At the just-concluded 2022 China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, BYD Chairman Wang Chuanfu expressed his views. He believes that the development of new energy vehicles in 2021 exceeds expectations, and the speed of industry change in the future may be faster than imagined.
On the one hand, there are more and more positive factors to promote the accelerated development of new energy vehicles at the level of technology, products, markets, policies and other levels; on the other hand, there are more and more negative factors restricting fuel vehicles due to rising oil prices, emission upgrades, energy conservation and environmental protection, and industrial transformation.
However, behind the explosive growth of the market, the industry is facing severe challenges such as the intensification of the epidemic, the soaring price of raw materials, and the instability of the supply chain. This year is a key year for new energy vehicles to take advantage of the momentum and accelerate change. The more the industry grows at a high speed, the more it is necessary to think of danger in times of peace, seek progress in stability, take into account various complex factors, and adhere to technological innovation to solve the problems of development.
To this end, Wang Chuanfu put forward three suggestions for the development of China's new energy automobile industry: first, he hopes to clarify the preferential policies for new energy vehicles in the post-subsidy era; second, adhere to the "two legs" of pure electric and plug-in hybrid; third, adhere to lithium iron phosphate as the correct development path. In Xiao Lei's view, rather than Saying that Wang Chuanfu made suggestions for the development of China's new energy automobile industry, it is more like planning three development directions for BYD itself.
In the post-subsidy era, BYD must find another way out
From a worldwide perspective, in order to stimulate the development of the new energy vehicle industry, European and American countries are increasing fiscal and tax support for new energy vehicles, but mainland new energy vehicles have entered the post-subsidy era, and policies such as new energy vehicle purchase subsidies and purchase tax reductions will be withdrawn at the end of this year.
Considering that product development requires a development cycle of 3-5 years, in order to stabilize industry expectations, Wang Chuanfu suggested that the purchase tax reduction policy for new energy vehicles can be extended to maintain policy stability during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period.
At the same time, due to the new energy vehicle sales reached a new high last year, resulting in a serious imbalance between the supply and demand of points, the price fluctuated sharply, which was unfavorable to the development of the industry, it is recommended to refer to the grain reserve adjustment mechanism of agriculture, study the establishment of a point pool to adjust the balance between supply and demand, enhance the predictability of the point price, and ensure the effective operation of the double credit policy.
In fact, not long before Wang Chuanfu proposed to optimize the double points policy, Xiao Lei mentioned in "Carbon Credit Trading, a Short "Wealth Creation Movement"" that when subsidies decline and the double points are seriously imbalanced, the situation FACED by BYD will be quite embarrassing.
You know, BYD is well-known in the industry for increasing revenue and not increasing profits. ACCORDING TOD Group's 2020 financial report data shows that although its revenue in 2020 is as high as 156.598 billion yuan, the net profit attributable to the mother is only 4.234 billion yuan, and the net profit attributable to the mother is only 2.954 billion yuan.
In 2020, BYD's new energy vehicle points reached 754,000 points, second only to Tesla in the positive points ranking. Based on the unit price of 3,000 yuan per minute in that year, BYD obtained 754,000 new energy credits in 2020 worth 2.262 billion yuan.
However, due to the surge in sales of new energy vehicles last year, there was a serious imbalance between the supply and demand of points this year, and the price fluctuated sharply. Today's points market has plummeted to 800 yuan / point, which means that the profit that BYD can obtain on points has plummeted by 3.77 times in just 2 years.
In addition, the "2019-2021 New Energy Vehicle Promotion and Application Subsidy Fund Pre-allocation Table" published by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that BYD Automobile Industry Co., Ltd. and BYD Automobile Co., Ltd. will receive a total of 2.445 billion yuan in subsidies, and the subsidies it receives rank first. It can be seen that BYD is a car company that is highly dependent on subsidies for new energy vehicles.
At the end of this year, the mainland will completely cancel the subsidy for new energy vehicles, which means that BYD will permanently lose this huge source of income in the future. Coupled with the big dive in the market situation caused by the imbalance between supply and demand of double integrals, it will undoubtedly make BYD, which has not increased revenue and increased profits, even worse.
Of course, the decline in subsidies and the imbalance between supply and demand of double integrals endanger not only BYD, but the entire Chinese new energy automobile industry that is developing in China's new energy vehicle market. As a new energy vehicle giant, BYD must come up with a set of effective solutions for its own survival or for the development of China's new energy automobile industry.
BYD has been walking on "two legs"
In terms of the technical route of new energy vehicles, although the mainland is the world's largest new energy vehicle market, before BYD released the DM-i super hybrid system to bring about the fire of plug-in and mixing, plug-in hybrid models have been tepid in the mainland's new energy vehicle market.
Since BYD released the world's first plug-in hybrid model F3 DM in 2008, BYD has always been an unswerving advocate of the "two legs" of plug-in hybrid and pure electricity. However, even in January 2021, traditional fuel vehicles still play a pivotal role in its model system.
At that time, BYD's passenger car sales were 42,094 units, of which the sales of new energy models were 19,871, the sales of traditional fuel vehicles were 22,223, and the sales of traditional fuel vehicles accounted for 52.7% of BYD's passenger car sales. In February 2022, BYD's passenger car sales were 90,268 units, more than double that of January last year.
Among the 90,268 new vehicles sold in February, new energy vehicle sales reached 87,473, compared with 4.4 times the sales of new energy vehicles in January last year. At this time, the sales volume of traditional fuel vehicles accounted for only 3.2% of BYD's sales of all models. Obviously, the current BYD has completed the revolution of its traditional fuel vehicles.
Among the 87,473 new energy vehicles sold by BYD in February, DM models sold 44,300 units and EV models sold 43,173 units, and these two different powertrain models accounted for half of BYD's new energy vehicle sales in February.
It can be seen that if in the automotive field, who will carry out the pure electricity and hybrid "two-legged" walking most thoroughly, BYD calls the first, and no one dares to call it the second. For Wang Chuanfu and his BYD, insisting on pure electricity and plug-in hybridization is basically clarifying the correctness of his "two-legged" walking strategy.
In Wang Chuanfu's view, China's plug-in hybrid vehicles still have considerable market potential. Last year, plug-in hybrid models accounted for 50 percent of the European market, but only 18 percent in China. You know, compared with Europe, the national conditions of the mainland are more suitable for the development of plug-in hybrid models.
There are more than 60% of car-free households in China, plug-in hybrid to achieve short-distance electricity, long-distance oil, so that the first family car can be oilable and electric. If pure electric vehicles focus on solving the demand for additional purchases, then plug-in hybrids effectively solve the needs of more families to buy or exchange, and form a significant substitution effect on the huge traditional fuel vehicle market.
Whether at home or abroad, plug-in hybrid is an important way to achieve the goal of double carbon. With the existence of plug-in hybrid, the energy transformation of automobiles will become relatively mild, which will also help stabilize the supply of the industrial chain and achieve a smooth transition from fuel vehicles to pure electric vehicles.
Insist on lithium iron phosphate, because BYD focuses on lithium iron phosphate
Regarding Wang Chuanfu's "insisting on lithium iron phosphate as the right development path", What Xiao Lei is thinking is that this is not what BYD has been doing? According to Wang Chuanfu, safety is the cornerstone of the development of new energy vehicles, cost is an important indicator that must be faced, when the performance crosses the threshold, the importance of energy density will be reduced.
In the past, when the electric vehicle had a range of only 200 kilometers, the energy density was indeed the most important indicator, but when the mileage reached 500 kilometers, the mileage of pure electric vehicles could almost reach the same mileage as a tank of fuel oil in fuel vehicles, and the battery energy density was no longer the most important, and the most important indicators may become safety, cost, cycle life, etc.
At the same time, in the era of traditional fuel vehicles, China's automobile industry has been being necked by oil cards, if the development of ternary lithium batteries, then the power batteries in the era of electric vehicles will be cobalt, nickel and other rare metal card neck. Lithium iron phosphate batteries do not contain rare metals, so they are more suitable for the tolerance of social resources.
On some level, energy density is almost equal to the endurance of pure electric vehicles. Wang Chuanfu's statement that "the importance of energy density will decrease" is similar to Musk's claim that "long endurance is not important". Wang Chuanfu and Musk's views on long-endurance electric vehicles seem to coincide, but in fact, they are pregnant with ghost fetuses.
The reason why Musk is not optimistic about the development of long-endurance electric vehicles is because in the case of the shortage of raw materials for power batteries, he wants to reduce the dependence of bicycles on power batteries and increase the scale of production capacity at the lowest cost; and Wang Chuanfu's remarks seem to be for the development of China's new energy vehicle industry, but it is actually for BYD itself.
It should be known that in addition to the vehicle business, the supply of blade batteries to the outside world and becoming a power battery supplier are the most important strategic decisions of BYD in the next few years. Blade batteries are essentially lithium iron phosphate batteries, since entering the automotive field, bydir is most proud of lithium iron phosphate batteries, and the drawback of lithium iron phosphate batteries is that the energy density is not high enough.
Wang Chuanfu's suggestion of "adhering to lithium iron phosphate as the correct development path" is not only the development route of China's power battery, but more like telling people: "Blade batteries do not contain rare metals, the cost is low, the safety is higher, and there will be no cases of being stuck in the neck in the future."
In Xiao Lei's view, the reason why Wang Chuanfu said that "when the performance crosses the threshold, the importance of energy density will decrease" is mainly because IT is difficult to optimize the energy density of lithium iron phosphate batteries.
It should be known that compared with the ternary lithium battery that can be optimized by adjusting the ratio of cobalt, nickel and manganese, BYD's blade battery is more of a physical optimization of the lithium iron phosphate battery through CTP technology. Strictly speaking, compared with traditional lithium iron phosphate batteries, the energy density of BYD's blade batteries has not been transformatively improved.
summary
The three suggestions put forward by WANG Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, at the China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, are ostensibly for the sake of China's new energy vehicles, but in fact, all of them are for BYD's own development. However, although Wang Chuanfu's proposal is for BYD's own development, we can't find anything wrong with its three suggestions in the current field of new energy vehicles in China.
In Xiao Lei's view, such a situation is more or less carefully fearful. For example, while the world scoffs at plug-in hybrids, BYD enters the game alone with plug-in hybrids. Nowadays, plug-in hybrid has become the most mainstream transitional technology in the automotive energy revolution, and it is possible to be reborn in the more distant field of new energy vehicles as a hydrogen energy battery car in the future.
For example, ASD had already set the tone for the development of new energy vehicles as early as 2002 when it entered the automotive field. In 2008, it launched the world's first plug-in hybrid production car, the F3 DM, which is equipped with a lithium iron phosphate battery. Nowadays, ternary lithium batteries are in a production capacity crisis because of expensive and rare metals, and lithium iron phosphate batteries that do not rely on rare metals have become a well-deserved sought-after commodity in the new energy vehicle market after several twists and turns.
Perhaps it is precisely because Wang Chuanfu saw all this when he entered the automotive field 20 years ago that he can carry out such a forward-looking layout for THE future of BYD.
Note: The material for this article comes from the Internet