CR927 battery.Analyze whether OEMs should enter the lithium-ion battery industry from the four dimensions of investment, technology, market and industry

Core viewpoints: 1. Market: At the beginning of the development of the automobile industry, many car companies produced parts independently. After the industry matured, professional division of labor led to the separation of standardized parts companies from vehicle companies. Representative examples include Faurecia from Peugeot Citroën Group was separated, Delphi was separated from General Motors Group, and Denso was separated from Fengshui Group.

Core ideas:

1. Market: At the beginning of the development of the automobile industry, many car companies produced parts independently. After the industry matured, professional division of labor led to the separation of standardized parts companies from vehicle companies. Representative examples include Faurecia from PSA Group Separation: Delphi is separated from the General Motors Group, Denso is separated from the Toyota Group, and Mobis is separated from Hyundai Motor, making it easier to supply to other automakers.

2. Industry: Today, vehicle manufacturers have basically determined the four major processes of stamping, welding, painting, and final assembly. Other parts are basically not produced. The important reason is that other parts such as tires and glass are standard parts. , has strong versatility and scale effect, and it is easier for third-party production to control costs. If the OEM produces it itself, it is theoretically difficult to supply to other automakers.

3. Technology: The core technologies of OEMs are system matching and vehicle tuning, parts evaluation standards and systems, cost control, and innovation capabilities, not standard parts technology;

With the promulgation of VDA and national standards, batteries are more likely to be standardized in the future, while Pack is closely related to vehicle design and is non-standardized;

From a technical perspective, the mechanical, electronic and electrical technologies required by the Pack are universal with the OEMs, but the electrochemical technology required by the batteries is not highly relevant to the OEMs.

4. Investment: From a global perspective, except for Tesla and BYD, no other automaker produces its own battery cells. BYD has begun to split its battery department. Tesla is actually a joint venture with Panasonic to produce battery cells.

Contrary to battery cells, the "Administrative Regulations for New Pure Electric Passenger Vehicle Companies" requires mastering power battery system integration technology. Major car companies are intensively entering the Pack industry, including Mercedes-Benz building Europe's largest Pack factory, jointly building a Beijing Pack factory with BAIC, BMW Brilliance is building a Pack plant in Shenyang, SAIC-GM is building a Pack plant in Shanghai, SAIC and CATL are jointly building a Pack plant, etc.

Whether vehicle companies should develop batteries, the author will analyze it from four aspects: investment, technology, market, and industry.

1. Market

Standardized auto parts are not produced by OEMs. The important reasons are that they can reduce capital risks of OEMs, improve work efficiency, reduce costs due to economies of scale, control quality, and enhance product competitiveness.

For a car, 80% of the parts of the car are not produced by the brand car factory. Why don't car companies produce all the parts of the car?

Let’s first talk about what automobile manufacturers produce, so as to understand what parts or tasks automobile manufacturers do not produce or do. Most factories mainly provide design requirements for cars, contact suppliers, conduct reliability and safety tests of the cars, and tune the parts that need to be tuned. In terms of production, it mainly produces sheet metal parts, some plastic parts, and some rubber parts, and performs welding and painting, assembling all parts, and finally conducts vehicle testing. There are also very few car manufacturers that have the ability to produce engines, transmissions and suspension systems.

For many car manufacturers, even the engineering design, styling and even software calibration of the car, as well as the engine and transmission are made by other companies, not to mention small parts such as airbags, seats, steering wheels, air conditioning systems, and in-car buttons. So the car manufacturers do this because they don’t have the ability in this area! Or do you have your own ideas due to other considerations?

Reduce company capital risk

The first reason why all companies do this is to reduce the company's capital risk. Doing so is also the most beneficial to a company's capital health. Because the process from car design to production to final launch is a very large project. For a company, the more links involved, the more capital is invested and the greater the overall risk. Once a problem occurs in a certain link, more capital must be continuously injected to solve the problem. This means that once the capital chain is tight or broken, the entire industry will face great risks.

In other words, the longer the so-called battle line is, the greater the risk. Chinese automobile companies have suffered from this before, thinking that a complete company should have everything. In the end, even the company's own hospitals and schools were involved, and most of the parts were produced in-house. The final result is that if it were not for the strong national rescue, the company might have gone bankrupt long ago. In order to increase their anti-risk capabilities, today's automobile companies are becoming relatively small and sophisticated companies. In this way, no matter what kind of event they face, their anti-risk capabilities are strong throughout the day, which also reduces the company's overall capital. risk.

Another point is about the large-scale recall of cars due to certain problems, design, safety, emissions, and national regulations. In this case, if the parts are produced by the car manufacturer, then all the recalls will bring huge consequences. The costs and compensation must be borne by the automakers themselves, and the huge recall costs caused by many major problems are very fatal to the company. If there is a problem with the supplier's parts, then the entire recall cost will be borne by the supplier and the company. This situation will effectively reduce the company's capital risk.

Increase work efficiency

Another benefit of using suppliers and outsourcing design is that it can actually improve work efficiency. The automobile industry has a large number of people. From an economic point of view, companies of this type will experience greater internal digestion. Therefore, if the company uses internal design and review, the internal consumption will be quite large, and the overall progress will be delayed due to the disconnection of various stages. Therefore, most automobile companies use outsourcing design and are only responsible for auditing. This will greatly improve work efficiency.

cut costs

Regarding production, another very important benefit of using suppliers is that it can reduce costs. Because self-production requires purchasing a large amount of production equipment, building factories, recruiting people, management, etc., and because current automobile companies produce more models, the usage of each component is very small.

One characteristic of modern industry is that the cost will decrease with the increase in the number of overall parts. To put it simply, if 10,000 pieces of a plastic part are produced, the cost may be 0.5 yuan, and after 1 million pieces are produced, the cost may become 0.1 yuan. For the entire vehicle, this cost reduction is very objective. If a supplier specializes in producing certain parts, it will naturally receive more orders, and the investment in space and equipment does not need to be started from scratch. Therefore, the cost of supplying goods from suppliers will be much lower than producing by yourself. .

Conducive to quality control

Another benefit of using suppliers is quality control. If the parts are produced by their own manufacturer, then there is a situation where the production department will force the design department to either introduce new equipment or change the design method to reduce the difficulty of production. This is naturally not conducive to quality control, and the quality control of internal companies is difficult to compare with cooperation between companies.

It is easier to use a supplier, because you only need to make requirements. If the supplier cannot meet the requirements or the price is too high, then just change to another supplier. And suppliers are much better at overcoming difficulties than company departments. In addition, for quality control, the company can also dispatch corporate quality control of suppliers and conduct regular spot checks to supervise the quality of suppliers. This requires very little human and financial resources, so the method of supplier supply is related to that Large-scale and comprehensive production is more conducive to quality control.

Improve automotive product capabilities

The last advantage of using suppliers or design outsourcing is that it can quickly and effectively improve the product strength of the car. Giving one thing to the right talent at the right time is the most correct choice, and there are specialties in the industry. In the upgrading and research and development of components, whether it is technology or materials, suppliers that specialize in one or a few items will be much better than those manufacturers that do everything in terms of the height of their technology and the speed of continuous change.

Specialized division of labor has led to the separation of parts companies from vehicle companies. Faurecia is separated from PSA Group, Delphi is separated from General Motors Group, Denso is separated from Toyota Group, and Mobis is separated from Hyundai Motor Group.

The auto parts industry is the foundation for the development of the automotive industry. With the development of world economic globalization and market integration, important links such as investment, production, procurement, sales and after-sales service, and research and development in the automobile production process have shown a trend of global configuration. As market competition intensifies, the world's major vehicle manufacturers have reformed their supply systems and implemented global production and procurement strategies, which ultimately led to the separation of auto parts manufacturing from vehicle manufacturing and independent facing of the market. The divestment of vehicle manufacturers and auto parts suppliers has increased the degree of specialization between each other, and auto parts suppliers have become increasingly involved in the vehicle development and production process.

Taking famous foreign parts manufacturers as an example, Faurecia separated from PSA Group, Delphi separated from GM Group, Denso separated from Toyota Group, and Mobis separated from Hyundai-Kia Group.

2. Industry

Over the past century, vehicle manufacturers have identified four major processes: stamping, welding, painting, and final assembly. Other parts are basically not produced. The important reason is that tires, glass and other parts are standard parts and have strong versatility. Due to economies of scale, it is easier for third-party manufacturers to control costs. If an automobile manufacturer produces its own products, it is theoretically difficult to supply other automobile manufacturers.

1. Stamping:

Stamping is the first step in all processes. First, the steel plate is cut to a suitable size on a cutting machine. At this time, only punching and trimming are usually performed, and then the actual stamping and forming process is entered. Each workpiece has a mold. As long as various molds are installed on the stamping machine, various workpieces can be punched out. The purpose of the mold is very large, and the quality of the mold directly determines the quality of the workpiece.

2. Welding process:

The stamped body panels are heated locally or simultaneously and heated and pressurized to join together to form a body assembly. Spot welding is the most widely used in automobile body manufacturing. The quality of welding directly affects the strength of the car body.

3． Painting process:

Coating has two important purposes, the first is to prevent corrosion, and the second is to add beauty. The coating process is relatively complex and the technical requirements are relatively high. The following important processes are: pre-painting and primer, spray painting process, drying process, etc. The whole process requires a large amount of chemical reagent treatment and fine process parameter control, and has high requirements for paint materials and various processing equipment.

4. Final assembly process:

Final assembly is the installation and assembly of various parts such as the body, engine, transmission, instrument panel, lights, seats, etc. The level of the assembly process directly affects the performance of the car. We will see that the joints of some car wrench joints are relatively uniform, while the joints of some car wrench joints are uneven. This is closely related to the assembly process.

The combination unitization that emerged in the late 1990s, that is, the adoption of modular assembly methods, has simplified the processes on the final assembly production line, shortened the production line, and significantly reduced costs. A general assembly workshop mainly has four major modules, namely, cowl assembly module, instrument panel assembly module, car light assembly module, and chassis assembly module. After the assembly of each module and the installation of each component, the entire vehicle can be rolled off the production line after inspection and adjustment such as wheel alignment and light vision inspection.

3. Technology

The core technologies of OEMs are system matching and vehicle tuning, parts evaluation standards and systems, cost control, and innovation capabilities. It is neither necessary nor economical to produce standardized parts by themselves.

According to incomplete statistics, a car is composed of approximately 10,000 non-detachable parts, and each part requires someone to design and manufacture it. Currently, automobile OEMs outsource most of their parts to parts suppliers. Tires, seats, brakes, instruments, etc. are all purchased from parts suppliers in different fields. This model means that the OEM actually does not know much about certain parts and systems, at least not as well as the suppliers.

If you think about it carefully, the electronic systems include Bosch, Denso, and Delphi; the interior parts include Johnson, Lear, Visteon, and Faurecia; the transmission systems include BorgWarner, Schaeffler, Wanxiang, and SKF; the chassis includes TRW , Continental, and Tenneco; tires include Michelin, Bridgestone, and Goodyear; transmissions include Aisin, ZF, Getrag, and JATCO; even the engine, known as the heart of the car, most of its parts ( Pistons, connecting rods, electronic control systems) are all supplied by Federal-Mogul, Magna, Mitsubishi, etc... So what can be regarded as the core technology of the OEM?

As an OEM, the most important task is to integrate resources. Its core technology should include the following four aspects:

1. The ability to match the system and the entire vehicle, including: chassis tuning, engine tuning, NVH performance, safety performance and other key vehicle performance. For example, suppliers can produce springs of various specifications, shock absorbers of various dampings, and swing arms of various strengths, but only the OEM can rely on these parts to match the suspension system suitable for new models; for another example, good matching The performance of the suspension system is very good, and the steering system is also very good. When installed on the vehicle, the two systems can each exert good performance without motion interference. These can reflect the core technology level of the OEM.

2. Improve comprehensive evaluation standards and systems, including evaluation of suppliers, evaluation of parts performance, and evaluation of vehicle performance. As an OEM, you may not understand the materials of parts or the processing techniques of parts, but you must not understand the performance requirements of parts. Similarly, when a prototype or prototype car is made, its performance needs to be evaluated, whether it is NG or OK. This tests whether an OEM has sufficient technology accumulation and whether it can develop a complete and comprehensive evaluation system. and standards. Once the standard is set low, product quality is not up to par, and product problems may occur; if the standard is set high, costs rise sharply and the product loses price competitiveness.

3. The ability to control costs. There are many cost control technologies that are regarded as masterpieces, including the introduction of Ford's assembly line production technology, platform sharing technology, parts sharing technology, simulation technology, etc. In today's market where technology converges and price competition is fierce, mastering cost control technology will obviously have core competitiveness.

In addition to keeping costs down through a series of value engineering activities, a more important task for OEMs is to reasonably allocate costs to various systems and parts. Let the cost be spent on what consumers really care about and pay attention to, that is, spend money wisely. This can be recognized by the market and consumers.

4. The ability to innovate. If you look at how Nokia, the mobile phone overlord, was destroyed, you will understand that even if the reliability of the product is very good, if it cannot keep up with the development of technology and social trends, it will be eliminated sooner or later, which shows the importance of innovation. Of course, innovation is not just about having a good idea, the key is to implement the good idea into practice.

Pack is closely related to the design of the vehicle and is a typical non-standard part. The "Management Regulations for New Pure Electric Passenger Vehicle Companies" requires mastering power battery system integration technology. The mechanical, electronic and electrical technologies required by Pack are common with the OEM. Expected to become a new energy