At this time of severe turbulence in the auto market, the big ship of Tesla appeared on a sea of turbulent clouds. Although the ship was successfully boarded, LG Chem still faces many challenges. Can it squeeze the ship? Tickets sailed through the waves, I believe we will soon see.
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “First Electric Vehicle Network ” ID: d1evwx), author Deng Ya.
As the saying goes, a companion is like a tiger. Regarding this, Panasonic, who just recently turned face with Tesla, must have a deep understanding.
But even if there is such a lesson learned, it still can’t stop a lot of companies in the industry chain from wanting to board the big ship of Tesla. Maybe this is the charm of “top stream”.
The enthusiasm of LG Chem is obvious to all.
According to media reports, LG Chem has been sending samples to Tesla for the past three years. At the same time, LG Chem, which is leading in soft bag technology, has not given up on 2170 batteries. The previous cooperation with Faraday Future, Lucid Motors and Rivian has been around 2170 batteries.
With the news that at the end of August this year, “Tesla agreed to buy batteries from LG Chem for use in electric cars produced in Chinese factories”, LG Chem finally “boarded” and its stock price soared.
But in the current changing market, getting a ticket does not mean peace of mind. How to squeeze the ticket smoothly to the shore, the challenge facing LG Chem is still not small.
“mimic” is not a long-term strategy
On November 7, Tesla China officially released the domestic Model 3, and many media also gathered at the Tesla Shanghai factory, but for the key issue-which product is the battery, Tesla did not disclose. It only means that the whole battery pack is still produced by Tesla.
But there are also reports from the media that the new domestically produced Model 3 still uses batteries from Panasonic.
This news is not groundless. Earlier CleanTechnica mentioned on the YouTube channel that the rapid construction of the Tesla Shanghai plant has caused some components to be put into production in a timely manner. One of them is the locally produced battery. Specifically, It is the battery provided by LG Chem.
In order to solve this problem, as early as August of this year, Tesla stated that the battery packs for production in 2019 will be purchased directly from the Gigafactory 1 plant in Nevada, USA. At present, the Shanghai plant has about 7,000 packs in stock , And the batteries used naturally come from Panasonic. About the use of LG batteries will be from the first quarter or the second quarter of 2020The beginning of the degree.
There is a question here, whether the same model can reach the same level after using batteries from different manufacturers.
When talking about this issue, CleanTechnica used the term “mimic” for LG Chem’s products. They believe that due to the differences in equipment and technology, even if LG owns the 2170 battery chemical formula provided by Tesla, it cannot produce products of the same quality as Panasonic, and it can only “mimic” as much as possible. In this regard, even Tesla also said that in terms of performance, LG Chem’s cells are slightly weaker than Panasonic.
But for the domestic Model 3 Standard Edition, the impact of product differences is not great. Musk has also publicly stated that Tesla can always cram some extra battery cells into the pack to make up the difference. (Tesla can put extra batteries in the pack to make up the difference)
But this is not a long-term solution. The competitiveness of Model 3 standard endurance models is always limited. Although it has not been officially announced, many insiders, including foreign media, have determined that Tesla will definitely produce Model 3 long-endurance versions at the Shanghai plant. Production of this model, Musk’s “additional battery” method must not be applied.
CleanTechnica sources said that if LG Chem’s batteries are used to produce long-life versions, there are two options. One is to expect LG to reach the same level of performance when producing high-end versions. Compared to the “China Long Endurance Version”, which has a lower performance than the Model 3 long endurance version produced in the United States.
These two options are obviously not the optimal solution for Tesla. This may be one of the reasons why Tesla does not use LG as an exclusive supplier and still looks for other partners in China. This is also LG Chem. The second risk.
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