Japan, South Korea’s three giants Panasonic, LG Chemical, and Samsung SDI have already “walked in”, but for various reasons, they have not been able to truly seize the Chinese market.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “First electric car network” ( ID: d1evwx), author Ma Jinqiao.
In the era of Ningde, the battery manufacturing giant of China’s electric industry, BYD is “going out.” Recently, some media reported that the two may soon meet in the Japanese market. Ningde era will launch batteries for housing and industry in the Japanese market in 2020, “and reduce the price to half of similar products”, and BYD’s emerging solid-state batteries will be delivered in Japan in 2021.
The three giants of Japan, South Korea, Panasonic, LG Chem, and Samsung SDI have already “walked in”, but for various reasons, they have not been able to truly seize the Chinese market. With the rapid development of China’s new energy vehicle market and the liberalization of policies, these “Chinese Dreams” have rekindled hopes, and they have begun to tighten their layouts, especially in terms of investment and construction.
LG Chemical – Expanding the Nanjing battery production line, mass production will begin in October
LG Chemical will make a billion in China and will supply Tesla.
The Nanjing Power Battery Factory was completed at the end of 2014. The products mainly include cylindrical 18650 batteries and soft pack batteries. Due to the subsidy catalogue restrictions, LG China’s power capacity is idle.
In April 2017, Geely wholly acquired the right to use all of the production equipment and manufacturing technology intellectual property rights of the LG Nanjing plant to provide and upgrade the battery system for Volvo. In June 2019, Geely announced that it will establish a joint venture with LG to produce and sell electric vehicle batteries. It is reported that the registered capital of the joint venture company reached 188 million yuan, and Geely and LG Chem each contributed 50%.
At the beginning of this year, LG Chem announced that it will reinvest about 1.2 trillion won (about 7.26 billion yuan) by 2020 to expand its battery production line in Nanjing. The factory plans to build 23 electric core production lines, including 16 power batteries, 3 energy storage batteries and 4 small batteries. Mass production is expected to begin in October 2019 and full production will be achieved in 2023. After the project is put into production, it is estimated that the annual output of the power battery will be 32GWh.
As of press time, LG Chem did not respond to questions such as factory schedules and mass production proposed by First Electric.
What’s interesting is that after Tesla’s localization, LG Chem actually “robbed” Panasonic’s business.
The latest news shows that LG Chem will supply 21,700 batteries for Model 3 and Model Y produced at Tesla’s Shanghai plant, while Tesla can also choose other supplies.Business. It is reported that the 21700 battery that LG will supply for Tesla may have a higher battery capacity than Bitsra, and the battery will be put into operation at LG’s Nanjing plant. It seems that LG Chem’s expansion of the Nanjing production line may be preparing for Tesla.
Samsung SDI – Strengthening the Dominance of Joint Ventures
On November 29, 2018, the second phase of the new plant of Samsung Ring New Power Battery was officially started in Xi’an.
On June 24, 2019, the official website of the Shaanxi Provincial Development and Reform Commission released a “Review on the Energy Conservation Report of the Expansion of the 120Ah Lithium Ion Power Battery Production Line Project of Samsung Huanxin (Xi’an) Power Battery Co., Ltd.”. The information shows that the project will be built by Samsung Huanxin, which will build a 5.4 million 120Ah lithium-ion battery production line, a 5.4 million 37Ah lithium-ion battery production line, and a total of 221 sets of lithium-ion battery production line equipment. One nitrogen storage tank and two vaporizers, the total investment of the project is 500 million yuan.
In the industry, the media revealed that “Samsung SDI has already communicated with Yutong Bus and CMU Electric on the supply of power battery products, and is likely to enter their battery supply system.”
In addition, according to the information displayed by the company, on August 26, 2019, the new shareholding of Samsung Ring was changed to 35% of the shares held by Huanxin Group, and the shareholding of Samsung SDI changed from 50% to 65%. Samsung Ring’s new largest shareholder.
The industry believes that once the subsidy has completely declined, Samsung will further strengthen its dominance in the joint venture, and it is not excluded that it may become the sole shareholder of Samsung Ring in the future. Gradually strengthen the management and control of the joint venture company, we can see that Samsung SDI attaches great importance to the Chinese market, and hopes to take the lead in the next step in terms of capacity expansion and market development in the Chinese market.
For all questions about the factory, Samsung said that “this kind of problem is not very convenient to reply.”
Someone said that as the earliest Korean battery company to deploy the Chinese power market, Samsung SDI “had gotten up early but caught a late episode.” Although there has been an attempt to speed up the layout of the power business in China, there is still no obvious improvement.
Panasonic: 50,000 sets of batteries for Toyota China Hybrid models
The layout of Panasonic in China is one step behind the other two, with two factories in China.
The Suzhou plant was put into production in 2017, mainly producing Tesla 18650 “special supply battery”.
Dalian New Energy’s special square lithium battery factory was established in 2015, and production began in early 2018. It has been in operation for more than a year and has a small production capacity. Some insiders said that this is mainly because their focus is not on pure electricity but on plug-in hybrids.
As Tesla’s original exclusive battery supplier, the follow-up attitude to Model 3’s localization is not clear, which is not unrelated to the growing tension between the two. The insider told the first electric, “still researching, but there is nothing particularly to say.” And the other side said that he would not discuss the matter at the moment.
However, Panasonic has recently made new progress.
Reuters reported that Toyota has purchased 50,000 sets of Tesla “same” batteries from Panasonic. These batteries have been installed in Toyota’s new plug-in corolla (Corolla, Corolla) and Ray this year. Ling (Levin) sedan. Although these batteries are the same size as Panasonic’s batteries produced by Tesla, they differ in composition.
In the industry, Panasonic and Toyota are cooperating in the power battery industry, which will accelerate the development of both parties in China and the world in the field of new energy vehicles.
Power battery price warWill start
The power battery market has been concentrated, and data shows that the concentration of the top 10 battery manufacturers reached 74.8%. It can be said that the pattern of “oligopoly” led by the Ningde era and BYD in China’s power battery industry is taking shape. However, with the gradual lifting of restrictions imposed by foreign battery suppliers and the withdrawal of government subsidies, the dividends of the industry’s specific development stages and policies are fading.
The founder of Zhen Li Research, Mo Ke, said to the first electric, from the installed data, the Big Three have not yet begun to exert their strength.
“It is expected that after 2020 (after the subsidy is completely cancelled), they will exert their strength, and the market share may increase rapidly in the short term (because the base is low). The advantage of overseas battery manufacturers is that the product quality is relatively better, and everything else is similar. However, the quality advantage may also be caught within two or three years.”
As for the shareholding ratio, it will not be solely invested in the establishment of the factory. Moko believes that this possibility is not great. It should be based on joint ventures, and the partners will be affiliates of battery factories or car companies.
Speaking of the power battery price war and value war for five or six years, it may start to really start in 2020.