On May 5, 2024, Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus showed off its new skills with the caption "Recently, we are trying to be useful!" ”
Musk had predicted that the number of Optimus would far exceed that of Tesla cars, and that the most indispensable thing for Optimus to function properly is the motor, which can be compared to the muscles of an adult, and the humanoid robot uses a coreless motor for its dexterous hands.
So, what exactly is a coreless motor and what are the barriers to entry?
The coreless motor is a miniature servo motor that is highly compatible with the dexterous hand joint, which can use a permanent magnet to generate a magnetic field, so as to achieve DC power supply.
The difference from conventional motors is that the coreless structure of the coreless rotor motor is characterized by no core loss, low friction and good heat dissipation, and the high efficiency of the motor is realized.
The barriers to entry in the coreless motor industry lie in its winding design and equipment, product matrix, and customer endorsement.
(1) Winding design
The key to the production of coreless motor lies in the winding of the coreless coil, which is mainly divided into three types: straight winding, saddle and oblique winding.
Saddle type and diagonal winding type are the two most common methods used by overseas advanced coreless motor manufacturers, among which Maxon coreless winding has global patents, and each motor model has a variety of wire diameter and turns winding specifications.
(2) Winding equipment
Switzerland's Meteor, Japan's Tanaka Seiki, and Japan's Nitoku Electric Engineering are the world's most important companies in coreless motor winding equipment.
The degree of localization of domestic coreless equipment is low, and the equipment research and development is also relatively backward.
Although the coiled coil production equipment can wind multiple coils such as oblique and saddle shapes, the quality of the wound coils is average, and the one-time molding equipment does not have a good solution for saddle-shaped coreless coils.
(3) Product matrix and customer endorsement
Both Maxon and Faulhaber have a well-established product matrix and excellent customer endorsement, which is why they are the world's leading manufacturers of coreless motors.
So, what is the market size of coreless motors?
Because the coreless motor avoids a variety of technical drawbacks of ironcore motors, it has a wide range of application fields, such as medical, aerospace, robotics, industrial control and many other fields.
At present, coreless motors are the most widely used in medical devices, followed by consumer electronics, which is recognized as one of the fastest growing industries in the world today, and the global medical device market size is expected to grow to $699.9 billion by 2025.
The biggest attraction of the future market is still in the field of humanoid robots.
Taking Tesla's humanoid robot Optimus as an example, assume that the number of coreless motors used in a single humanoid robot is 12;
When the annual output of humanoid robots is 5, 10, 50 and 1 million units, assuming that the average price of coreless motors is 1000, 800, 600 and 500 yuan respectively, the corresponding market space is 6, 9.6, 36 and 6 billion yuan respectively;
Further assuming that the market share of Chinese enterprises is 30%, 40%, 50% and 60% respectively, the market space available to Chinese enterprises is 1.8, 3.8, 1.8 and 3.6 billion yuan respectively.
Moreover, the market size of the global coreless DC motor market reached USD 748 million in 2022 and is expected to reach USD 1.186 billion by 2028, registering a CAGR of 8% during the forecast period of 2023-2029, and the market is still quite broad in the future.
Humanoid robots may further open the ceiling of the industry, what are the investment opportunities?
At present, the overseas head enterprises of coreless motor include Maxon of Switzerland, Faulhaber of Germany and Portescap of Switzerland, and the domestic head enterprises are Mingzhi Electric, Topband, Dingzhi Technology, Flextron Electric, and Haosheng Motor are also important coreless motor companies.
Let's take a look at the performance of Mingzhi Electric Appliances first.
In 2023, the poor performance of Mingzhi Electric will be mainly due to the impact of global destocking on product demand and the relocation of Mingzhi Electric production base affecting production capacity, and the revenue growth rate will pick up in the first quarter of 2024, and the follow-up will enter the active inventory cycle at home and abroad, which will be the core driving force for the company's performance repair.
In terms of cash flow, by strengthening accounts receivable and inventory control, Mingzhi Electric's net operating cash flow increased by 2297.25% year-on-year to 203 million yuan in 2023, and the net operating cash flow in the first quarter of 2024 increased by 49.41% year-on-year, with significant improvement.
Hybrid (HB) stepper motor is the core business of Mingzhi Electric, and its growth is broad.
Mingzhi Electric is the leading stepper motor, and Japan has previously controlled most of the market share in the world. In 2015, the global stepper motor CR3 was 68%, all of which are Japanese companies, and the company ranked fourth with a market share of 10.18%.
In 2022, Mingzhi Electric will have a global market share of more than 10%, entering the top three positions in the world, which is the only domestic enterprise that has changed the global competition pattern of HB stepper motors in the past ten years, breaking the monopoly of Japanese companies.
In terms of the main application fields of HB stepper motors, Shinano and Minebea are mainly for office equipment, Nidec is mainly for office equipment and factory automation, and Sanyo Electric and Dongfang Motor are mainly for factory automation.
Mingzhi Electric adopts differentiated competition, and its application fields are mainly stage and landscape lighting, security systems, factory automation, and professional printers, and will continue to focus on emerging and high value-added fields in the future, such as mobile robots, photovoltaics, etc., with huge room for scale improvement.
Mingzhi Electric is expected to take the lead in making significant progress in the field of humanoid robots and opening a new growth curve for the company, which also attracts the social security fund to enter the market.
Mingzhi Electric has been developing coreless cups for nearly 10 years, and its technical strength ranks fourth in the world and first in China. In 2019, the company acquired Technosoft Motion AG in Switzerland to further strengthen its advantages in the field of coreless motors, and the company has obtained more than 50 patents in technology.
Moreover, compared with the overseas leader Maxon, the performance of the 16mm coreless motor of the two is close, but the price of the company's products is only about 28% of Maxon, with a strong cost advantage, the company has entered the preliminary cooperation stage with Tesla.
Tesla plans to sell more than one million humanoid robots in the future, and it is expected to be commercialized in 3-5 years, which will drive the development of the company's coreless motor business, and the performance increment can be as high as 7.2 billion.
In addition, Mingzhi Electric has formed a business synergy through the acquisition of overseas companies and strengthened its global layout.
At present, Mingzhi Electric's business has covered North America, Europe, East Asia and Southeast Asia, with overseas revenue accounting for more than 40% all year round, and overseas revenue accounting for 46.94% in 2023.
Moreover, in the first half of 2023, the Taicang base has completed the relocation work, and the Vietnam base has been put into mass trial production, further enhancing the company's global competitiveness with production capacity layout.
Finally, to sum up, the coreless motor is adapted to the dexterous hand of the humanoid robot, and with the increase of the humanoid robot, the industry has a broader space for development. As a leader in the industry, Mingzhi Electric's main business HB stepper motor business has grown steadily, and a variety of products based on coreless motors are expected to benefit from the development wave of humanoid robots and open a new growth curve for the company.
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