In fact, at the 12th China Automotive Forum, not only did the skyrocketing prices of power battery raw materials and chip shortages become hot topics of discussion; At the same time, how to seize the critical period of transformation, how to develop new energy vehicles through multiple technological routes, and how to promote pickup trucks as industry growth points are also hot topics.
'Lack of core and expensive electricity' has become a roadblock, calling for the establishment of an automotive industry ecosystem
Since last year, the prices of raw materials for power batteries have continued to rise. Taking the price of battery grade lithium carbonate as an example, on November 11th, the latest data from Shanghai Steel union showed that the price of battery grade lithium carbonate rose by 2500 yuan/ton today, with an average price of 590000 yuan/ton, continuing to reach a new historical high; Compared to the price of around 50000 yuan per ton at the beginning of 2021, the increase is more than 10 times.
Zhu Huarong, Chairman of Changan Automobile, stated that this directly leads to an increase of approximately 5000 to 35000 yuan in the cost of different models of Changan Automobile, all of which rely on the enterprise's own research and digestion. He admitted that under the influence of rising prices of raw materials such as lithium phosphate, automotive companies have been forced to bear the pressure brought by the continuous rise in battery prices, with some new energy vehicle models having battery costs of over 40% or 50%.
BYD Executive Vice President Lian Yubo believes that the overall risk resistance of the industry chain is insufficient, and price fluctuations such as lithium carbonate have a significant impact; He further stated that the rising prices of power raw materials and batteries have had a significant impact on the entire new energy vehicle industry chain.
In Zhu Huarong's view, the reason for the high price of batteries is the rise in raw material prices, malicious capital speculation, sellers' reluctance to sell, and intermediaries hoarding and hoarding; He suggested that with the support of relevant departments, efforts should be made to crack down on anti profiteering activities in accordance with the law, solve the chaos of raw material hoarding and speculation in individual enterprises, improve the level of battery generalization, reduce costs, and improve efficiency.
Faced with the continuous rise in the prices of raw materials for power batteries, Guo Shougang, Deputy Director of the Equipment Industry Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated that we will promote stable operation, improve the risk warning mechanism for automobile production, actively carry out cooperation between upstream and downstream industries in the industry chain, promote the acceleration of domestic resource development progress, and crack down on unfair competition such as speculation and hoarding.
With the continuous improvement of intelligence, the importance of chips continues to increase. Pan Jiming, General Manager of the Planning Department of SAIC Group, stated that currently, automotive applications include 11 categories of chips, including power chips, main chips, driver chips, sensor chips, and image processing chips, with approximately 1600 model numbers.
Like "expensive electricity", lack of cores is also a pain point that needs to be addressed urgently. Zhu Huarong stated that the issue of missing cores is not only related to soaring prices, rising procurement costs, and brand image damage caused by delayed delivery of new products. Currently, the production order of the entire automotive industry is severely affected. For the reasons for the lack of chips, he analyzed that in addition to the global chip shortage factor, the key to the problem is that technology is constrained by people, and there is a lack of direct communication planning and risk sharing mechanism between automotive and chip companies, resulting in insufficient trust between supply and demand.
Guo Shougang stated that the next step of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will be to increase investment in technology research and development in areas such as the new generation of electronic and electrical architecture, automotive chips, new system batteries, high-precision sensors, and automotive operating systems. En Yunfei, Chief Engineer of the Fifth Institute of Electronics under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated that the vigorous development of China's automotive industry cannot be separated from the support of the automotive chip industry chain. He hopes that the upstream and downstream of the industry chain can work together to create a new ecosystem for the automotive chip industry; He stated that currently, vehicle companies should sink and enter the investment and research and development fields of chips; Chip companies are exploring upwards to learn more about the demand for complete vehicles.
Zhu Huarong suggested that "we should promote the localization of core component technology and accelerate the process of unifying and generalizing automotive chips." Li Shaohua, Deputy Secretary General of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, believes that automotive chips are facing new supply chains and industry chain restructuring, which will force the automotive and chip industries to establish a more resilient supply chain; The development of a symbiotic ecosystem between chips and operating systems has become an inevitable direction, and China must establish an industrial ecosystem where automotive chips and on-board operating systems coexist.
New energy vehicles present a trend of diversified technological development
According to data from China Automobile Association, the production and sales of new energy vehicles in the first 10 months of this year were 5.485 million and 5.28 million, respectively, with a year-on-year increase of 1.1 times and a market share of 24%. The industry believes that with the transformation and upgrading of the global automotive industry, Wan Gang, Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and Chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, has also stated that the further accelerated development of new energy vehicles in China is facing challenges, including uneven regional development of new energy vehicles, and the market potential has not yet been fully explored; Slow progress in new energy commercial vehicles; The infrastructure construction of charging and swapping, hydrogen refueling network, and vehicle road collaboration is still relatively lagging behind and other challenges.
Wan Gang believes that the market has proven that there is still demand for internal combustion engines, but the direction of development should be to achieve higher efficiency at lower emissions. We should coordinate the coordinated development of plug-in hybrid and extended range hybrid vehicles. In fact, according to Zhang Yongwei, Vice Chairman and Secretary General of the China Electric Vehicle Hundred People Association, new energy vehicles are showing a new trend of diversified technological development.
Zhang Yongwei believes that from the perspective of future trends, different technological routes still have their own trajectories and development trends; In the long run, pure electricity will be the mainstream globally, and plug-in hybrid power, as an important technological route, is still in the stage of innovation. The incremental route is also rapidly becoming a supplement to the development of pure circuit lines. In addition, fuel cells are currently in a period of rapid breakthrough, and it is expected that the number of fuel cell vehicles in China will reach 1 million by 2030. Intelligent technology and products will determine the future development space of different technological routes
Li Wanli, a member of the China Automotive Industry Advisory Committee and deputy inspector of the former Industrial Policy Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, also shares the same view. He believes that the choice of automotive technology route is mainly influenced by the comprehensive influence of international and domestic macro factors, and China must develop new energy vehicles under a multi technology route.
The multi technology route is the necessary path for China's clean and low-carbon transformation of automobiles. "He Yi, Deputy Secretary General of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, candidly stated that the multi technology route is the fundamental demand for China's ultra large scale automobile development market." China has formed a super large scale automobile market, with numerous levels of demand from urban to rural areas, vast territory, and numerous application and demand scenarios, which require multi technology routes to meet
In addition, the development of the pickup truck industry is also a hot topic at the 12th China Automotive Forum. Since the beginning of this year, the State Council has issued three articles mentioning the lifting of the ban on pickup trucks. Li Shaohua said that the lifting of the ban on pickup trucks nationwide is an inevitable trend. The lifting of the ban on pickup trucks gives consumers full choice, drives the growth of upstream and downstream consumption, and is expected to become another market explosion point after the SUV market. Du Pengyu, Research Director of Kerui Zhuoxin (Beijing) Consulting Co., Ltd., predicts that the sales of pickup trucks in China may reach the level of 800000 units in 2025, and may exceed 1 million units by 2030.
Chen Weijie, General Manager of the Changan Automobile Pickup Brand Business Unit and General Manager of Changan Kaicheng, also shares the same view. He believes that pickup trucks will become the next trend in the future car market, with user demand and new energy intelligence technologies driving the rise of the pickup truck market. In the long run, pure electric pickup trucks will become the solution. Xie Guoping, Deputy Director of the Department of Information Technology and Industrial Development of the National Information Center, also believes that the new energy development of pickup truck models has been determined as the development direction; However, it is still in its early stages and the penetration rate is relatively low. Therefore, it is necessary to enhance the strategic focus on promoting the new energy transformation of pickup trucks and build long-term competitiveness.
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