Please pay attention to contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. BYD: How to win in the era of diversified battery supply?

Kazuhiro Tsuga, the president who weakened the plasma TV business and replaced the home appliance industry with the automobile industry, is accelerating the continuous expansion of the operating deficit of the whole company.

Although Panasonic invested heavily in the acquisition of Sanyo Electric and other strategic investments, the poor performance of the automobile sector became the biggest enemy of the company's profits, and in March 20 19, it became the only player among Japanese auto parts suppliers with a negative operating profit margin.

On-board equipment and on-board batteries have become the two major sources of the company's sustained losses. Among them, Gigafactory, an American super factory with a joint venture with Tesla? 1 once struggled.

Due to the current situation, in the new round of strategy launched by Panasonic in March 2020, the automobile sector was also adjusted by the company's top management from the previous "target highest growth business" to "re-challenge the business that urgently needs structural reform".

At the financial report meeting in the first half of the fiscal year in March 2020, Matsushita Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer Mei Tianbo even admitted to the media that the business of providing automobile batteries to Tesla had been in deficit, and it was difficult for the entire automobile business to achieve profitability in a short time, because the relevant departments suffered losses.

Panasonic is passive because it puts too many eggs in one basket, which not only puts too many strategic bets in the automobile industry, but also binds too deeply with Tesla in the vital field of automobile batteries.

Then they attacked each other and tore their faces.

In the second half of 20 19, Tesla no longer had a soft spot for Panasonic, and the news that LG Chemical was "derailed" was widely known in the industry. On Panasonic's side, although President Jin Hehong has publicly stated on many occasions that he will continue to support Tesla's battery supply, he has been in the arms of new partners and formed a joint venture with Toyota, with the goal of getting the business on the right track as soon as possible in the spring of 2020.

These are just a microcosm of the tide of the times.

Walk out of a single supply siege

More and more car manufacturers have realized the importance of not putting eggs in one basket. A single battery supply channel is not only easy to be controlled in supply, but also has a negative impact on the planned automobile production capacity. It is also very likely that due to the cost disadvantage, partners will sit on the ground awkwardly and start the game.

In addition to avoiding the capacity risk caused by the relationship between supply and demand, automobile manufacturers have also begun to consider further reducing manufacturing costs. After all, the cost of on-board battery as the core component accounts for about half of the manufacturing cost of pure electric vehicles.

Just recently, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation of Japan decided to implement a new strategy of decentralized procurement of vehicle batteries from 2020. Mitsubishi will launch a plug-in hybrid version of the main model Outlander in 2020, and the corresponding car battery will come from Envision, a power battery company under Nissan Motor Company. AESC (Japan base is located in Zuojian City, Kanagawa Prefecture) procurement.

Most of the car batteries used by Mitsubishi Motors are purchased from Lithium, a joint venture battery company between Mitsubishi Motors and GS Tang Qian. Energy? In Japan (Lidong City, Shiga Prefecture), batteries for light vehicles jointly developed with Nissan have also been purchased from Toshiba, but the formal decentralized procurement is the first time.

After formally reaching a battery purchase cooperation with AESC, Mitsubishi also plans to set up factories in Japan and China to provide automotive batteries for electric vehicles in Asia. Imagine? AESC plans to produce batteries on a large scale in China by the end of 2020, and in Japanese and British factories.

Honda also belongs to a typical purchasing base divided by region and model. The battery of the hybrid car is 49% funded by the company, with Blue? Transferred to Energy (Fukuyama City, Kyoto Prefecture) and Panasonic. The batteries of Panasonic are used for Japanese pure electric vehicles, and the batteries related to General Motors are purchased by Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. in China and North America.

In fact, since 20 19, most automobile manufacturers in the world have started diversified vehicle battery supply strategies.

As early as 20 18, Volkswagen CEO Herbert diss (Herbert? Diess) made it clear at the annual meeting that in the long run, the company must not rely on a few manufacturers to produce batteries. The group was once passive in the field of battery cooperation, and therefore lowered the established production capacity of Audi pure electric vehicle e-tron, mainly because the supply of LG batteries was limited and could not meet the original planned production demand.

In view of this, Volkswagen Group has to learn from the past and set off a new round of battery supply plan. It has not only reached new supply contracts with LG Chem, Samsung SDI, Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. and SKI. , but also invested $84 billion to build its own team, and started the internal battery production plan with 2025 as the time node.

On June 7 last year, in response to the rapid growth of electric vehicles, Toyota officially joined hands with Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. and planned to sign a memorandum of "strategic partnership". According to the cooperation agreement, Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. expects to supply lithium-ion batteries to Toyota from 2020, and the supporting automobile products will be listed in China and other markets.

This is a game between the strong.

At this point, Volkswagen, which has an absolute advantage in revenue and sales worldwide, and Toyota, a Japanese giant with far-ahead profit and market value, have made preparations for the supply of on-board batteries in their own ways on the road of accelerating the pure electric strategy and made a realistic choice of diversified procurement.

Prior to this, Toyota and Panasonic have maintained a long-term purchasing relationship. Now, they not only cooperate closely with Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. and BYD, but also form cooperative alliances with Panasonic, Toshiba, Tang Qian and other enterprises in battery supply. Through this channel layout, Toyota's annual sales target of 5.5 million new energy vehicles has been advanced by five years.

Joint venture, shareholding, all roads lead to the same goal.

"Mastering the production of automobile batteries is equivalent to mastering the golden key of the electrification era."

Diss, CEO of Volkswagen, once said that considering the need to adapt and adjust vehicle performance and intelligent applications after the battery production cycle, it is necessary for them to master the core technologies related to batteries and establish their own battery manufacturing base.

Because of this, Volkswagen built its own battery production base in the northwest of Germany in June, 20 19, and GM, which is far away in Detroit, USA, also plans to cooperate with LG Chem of South Korea to set up a new factory in Ohio, USA, with a total investment of 2.3 billion US dollars.

On June 12 last year, Geely Automobile announced that Shanghai Huapu Guorun, a holding subsidiary, will enter into a joint venture agreement with LG Chem, and the two parties will set up a joint venture subsidiary to engage in R&D, manufacturing and sales of power batteries. The registered capital of the new company will be USD 65.438+88 billion, and the production capacity will reach 654.38+00 GWh by the end of 2026.5438+0.

Geely started the Jinhua Power Battery Project with an investment of 2.05 billion yuan in 20 16, which can meet the battery usage of 80,000 pure electric vehicles every year. Since then, the company has been looking for diversified supply of key components of new energy.

Before LG Chemical "got an electric shock", Geely Power Battery was mainly supplied by Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. and Hengyuan New Energy under Hongqiao Group. Geely is the controlling shareholder of Hongqiao Group. Through this Hong Kong-listed company, Geely indirectly controls two automobile power battery companies, Shandong Hengyuan New Energy and Zhejiang Hengyuan New Energy.

Joint venture to build a factory is one way.

Direct shareholding is another way.

But in the end, the two roads will eventually lead to the same goal. Also at the beginning of the past 65438+ 10, Reuters informed sources revealed that Volkswagen would acquire 20% of the shares of China automobile battery manufacturer Guo Xuan Hi-Tech to accelerate its entry into the China market through discounted private equity placement.

Subsequently, Guo Xuan Hi-Tech said that the two sides have entered a critical stage of negotiations and have not yet signed or reached a binding formal agreement. However, the public has been coveting Guo Xuan Hi-Tech for a long time, and the news about its shareholding has been circulated in a small scale in the industry as early as the first half of 20 19. However, at that time, there were different opinions on the specific share of its shareholding, and the public's ambition to enter the electrification market was not as aggressive as it is today.

Speaking of which, I can't avoid another Japanese company.

Nissan had previously decided to sell its battery business. In addition to cost reasons, more flexible repositioning of procurement sources is also an important consideration.

As early as 20 17, Jinshajiang Capital, a domestic investment fund, intended to buy Nissan batteries and related production equipment, but the transaction could not be successfully realized due to financial problems (the transaction amount at that time was about 10 billion US dollars). Until 20 18, Envision of China Vision Group became the ultimate successor of AESC of Nissan Lithium Electronic Power Battery Division, and will exercise absolute business control over the merged company.

Since then, Nissan has only retained 25% of its core battery business, and signed a power battery purchase contract with Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. in 20 18. The new Dongfeng Nissan Sylphy EV model became Nissan's first product equipped with batteries of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd.

Battery production has also begun to look for different baskets.

Not only smart car manufacturers have seen the absolute benefits of diversified procurement of battery supply, but more and more battery manufacturers have also started more flexible business models.

On the one hand, it is to find more customers to pay for the battery.

On the other hand, we began to look for different baskets for our production capacity.

After harvesting more and more large purchase orders, ambitious Asian battery manufacturers began to look overseas. They built new factories and expanded new production capacity to seize more market share. A battery melee drama that brings together local players from China, South Korea and Europe is quietly staged in the distance.

It is not difficult to understand why Europe was chosen as the stage. It is the home base of well-known enterprises such as Volkswagen, Daimler, Jaguar Land Rover and BMW, and the EU has the most stringent carbon emission standards in the world. After the emission scandal, the market potential of this market in the field of vehicle batteries is no less than that of China in Asia.

"It is difficult to accept the status quo that our country's automobile batteries are monopolized by Asia. In the long run, it is not a good thing for car batteries in France and even Europe to rely on other countries. " According to foreign media reports such as Reuters, French President Macron expressed strong dissatisfaction with the monopoly of local battery market by Chinese, Japanese and Korean enterprises at the beginning of this year.

However, the cruelty of reality is that the ambition of Asian battery manufacturers that have sounded the alarm for Macron is not in a certain corner. In the industrial chain of battery supply, they don't want to give European companies a break, and they will continue to expand their production and R&D bases to European bases.

In the second half of 20 18, witnessed by Premier the State Council of China and Chancellor Merkel of Germany, Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. signed an investment agreement with the Thuringia government of Germany. Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. will establish a battery production base in Erfort, Thuringia, Germany, which will be built in two phases, mainly engaged in the research and development and production of lithium-ion batteries.

The base is scheduled to be put into production in 20021year, and will provide related battery products for BMW, Volkswagen, Daimler, Jaguar Land Rover, PSA and other enterprises. It is noteworthy that Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. revised the capacity planning of the base at the beginning of 20 19, and the capacity was increased from 14GWh at the start of the project to 98GWh, a full seven-fold increase.

2065438+In May 2009, Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. officially announced that it had signed a purchase agreement with Volvo, and they would provide battery modules for all models on Volvo's upcoming automobile development platform SPA2 and CMA. However, at the back of this statement, the information that "overseas factories will meet part of the production capacity requirements of this order" was added, which was quite interesting.

If the action of contemporary Amperex Technology Limited in Germany is to hold high and fight high, then the details of another domestic battery manufacturer, Funeng Technology, building a factory in the local area are much lower-key. In the first half of 20 19, Funeng plans to build a new factory in Germany with an investment of over 600 million euros. It is reported that this move is mainly to meet Daimler's battery demand. The two parties signed a cooperation order at the end of 20 18, and it is planned that Daimler will provide a total of 140GWh batteries by 2027.

In the first half of this year, foreign media broke the news that LG Chem started its second factory in the European market. As early as 20 16, LG Chem announced that it would set up its first production base in Wroclaw, Poland. Because of the continuous expansion of the European market, the company launched a new round of expansion plan last year, increasing the production capacity to 70GWh, which can guarantee the battery supply of 300,000 new energy vehicles every year.

But all this is just to compete with competitors.

According to IHS data, the output of pure electric and hybrid vehicles in 20 18 was 5.52 million, accounting for 6% of the total number of new cars. In the next 10 year, the turnover of this type of vehicles will increase by about 10 times, and it will reach 63 million vehicles by 2030, equivalent to 56% of the total number of new cars.

According to the forecast of Yano Economic Research Institute in Japan, by 2025, the demand for vehicle batteries will reach 360,000 MWh per year, which is more than three times the market demand in 20 18.

It is worth mentioning that the price of car batteries is also falling. According to the calculation of Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), a subsidiary of Bloomberg, as of 20 19 and 12 years, the price of automobile batteries will be $0/56 per 1 kWh, which is 87% lower than that in 20 10 years, and it is expected to drop to/by 2023.

With the gradual popularization of electric vehicles and the rise of large battery manufacturers in China and North America, mass production will further reduce the manufacturing and supply prices of automotive batteries.

Therefore, everyone should race against time. In order to survive, battery manufacturers are also stepping up technological innovation. Only by defeating technology can they defeat time and finally their opponents.

Text/North Shore

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