Bus area is expected to promote new energy vehicles

Tesla Motors of the United States detonated a new energy car boom globally with its brilliant sales and performance in the first quarter of 2013. However, people in the industry believe that Tesla has no substantial breakthrough in power battery technology, and it has not directly affected domestic companies involved in new energy vehicles.

The domestic new energy battery technology has yet to usher in a critical breakthrough point, and it is expected that within three years it will be difficult to see a revolutionary technological breakthrough. At present, the purchase subsidy policy for new energy auto products is in an “empty window period”, and private purchases are still difficult to break through. However, the industry believes that in public transportation such as taxis and buses, electric vehicles are expected to explore economical business models and promote sales growth.

Battery technology is still difficult to break through

According to Tesla's brilliant data, Prince Dongdong, director of the National 863 electric vehicle major special power battery test center, said that Tesla's products are aimed at wealthy consumers rather than mass consumers, and their performance is not of universal significance. Tesla's battery technology has not made major breakthroughs, and it has no major threat to the development of domestic batteries, nor has it contributed to it. At the same time, he said that the development of domestic battery technology is not at a critical point of major technological breakthroughs.

Wang Qingsheng, general manager of Weihai Dongsheng Energy Technology Co., Ltd., who specializes in the study of porous polymer lithium batteries, told China Securities Journal that Tesla's use of existing lithium batteries manufactured by Panasonic may not have major breakthroughs in innovation. Without a strong new battery technology, the battery performance improvement will depend on the breakthrough in the battery management system. However, because Tesla uses a large number of small 18650 lithium batteries to form a power battery, this method is not the industry's development direction. Because there are many problems such as the uniformity of the battery, and the battery management system is highly demanded, after-sales maintenance monitoring workload is very large.

The principle of investment of Oerlikon Investment’s Gedi’s chief believes that the linkage effect of the Chinese and US stock markets has led to a rise in the domestic new energy auto sector, but in fact the North American market is very different from the Chinese market. Tesla has won the recognition of a niche market that is very subdivided by its high-end positioning, brand-new designs and concepts, rather than relying on its economic practicality. However, in China, electric vehicles are positioned in the low-end market and need to rely on cost-effective wins. At the same time, due to the fact that domestic new energy vehicles are almost all converted, this also results in the performance and reliability of these models cannot be compared with that of fuel vehicles.

At present, the development and sales of lithium batteries are still in the bottleneck. According to senior industry personnel in the lithium battery industry, a large number of lithium batteries, including lithium-ion material companies, have been shipped, and orders have performed poorly. In this regard, Ge Yuan said that this has both the industry's own technology, process problems, but also the downstream sales of new energy vehicles, the problem of poor, he believes that within the past three years there will be no breakthrough in the revolutionary battery technology.

Wang Qingsheng said that the breakthrough in battery technology is mainly in the materials and battery systems, the current rapid development of materials, the battery system is a major problem. At present, 90% of domestic lithium battery manufacturers are engaged in the research, development and production of liquid lithium iron phosphate batteries. However, batteries produced under this system have problems such as low safety and low energy density.

However, Ling Tianyi, chief engineer of SAIC Group's New Energy Automotive Division, believes that Tesla's brilliant performance is still encouraging the development of China's auto industry.

Subsidy rumors "do not fly"

In fact, the rumors about the upcoming introduction of new energy vehicle subsidies also indirectly contributed to the “dancing” of the shares of related companies. However, the latest information shows that the subsidy policy may not be as optimistic as the market expected.

According to media reports, four ministries and commissions including the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology have reached a consensus. In the first half of this year, a new subsidy policy for new energy vehicles will be introduced. The subsidy will be divided into 16 files. The minimum subsidy standard is also greater than the previous standard of 3,000 yuan per kilowatt-hour. However, on May 9, Dong Yang, secretary general of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, said that the rumor that new energy vehicle subsidies were introduced in the first half of the year was "not reliable."

For the continuation of the new energy vehicle subsidy policy, the industry generally agrees. Li Weili, Director of the Manufacturing Division of the Information Resource Development Department of the National Information Center, said that the subsidy policy for new energy vehicles will continue at least until 2015.

Ling Tianjun told the China Securities Journal reporter that the subsidy policy for new energy vehicles will certainly continue, but it is still not clear how subsidies and subsidies will be used. The current subsidy policy is not continuous and unstable. It has affected the sales of auto companies and the purchasing enthusiasm of consumers. However, due to the imperfections in infrastructure, the company has no plan to promote taxis.

However, Li Weili believes that the current development of the new energy vehicle market is not the market but the product. He said that even if the state subsidizes new energy vehicles, the company does not have products suitable for market sales. This is also the reason why subsidy issuance is lower than expected before 2012. He believes that companies that develop new energy vehicles should adhere to research and development and cannot rely solely on subsidies.

The industry believes that over-reliance on subsidies caused by the company's own short-sighted behavior, resulting in the development of hybrid vehicles in China is not optimistic. The person in charge of new energy at Changan Automobile stated that the company had long started to research hybrid vehicles. However, due to changes in the direction of state support, enterprises generally paid attention to short-term subsidies, thus interrupting research in this area. Now the country has begun to pay attention to it, but technology has opened up a distance with international car companies.

The development experience and lessons learned from hybrid vehicles also apply to pure electric vehicles. The industry believes that although the sales environment of pure electric vehicles is not yet mature, the research and development of car companies cannot be interrupted.

Bus industry is expected to take the lead

The new energy auto industry is not currently out of nowhere. The industry believes that pure electric vehicles are expected to take the lead in the emergence of economically viable business models in the public transportation sector.

Geyuan said that the development of pure electric vehicles should be very promising because of its special operations in the public transportation sector. However, in the area of ​​private purchases, due to the low price/performance ratio and inconvenience of use, it is expected that there will be no breakthrough in the short term. Currently, taxi companies have used pure electric taxis to make profits. It is expected that there will be more economic models for public transportation such as taxis and buses in this year or next year.

The National Association of Passenger Vehicle Market Information also said that the most easiest way to promote new energy and hybrid power technologies at present is for large and medium-sized passenger cars, which account for more than 40% of world production. Due to high vehicle prices, the proportion of increased technical equipment in cost is small, fuel saving per vehicle is 10 times higher than that of private passenger vehicles, and it is easy to recover costs; the increased weight accounts for a small proportion of the entire vehicle weight, and has little impact on energy consumption. It is expected that the effect will be seen by the end of the year.