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In just one month, two power battery companies have boarded the 'headlines', the difference is that their experience can be described as two days.
From July 1st, 2018, all employees of Shenzhen Waterma Battery Co., Ltd. will be forced to accept the reality of half a year of vacation. A Wo Si '2018' No. 16 notice, the contents of the document: 'To solve the company order Insufficient, financial difficulties affect the career development of all employees, determined by the company's high-level strategic research: Since July 1, 2018, all employees have been on vacation for six months.
Just as Waterma struggled in the quagmire of 'insufficient orders and financial difficulties', the Ningde era on the other side was launched on June 11. After pulling out eight daily limit boards, the current Ningde era has a market value of more than 160 billion yuan. .
The ups and downs of the Ningde era and Waterma reflect the embarrassing situation behind the fiery industry. In the past, the influx of capital brought only the surface prosperity to the power battery industry, and the industry competition was actually extremely cruel.
'China's power battery supporting enterprises have dropped from about 150 in 2015 to around 100 in 2017, and one-third of the companies have been eliminated. ' On June 27, the 2018 China (Qinghai) lithium industry was held in Qinghai. At the International Summit Forum of Power Batteries, Chen Qingtai, chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100-member Association, told the China Newsweek reporter.
Several happy couples, the common problems in the power battery industry are reflected: upstream prices skyrocketing, new energy auto companies continue to push down supplier purchase prices after subsidies, etc. Overall, the survival of power battery companies Extraordinary hardship.
Raw material prices rose, subsidies fell
Despite the recent correction in the prices of upstream materials such as lithium and cobalt, the prices of lithium and cobalt have risen rapidly in the past.
'The bottleneck of upstream resource development technology has led us to low self-yield, so the supply of resources has tightened, so the price soared, resulting in a sharp rise in the cost pressure of the entire industry chain.' Chen Qingtai said.
According to statistics, in 2017, China's power lithium battery shipments reached 3.91 billion watt-hours, accounting for about 50% of the overall size of the lithium battery industry. Among them, automotive power battery shipments reached 38GWh, accounting for global automotive power battery shipments. The amount of 65.4%. Chen Qingtai predicts that the scale of lithium batteries will be further expanded, and the demand for lithium cobalt will be further enhanced.
He believes that the global lithium, cobalt, and nickel resources are characterized by oligopoly. Although China's lithium resources are abundant, the endowment is poor, the utilization rate is relatively low, and the nickel and cobalt resources are scarce, and the external dependence is high. Therefore, from the long-term Look, there are resource security risks.
At the same time, according to the new energy vehicle subsidy policy issued by the country from 2017 to 2018, the national subsidy is generally 20% lower than 2016, and the local subsidy should not exceed 50% of the state subsidy. The subsidy will be retreated to new energy auto companies. Bringing tremendous pressure, and in order to reduce costs, this pressure is quickly transmitted to power battery companies.
Under the double pressure, power battery companies feel greater financial pressure, and even begin to experience business difficulties.
Insufficient high-end supply, low-end order
According to relevant data, the capacity of China's power battery has exceeded 200GWh in 2017, but the overall capacity utilization rate is only 40%. The differentiation of the market poles is very obvious.
Chen Qingtai believes that: 'The high-end high-quality capacity supply is insufficient, the low-end production capacity is insufficient, the production and operation are difficult, and there is a structural overcapacity.'
Zhang Yongwei, secretary general and chief expert of China Electric Vehicles 100-members, said that China's power battery capacity is very large, but there has been a problem of investment vain. He said that the so-called investment simplification is that a large amount of investment revolves around some curing technologies. Some low-end areas accumulate, and it is easy to create some uncompetitive production capacity, and these production capacity may eventually become an obstacle to industrial innovation. Therefore, large capacity is not necessarily an advantage, but it is difficult to build a competitive threshold without capacity. This is a double-edged sword.
'This round of competition, we run capacity, use management to make domestic enterprises grow fast. But in the next generation of battery competition, who is ups and downs, there is indeed great uncertainty. ' Zhang Yongwei believes that although China's battery companies in the capacity competition Win, but the real pressure lies in technical competition.
Zhang Yongwei said that people in the industry have vaguely felt that if Chinese companies do not accelerate the layout of the next generation of battery technology, the competitive landscape will be rewritten, so the pressure is huge. 'Really, there are some differences in our industry, there are some The more extensive approach has affected the reputation of the industry. '
The recycling technology is not mature, the acquisition network is imperfect
In addition, the industry must pay attention to the fact that battery recycling technology and system construction is still not in place.
According to the data of China Battery Alliance, it is estimated that the theoretical decommissioned power battery will be 5.14Gwh in 2018 and reach 48.09Gwh by 2023. However, in the face of the arrival of the power battery scrapping tide, China has not established a perfect recycling network. The recycling technology is still not mature, the acquisition network is still not perfect, the management measures are not sound enough, the support policies are not enough, and the business model and profit model have yet to be explored. 'Chen Qingtai said.
According to the staff of GEM, which specializes in battery recycling business, the first person responsible for the recycling of scrapped power batteries is the car manufacturer. Therefore, the recycling is mainly in cooperation with the OEM and the battery factory. In addition to these two methods, it is difficult to The channel is recycled, and the overall recovery is not large.
Moreover, the scrapped power battery recycling industry is currently in a barbaric growth period. A large number of car companies have higher prices, resulting in most of the waste power batteries failing to flow into legal processing channels.
Starting from August 1 this year, the Interim Measures for the Management of Recycling and Utilization of Power Battery for New Energy Vehicles will be implemented. As mentioned in the Measures, it is necessary to explore the formation of a business model for the innovation of power battery recycling and encouragement through various forms and cooperation. Construction, sharing the recycling channels of used power batteries. At the same time, it emphasizes the implementation of the extension system of producer responsibility, and requires automobile production enterprises to bear the main responsibility of power battery recycling.
Under the guidance of the policy, some companies have begun to lay out in related fields.
In May of this year, Beiqi Penglong and GEM have signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement. According to the agreement, the two sides will cooperate in the construction of new energy vehicle power battery recycling system, decommissioning power battery ladder utilization and recycling and other circular economy fields. At the same time, Guanghua Technology also announced that it will set up a lithium battery recycling subsidiary.
In addition, it is reported that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is conducting research on the recycling of new energy vehicles' power batteries in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Before this, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology went to Guangdong, Hunan and Hubei in May to investigate the work. Value.
It is foreseeable that the future of new energy vehicles will continue to develop rapidly, and this will continue to drive the development of the power battery industry. This also means that the industry's normative development is increasingly important.
