Source: China Electronics News
BYD Auto Yuan Plus model production line
With the low sound of the fluidized bed device, the mung bean-sized granular silicon flows into the storage tank, waiting to be packed into the warehouse after passing the test...... This is a scene that the reporter saw in the granular silicon production base of GCL Technology. "Our company's current granular silicon orders are very full, and the production capacity is almost at full capacity, with three production bases and factories working in shifts 24 hours a day. The person in charge of GCL Technology had a smile on his face.
At present, the "new three" represented by electric manned vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar cells are performing well. According to the data, in 2023, the production and sales of new energy vehicles in mainland China will reach 9.587 million and 9.495 million respectively, an increase of 35.8% and 37.9% year-on-year, respectively; more than half of the top ten enterprises in the world in terms of power battery loading volume will come from China; from January to October 2023, the output of photovoltaic manufacturing in mainland China will increase by more than 70% year-on-year, hitting a record high, and the output value of the manufacturing end will exceed 1.3 trillion yuan.
From clothing, home appliances and furniture to the "new three", the change of "Made in China" on the world shelf is a vivid portrayal of the development and upgrading of the mainland's manufacturing industry. The rapid rise of the "new three" has injected confidence and vitality into the sustained recovery of the economy, and has become a powerful driving force for cultivating new quality productivity.
The "chain" is making efforts to accelerate the rise of industrial clusters
Walking into the GAC Aion new energy vehicle assembly workshop, the machine roared, the mechanical arm on the production line kept waving, and the AGV unmanned vehicle was busy shuttling back and forth. Here, after a series of technological processes such as stamping, welding, painting, and final assembly, the seemingly complex auto parts can be assembled into a new energy vehicle in just 60 seconds.
Picture: CATL anode production workshop
GAC Aion New Energy Vehicle Assembly Workshop is located in GAC Zhilian New Energy Automobile Industrial Park, Panyu District, Guangzhou. At present, with the vehicle factory as the core, the industrial park has formed a supply ecosystem of the auto parts industry chain in as fast as 3 hours, which can realize the supporting supply of core components such as batteries, electric chassis and body within 10 kilometers, and more than 80% of the supporting supply within 100 kilometers
Gu Huinan, general manager of GAC Aion, said: "Building a major parts supply within 100 kilometers can not only reduce transportation and warehousing links and shorten the supply cycle, but also strengthen upstream and downstream coordination, timely find product quality problems, and improve production efficiency." "It is understood that in 2023, about 480,000 new energy vehicles will be produced here and sold all over the world.
The reporter learned that not only in the Pearl River Delta, but also in the mainland, the Yangtze River Delta, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Southwest, Central China and other new energy automobile industry ecological groups are being formed. Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that through unremitting efforts, the mainland has established a new energy vehicle industry system with a complete structure and organic coordination, and the production and sales volume has increased year by year, forming a good development situation of mutual integration and symbiosis and win-win cooperation between new energy vehicles and related industries.
"Cultivating and developing advanced manufacturing clusters, in the final analysis, is to promote the manufacturing industry to the middle and high-end through collaborative innovation and mutual cooperation, so as to improve industrial competitiveness. The expert noted. The supply advantage of the complete industrial system is like an "accelerator", which has laid a solid foundation for the rapid rise of the "new three".
In the past ten years, the mainland's photovoltaic industry has been able to achieve leapfrog development, and it is inseparable from a complete and rich industrial chain. "The outstanding results of the mainland photovoltaic industry are partly due to the competitiveness of the domestic photovoltaic industry itself. The relevant person in charge of LONGi Green Energy told the reporter of China Electronics News. In recent years, the mainland photovoltaic industry has made full use of its own technical foundation and industrial supporting advantages to develop rapidly, and has gradually formed the world's most complete photovoltaic industry chain from high-purity silicon materials, silicon ingots, silicon rods, silicon wafers, cells, modules, photovoltaic auxiliary materials and accessories, photovoltaic production equipment to photovoltaic product applications, and has formed a number of leading enterprises in each major link.
Hefei Feidong County Liangyuan 100MW Fishery-PV Complementary Power Station Project
In the Jiangji Reservoir in Feidong County, Hefei, Anhui Province, layers of blue "sails" that cannot be seen float on the water, like a race of thousands of boats. If you look closely, the "sails" standing diagonally on the water surface turn out to be blue photovoltaic panels. In the process of promoting new industrialization and accelerating the optimization and upgrading of the industrial system, Feidong County takes the vision of "the first photovoltaic county", focuses on the intelligent manufacturing of high-efficiency photovoltaic cells and modules and the supporting upstream and downstream industrial chains, and strives to reach the industrial scale of 100 billion yuan and build an intelligent manufacturing highland for the global photovoltaic industry.
"Anhui is located in the Yangtze River Delta, with obvious geographical advantages. Relying on the advantages of quartz sand resources, our province has cultivated a number of industrial chain advantages such as photovoltaic glass, cells, modules, inverters, etc., and the layout of the optical storage industry is relatively complete. In 2023, Anhui will achieve a breakthrough in the innovation capability of the photovoltaic and storage industry, with a net increase of 62 high-tech enterprises in the field of advanced photovoltaic and new energy storage in the province, reaching 169, 334 technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises, and 1 new national innovation platform, bringing the total number to 6. The relevant person in charge of the Office of the Leading Group for the Construction of Advanced Photovoltaic and New Energy Storage Industrial Clusters in Anhui Province told reporters.
Anhui is only one of the many photovoltaic industry clusters in the mainland, the reporter learned that at present, Zhejiang, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Sichuan and other provinces have proposed to strengthen the construction of photovoltaic industry clusters, and the large-scale, clustered and high-end development of the photovoltaic industry has continuously reached a "new level".
Innovation-driven: Ignite the "new" momentum of development
Innovation is the first driving force to lead development, and technological innovation is the key to accelerate the formation of new quality productivity.
CATL's "battery family"
At present, the mainland continues to make innovative breakthroughs in key technologies and production levels such as new energy vehicle batteries, motors, electronic control, and intelligence, and is at the forefront of the world. In terms of power batteries, CATL has mass-produced and delivered the "1,000-mile endurance" Kirin battery, and released the world's first lithium iron phosphate 4C super-rechargeable battery, which can achieve a range of 400 kilometers in 10 minutes, and Qingtao Technology, invested by SAIC, has taken the lead in the development and mass production of semi-solid-state batteries in the world, and in 2024, the first Zhiji brand pure electric car equipped with semi-solid batteries with a range of more than 1,000 kilometers will be put on sale. In terms of intelligence, Huawei's ADS2.0 and Xpeng XNGP intelligent driving systems have realized intelligent assisted driving in urban areas that do not rely on high-precision maps, and Xiaomi Auto has developed the world's first mass-produced "end-to-end perception and decision-making model", which can realize ultra-difficult functions such as real-time observation and dynamic adjustment of parking machine storage locations.
Chen Shihua, deputy secretary-general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, pointed out that from a global point of view, the latest models of the new generation of electric vehicles are basically the first to be launched in China, and the world's new generation of automobile-related technologies are often the first to be applied in the products launched in China, and these two "new" have laid a solid foundation for China's new energy vehicle industry to lead the world.
The relevant person in charge of CATL told reporters that the power battery industry is competing for comprehensive strength. Based on innovation and development, CATL has established four major innovation systems, including materials and material systems, system structures, extreme manufacturing, and business models, and adheres to multiple technical routes in parallel for different market needs and application scenarios. "We are steadily promoting the mass production of sodium-ion batteries, polyphosphate batteries and condensed matter batteries, and at the same time actively stockpiling future-oriented next-generation battery technology, in order to lead the new energy industry to reduce costs and increase efficiency. The person in charge said.
With leading technology, the mainland's new energy vehicle industry has also begun to change from "exchanging technology with market" to "reverse output technology". CATL has helped Ford build its own battery factory through a technology licensing service model, and Xpeng and Volkswagen have reached a technical cooperation framework agreement to jointly develop two Volkswagen-branded electric models.
In this regard, industry experts have said that the emergence of the technical cooperation model shows that the mainland is not only a simple automobile market, but also the source of automotive technology innovation. In the future, more international companies will carry out similar cooperation on the mainland.
"2024 is a very critical year, many new technologies in the automotive industry will be the first to be applied in the Chinese market, new models will also be the first to be launched in China, and the definition of the car is more in China, so to speak, the next generation of automotive products will be defined by the Chinese market. Zhang Yongwei, vice chairman and secretary general of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, said that in the next two years, China will not only maintain a leading position in sales, but also maintain a leading position in the definition of technology and rules: the internationalization of new energy vehicles will become a major highlight, and landmark technologies such as batteries, chips, and operating systems are expected to make further breakthroughs, and the application route of intelligent driving will gradually become clear, and the integration of automobiles and ICT, energy and industry will accelerate.
The iterative update of technology is also the core driving force for the development of the photovoltaic industry. According to the highest efficiency chart of the global solar cell laboratory released by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the United States, since 2023, mainland enterprises and research institutions have broken records five times, and currently holds seven records on the list. Among them, the highest efficiency record of silicon-based solar cells in the world set by mainland companies is 26.81%, which has remained so far. In 2024, this trend of innovation is likely to continue.
Polysilicon is an important raw material in the upstream of photovoltaics, and its purity greatly affects the photoelectric conversion efficiency of photovoltaic cells. For a long time, due to deep-seated reasons such as high technical barriers and strict protection of intellectual property rights, the polysilicon industry was almost dominated by the traditional modified Siemens method. Today, this pattern has been broken by the mass production of granular silicon.
Picture: Production workshop of Xuzhou base of GCL Technology's 5GW granular silicon application demonstration project
"Compared with traditional rod silicon, granular silicon has the characteristics of small size, strong fluidity, no need to crush, and simple preparation process, which can completely avoid the risk of adulteration of impurities, and has obvious advantages in quality, cost, and carbon reduction. In recent years, our granular silicon products have been continuously iterating, and the proportion of products with metal impurities below 0.5ppbw (parts per billion) has exceeded 90%, and the overall power consumption has been significantly reduced. Speaking of the company's self-developed granular silicon products, Song Hao, assistant vice president of GCL Technology, proudly introduced.
"At present, photovoltaic cell technology is in the transition period from P-type to N-type, which puts forward higher requirements for metal content impurities. In 2024, we will continue to increase our R&D investment, achieve a total metal impurity content of 0.5ppbw or even lower in granular silicon products, and strive to achieve 100% coverage of N-type silicon to downstream leading enterprises. In the future, in the use of N-type modules, the conversion efficiency of granular silicon is expected to surpass that of rod silicon. Song Hao said. The reporter learned that the current market share of GCL Technology's granular silicon is about 20%, and it is expected to exceed 35% in 2024.
Jiang Hua, deputy secretary-general of the China Photovoltaic Industry Association, said that the photovoltaic industry is a cost-oriented industry, and improving quality and efficiency is the core of its development. The mass production and application of high-efficiency cell technology is absolutely positive for promoting the growth of the mainland and even the global photovoltaic market. As the conversion efficiency of P-type cells gradually approaches the ceiling, the industrialization process of N-type cells will usher in new breakthroughs in 2024: the mass production scale of TOPCon cells will continue to expand, and the market share will increase rapidly, and HJT heterojunction cells will accelerate the cost reduction and efficiency increase, and the production capacity will be further released. "It is worth mentioning that while maintaining the leading technology of the main links, the industry should also strengthen the collaborative research of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and realize the interlocking of the upstream and downstream links of the industrial chain, so as to promote the collaborative innovation of the whole industrial chain. Jiang Hua emphasized.
The China Electricity Council predicts that in 2024, the cumulative installed capacity of new energy power generation will exceed that of coal-fired power for the first time, reaching about 1.3 billion kilowatts, and the proportion of total installed capacity will rise to about 40%.
"Going to sea" to speed up and win-win with the global industrial chain
At Shanghai Haitong International Terminal, next to the large foreign trade ro-ro ship "SAIC Anji Shencheng", one after another fashionable new energy vehicles are entering the cabin through the port channel. With the sound of a whistle, the ro-ro ship loaded with more than 1,000 new energy vehicles of mainland independent brands officially set sail for Germany, Belgium and other European countries.
BYD's first car transport ro-ro ship sailed to Europe on its maiden voyage
And 3,000 kilometers away in the desert of Pakistan, rows of dark blue photovoltaic panels shine in the sun. This is the first photovoltaic power plant in Pakistan to apply N-type modules, and the more than 40,000 high-efficiency photovoltaic modules used in it are provided by JA Solar, a mainland photovoltaic company.
The mainland's "new three" products continue to be "popular" overseas, and have become a beautiful "business card" for China's "intelligent manufacturing" to the world. According to the data, in 2023, the mainland's "new three" products of electric manned vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and solar cells will be exported to a total of 1.06 trillion yuan, breaking the trillion yuan mark for the first time, an increase of nearly 30%. At the same time, the "new three" and "going out" mode is also more diversified, in addition to product exports, overseas investment and construction of factories has also become a strategic choice for many enterprises.
From Southeast Asia to Europe, the overseas territory of mainland new energy vehicle manufacturers continues to expand. BYD announced last month that it would build a new energy vehicle production base in Hungary, and its first overseas passenger car production base, the Thailand plant, will also be officially put into operation this year, and GAC Aion announced that it will invest 2.3 billion baht to build an electric vehicle production plant in Thailand, the first phase of which is expected to be completed in July this year......
The pace of overseas layout of mainland power battery manufacturers has also accelerated significantly. CATL's first overseas battery plant in Thuringia, Germany, has achieved mass production of battery cells, and the construction of its second European factory, the Debrecen plant in Hungary, is also progressing smoothly, Gotion Hi-Tech has set up overseas production bases in the United States, Germany, India, Vietnam and other places, and SVOLT will also establish a European battery production base and a European R&D center in Germany.
"The automotive industry is a typical global industry. Its production, sales and service are global, and materials and components are also sourced globally. With the improvement of China's automobile production level, the spillover of Chinese manufacturing is a historical inevitable process. In the process of 'going global', Chinese automakers have brought new technologies, low-carbon products and concepts to international consumers, while Chinese automakers have built overseas factories and laid out supply chains, which has also provided benefits for local economic and social development. Fu Bingfeng, executive vice president and secretary general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, introduced.
However, he also pointed out that the entry of Chinese automobiles into the international market is a long-term task and systematic engineering. At present, the overseas development of Chinese automobiles is still in its infancy. "The successful transformation of the electrification of the automotive industry in China provides a good choice for consumers around the world, and our intelligent advantages will be further exerted, with great development potential and a promising future. Fu Bingfeng said.
The relevant person in charge of BYD told the "China Electronics News" reporter that with the acceleration of the global sustainable development process, new energy vehicles will become the key engine to promote the economic growth of various countries, and with new energy vehicles as the main growth force, the mainland's new energy vehicle exports will usher in a new opportunity period of scale effect and brand effect. "In the new year, we believe that the new energy vehicle industry will continue to maintain a strong momentum of development. By around 2025, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in mainland China will increase to 70%. With the 'going overseas' of Chinese automobiles, Chinese brands and Chinese technologies are increasingly spreading around the world, which also promotes the overall improvement of the capabilities of Chinese car companies in technological innovation, product innovation, brand competitiveness and other aspects. We believe that in the future, with the continuous improvement of China's automotive technology and brand strength, the international competitiveness of Chinese auto brands will be significantly improved, and it will usher in the stage of industrial transformation and upgrading and high-quality 'going global'. The person in charge said.
Photo courtesy of Pakistan's first n-type PV power plant project jointly built by JA Solar and Orient Energy Systems
While the products of the photovoltaic industry sell well all over the world, the pace of its "overseas industrial chain layout" has also entered a new stage of "global production capacity layout" from "regional production capacity landing". "Thanks to the continuous accumulation of technology and production capacity, mainland photovoltaic products have obvious cost-effective advantages and have become the first choice for overseas customers. It is expected that in 2024, the overseas photovoltaic market will still maintain considerable and stable growth, in addition to traditional markets such as Europe, emerging markets such as the Americas and the Middle East will continue to emerge, becoming a new growth pole for foreign trade growth. Jiang Hua pointed out.
With the intensification of international competition in photovoltaic manufacturing, mainland photovoltaic enterprises must focus on the world and multi-point layout if they want to truly launch their brands and realize the transformation from "going out" to "going well". "If mainland PV enterprises want to truly become international large enterprises, they must open their arms and integrate deeper into the global industrial chain and supply chain system. When building factories overseas, it is not only necessary to fully consider and make use of local localization development policies to improve the production efficiency of the factory, but also to deeply bind with local resources, such as cultivating local talents and making full use of local funds. In this way, we can better serve the local area and promote the globalization of the photovoltaic industry chain. Jiang Hua said.
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