Huawei does not build cars, but invested a lithium battery with Xiaomi

Text | Zou Yilan

Edit | Zhang Lijuan

Source | Invest in Net East Forty Capital

Xiaomi Huawei took a stake in a lithium battery company; a week ago, the company officially announced that it would cooperate with Weilai.

According to the Tianyancha APP, on March 24, Beijing Weilan New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. underwent industrial and commercial changes, adding a number of shareholders such as Hubei Xiaomi Yangtze River Industry Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership) and Huawei Affiliate Shenzhen Hubble Technology Investment Partnership (Limited Partnership), while the company's registered capital increased from 58.0368 million yuan to 61.3673 million yuan, an increase of 5.74%.

This is the second increase in Xiaomi Huawei's two companies and after participating in the C round of financing of Weilan New Energy in November 2021, and it is also the only lithium battery company that Huawei has publicly invested so far. It is worth noting that the company officially announced its cooperation with NIO at the recent China Automobile 100 Forum.

Xiaomi Weilai: Is it the same destination, or the narrow road?

Mobile phone companies building cars is nothing new. Compared with Apple, which is "less than half of the business and the middle road collapses", Xiaomi is obviously much smoother in the automotive field. On March 22 this year, Xiaomi said that the progress of the car-making business far exceeded expectations while officially releasing the 2021 financial report, which added a little more confidence to the company's previous announcement that it expected to achieve mass production of new energy vehicles in 2024.

CVSource investment data, since the announcement of car manufacturing in 2021, Xiaomi has also invested in Honeycomb Energy and Ganfeng lithium battery two car-related battery companies. The former is a lithium battery rising star independent of Great Wall Motors and is eager to be listed; the latter is a holding subsidiary of Ganfeng Lithium (A: 002460, H: 01772), an A+H listed company, in which Xiaomi invested 187.50 million yuan and held 3.51% of the shares.

Endurance has always been a major problem entangled in new energy vehicles, and it is also the most concerned problem by external consumers. Insufficient mileage will directly reduce consumers' desire to buy, and will also directly affect the sales of enterprises. Therefore, getting a good battery will directly increase the core competitiveness of new energy vehicle companies. From the perspective of Investing in Ganfeng Lithium, known as the "Lithium King", Lei Jun has made enough efforts for his "second entrepreneurship".

Although the outside world has different opinions on the major mobile phone companies to join the new energy vehicle track, the first to bear the brunt is the new energy vehicle companies, especially the emerging enterprises represented by "Wei Xiaoli". After the crazy "inner volume" of domestic and foreign veteran car companies, before the cross-border competition of mobile phone giants, in the face of a paper document of state subsidy decline, the days of new energy car companies that continue to lose money in 2022 will become more and more difficult.

Instead of sitting still and waiting, it is better to "attack" in reverse. In February this year, a source revealed that Weilai has opened a "machine-making" business, led by Yin Shuijun, the former president of Meitu Mobile Phone, and that this plan was proposed long before Xiaomi made cars. It is reported that Xiaomi has implemented non-compete agreements for car companies such as "Wei Xiaoli" to prevent opponents from poaching core talents.

In addition to human resources, quality suppliers are bound to join the scramble list. According to the Financial Associated Press, at the past China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, Li Hong, chief scientist and founder of Weilan New Energy, revealed that Weilan New Energy is cooperating with Weilai Automobile to launch a hybrid solid-liquid electrolyte battery with a single charge range of 1000 kilometers based on et7 models, with a battery pack of 150 degrees of electricity and an energy density of 360Wh/kg. The solid-state battery is expected to begin mass production at the end of this year or the first half of next year.

With the new business of Xiaomi and WEILAI on the right track, it is foreseeable that the two will have more confrontations in the future.

Huawei's only invested battery company: not to build a car, but also to get a piece of the pie

Compared with Xiaomi, which "builds cars behind closed doors", Huawei's attitude towards car building is much more flexible. In April 2019, Huawei's rotating chairman made it clear that Huawei does not build cars itself, but will cooperate with car companies in information and communication technology. Since then, Huawei has reached strategic cooperation agreements with many car companies such as Changan and GAC to enter the new energy vehicle track.

Although technically, cars and mobile phones do have some overlap. But for enterprises, it is not easy to enter an almost completely unfamiliar industry from scratch; especially in a money-burning industry such as new energy vehicles, even the leading giants may not be able to have such ambitions.

However, with the "arms race" of car companies, the demand for related spare parts will inevitably rise. In the ranking of new energy vehicle brand financing in the past decade, Hive Energy, which is mainly engaged in batteries, is prominently listed. Obviously, compared to relying on real money and silver to pile up the whole vehicle from scratch, using technical advantages to play auxiliary is also a good tactic.

Previously, Huawei has ranked first in the field of smart cockpit SoC chips and side-channel unit RSU, but it cannot satisfy Huawei's appetite. According to CVSource investment data, except for Weilan New Energy, Huawei and its Hubble investment have not had an investment record of battery companies; Hubble Investment was previously highly concentrated in the semiconductor chip industry, with 37 investment records and a cumulative amount of more than 900 million yuan.

At the same China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, Wang Chao, president of Huawei's digital energy intelligent electric product line, said that in the next few years, Huawei will launch a full-stack platform solution based on a 1,000-volt high-voltage platform that can be charged for 7.5 minutes or even 5 minutes to quickly charge 200 kilometers.

With the addition of Huawei, the cake of new energy vehicles is becoming more and more difficult to cut. With the rising price of new energy vehicles, there are still question marks in the consumption prospects, and the upstream and downstream are surrounded by wolves. The fish are more watery and small, how much time is left for "Wei Xiaoli" to turn around? Perhaps the remaining days of 2022 will reveal the answer.

The scrambled Weilan New Energy: The Transformation Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

Weilan New Energy is a solid-state lithium battery developer, the company was established in 2016, the business scope includes: lithium-ion batteries, mixed solid-liquid batteries, solid-state batteries, solid-state batteries, all-solid-state batteries, power batteries, energy storage battery material technology development. The company mainly focuses on the research and development and production of the next generation of solid-state lithium batteries, and is one of the few high-tech battery enterprises in China with core patents and technologies for solid-state lithium batteries.

The founder of the company, Academician Chen Liquan, is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a researcher of the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a doctoral supervisor. From the "SIX. Five" to "eight. Wu" presided over and participated in the research of the key project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences "All-solid-state Lithium Battery". He was the person in charge of the national 863 plan for secondary lithium batteries, and was the first to successfully develop lithium-ion batteries in China.

Its chairman and general manager Yu Huigen is a professor-level senior engineer with 22 years of working experience in the lithium battery industry, with 78 patents and 8 papers; he is also a battery expert of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. Its director Li Hong is a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the leader of the Class A guide project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and has won the Scientific and Technological Achievement Award of the Academy of Sciences.

The company is also an important layout of cassette capital of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the field of new energy and new materials. In the future, CAS Venture Capital will continue to help Weilan New Energy implement the high-energy density solid-state lithium battery technology innovation project, help it achieve a complete set of mass production technologies for 300Wh/kg and 400Wh/kg series solid-state lithium batteries, energy storage batteries and other products, break through the series of innovative technologies with independent intellectual property rights, and gradually promote large-scale production.