated stage, and after more than 10%, it will enter a new stage of marketization." On March 26, at the high-level forum of the 2022 Electric Vehicle 100 Association, Wan Gang, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, shared his thoughts on new energy vehicles.
Wan Gang said that the new energy vehicle market will achieve high-quality development in 2021, mainly reflected in high-speed growth, high penetration rate, and high penetration of intelligence.
According to the data, the global sales of new energy vehicles will reach a new high in 2021, reaching 6.75 million units, an increase of 108% year-on-year. Among them, the European market continued to grow, with sales reaching 2.338 million vehicles, an increase of 66% year-on-year; the United States also increased significantly, with sales reaching 670,000 vehicles, an increase of more than 100%; China continued to break through, with sales reaching 3.52 million vehicles, and production and sales increased by more than 160% year-on-year. The global number of new energy vehicles exceeded 15 million, and China's figure exceeded 9 million, maintaining more than half of the world's ownership and production and sales.
The penetration rate of new energy vehicles in Europe has reached 16.5% in 2021, and the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China has reached 13.4%, and has continued to grow since the beginning of last year.
At the same time, the Internet of Vehicles technology has also achieved a high degree of coverage in the field of new energy vehicles, and the market penetration rate of L2-level driver assistance systems in new energy vehicles has reached 38%; in 2021, 70 new energy models will be listed, and 289 models will be on sale.
From the results of the backward reasons, the high-quality development of new energy vehicles is inseparable from the breakthrough of technological innovation. Wan Gang said that at present, the pure electric platform, intelligent thermal management, hydrogen fuel cell and other vehicle technologies of new energy vehicles, high-nickel ternary cathode materials, silicon/carbon composite anode materials, electric vehicle electronic and electrical architecture and other key component technologies have made significant progress, and for the intelligent car first pass the vehicle information security protection, but also found a corresponding solution.
The achievements of new energy vehicles cannot be ignored, but the challenge of entering a new stage of marketization is also huge. Supply chains, intelligence and the "double carbon target" have all become problems to be faced in the new phase.
First of all, it is the issue of industrial chain and industrial chain security. In 2021, due to the impact of the epidemic, fire, power outage and other factors, chip production capacity is limited, which has become a pain point in the global automotive industry, so the global automobile production capacity has been reduced by tens of millions. This also reminds the mainland new energy automobile industry that the development of domain controllers should be taken into account when solving the problem of architecture, and the design of a new generation of automotive chips should consider more reliability, credibility, and basic functions and basic performance.
At the same time, the price of battery raw materials deviates from the growth of supply and demand, such as the price of lithium carbonate, which has increased by 10 times in one year, which has brought great trouble to the new energy automobile industry. This requires us to promote scientific and technological innovation around resource mining and refining, battery technology research and development innovation, recycling system construction, especially now in battery research, low nickel, low lithium, low cobalt or cobalt-free batteries are the direction of development, while the lithium and other raw materials trading market market management, in the smooth international logistics channels and trade processes to strengthen international cooperation, to ensure the supply of global power battery materials.
Second, promote the integration of vehicle energy, vehicle-road coordination, and vehicle-network interconnection. At present, power grid enterprises and automobile companies have begun to cooperate, and cars can be used as a storage power source to coordinate with regional network distribution networks; in terms of vehicle-road collaboration and vehicle-network interaction, vehicle perception and roadside perception have gradually formed, as well as the cooperation of regional clouds, providing a foundation for future vehicle-road collaboration. However, at the level of the actual application of technology, there are still some obstacles. Solving these problems requires strengthening understanding, mutual trust and cooperation among industries and jointly building cross-cutting standards and norms. The most important thing in this process is to maintain data security and user privacy protection, which is an important principle of our ethical and standard norms for developing artificial intelligence.
Finally, and most importantly, the challenge is to implement the country's "double carbon" strategy. Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission promulgated the medium- and long-term development of hydrogen energy and the specific goals of the 14th Five-Year Plan for 2035. In this regard, the automotive industry should coordinate its efforts, issue a roadmap for the green and low-carbon development of the automotive industry as soon as possible, clarify the policy standard system framework with low carbon as the core, and conduct in-depth research on the industrial chain footprint of the whole industry.
Especially in the field of "difficult households" commercial vehicles that reduce carbon emissions and emissions, Europe and China are facing the same problem: the number of commercial vehicles in the EU is about 5%, but the carbon emissions account for 40%, and the comparison in the mainland is more prominent, the commercial vehicle ownership is only about 5%, but the carbon emissions account for more than 50% of the entire industry. Therefore, this requires us to build an exchange platform for international cooperation, unite the synergy of the upstream and downstream development of the industrial chain, jointly explore the path of technological innovation, strengthen the collaborative research of science and technology, carry out forward-looking demonstration and promotion, strengthen the coordination of standards and regulations, and accelerate the low-carbon transformation of commercial vehicles.