"Double carbon goals" has become an important strategy promoted by multiple parties.
As an important part of my country's road transportation, trucks undertake more than 70% of my country's freight volume and are one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. How to promote and realize the low-carbon cleanliness of trucks is becoming a new development issue.
Recently, the "Work Plan for Promoting the Development of Multimodal Transport, Optimizing and Adjusting the Transportation Structure" proposed to further optimize and adjust the transportation structure. At present, domestic and foreign car companies engaged in the production of electric trucks, except for most old traditional car companies, only a few start-up forces are engaged in the design and development of new energy trucks.
Established automakers such as General Motors, Volkswagen, Volvo, Daimler, and Honda have accelerated their transformation based on their accumulated advantages. Taking a closer look at domestic new energy commercial vehicle companies, Zhidian Automobile is also one of the few companies in China that is involved in the design and development of complete vehicles, related ecological services and parts manufacturing.
New energy commercial vehicles are becoming another outlet after new energy passenger vehicles.
Huxiang Automobile Enterprises Conforming to the Times
Whether it is an established car company or a start-up company, they are not stingy in the research and development and design of new energy commercial vehicles such as electrification and intelligence, and the funds invested in them have reached hundreds of millions or even billions of yuan.
A number of start-ups such as Zhijia Technology, IntraTech, Embark, Gatik, etc. are also focusing on this field, and a single financing can easily reach hundreds of millions of dollars.
As a smart car that is "inextricably linked" with Singularity, the fate of "born" is completely opposite to that of Singularity. In the context of new energy commercial vehicles, it is also favored by capital.
· In 2020, Zhidian Automobile received 100 million yuan in angel round financing, led by Xingmai Capital;
· In June of the following year, Zhidian Automobile announced that it had completed the A-round financing of 1 billion yuan, led by Henglu Capital, followed by Zhuzhou State Investment and Power Valley Investment.
That is, the financing in 2021 will be used by Zhidian Automobile for platform construction, product research and development, delivery quality control, and liquidity supplementation. The product launch will be carried out around three platforms, represented by the IT500 series of small box trucks with a load capacity of 0.5 tons, the IT1000 series of smart electric pickups and the IT1500 series of light trucks.
Let’s not speculate whether Zhidian Auto, which only received 1 billion yuan in financing this time, will create “loneliness” on the road to car manufacturing. But at least, for a start-up company trying to make a difference in the field of new energy commercial vehicles, the integration of 1 billion yuan at least provides a guarantee for its car manufacturing.
Ma Jianfeng, founder and CEO of Zhidian Automobile, said that Zhidian Automobile is the first company in my country established with intelligent new energy technology commercial vehicles as its key development plan.
Judging from the commercial vehicle plan disclosed by Zhidian Automobile in 2018, the commercial vehicle segment of Zhidian Automobile will focus on logistics fields such as intercity distribution and short-distance connections. Different from established players such as Sany Heavy Industry, Hanma Technology and SAIC Hongyan, Zhidian Motors chose the route of light trucks and reached a consensus with domestic new energy commercial vehicle manufacturers. For start-ups like Zhidian Auto whose foundation is not yet of a certain level of strength, it is undoubtedly a "wise" choice in terms of cost and investment.
It is understood that the first vehicle series that the company will mass-produce at the end of the year is the X301 light truck series. department.
At present, in the domestic commercial vehicle market, car manufacturing relies more on the reasonable industrial planning of local governments and the support of national industrial policies. At this stage, relying on these two advantages, Zhidian Automobile has gradually built the prototype of its own commercial vehicle business.
Zhidian Automobile Production Line is the most flexible commercial vehicle production line in the industry with the most automated technology, which can achieve the related production of load-bearing body and non-load-bearing body, including the tangential production of popular light commercial vehicles from the smallest 3m to the largest 6m , high-quality pickup trucks and new energy bus manufacturing.
Entering the new energy commercial vehicle market, it can be said that it is the best choice for Zhidian Automobile to avoid the frontal "hardness" of the large forces. However, the "best choice" that conforms to the trend of the times also hides a "mystery".
Are intelligence and customization pure gimmicks?
Compared with the new energy passenger car market, the market size of new energy commercial vehicles is relatively small.
According to the statistical analysis of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in January 2022, the market share of new energy vehicles reached 17%, but the market share of new energy passenger vehicles reached 19.2%, continuing the trend of rapid development last year. Just imagine, how much market share new energy commercial vehicles provide in the middle, perhaps we already understand.
The new energy commercial vehicle market, which is already small in scale, is flooded with more start-up car companies or traditional manufacturers, which will undoubtedly further compress the market space.
In addition, the current trend of intelligentization of automobiles is intensifying. In order to take the lead in realizing the large-scale landing of new energy commercial vehicles and occupying market share, intelligentization has also been applied to electric trucks by car companies. Many car companies have launched customized and smart trucks. to open up the market situation. But for the significance of the commercial vehicle market at this stage, the intelligence and customization at this stage are more like a gimmick.
On the one hand, for the small-scale market of commercial vehicles, how to ensure cost control and production scale also plagues many current car companies. At present, the main cost difference between new energy vehicles and traditional fuel vehicles lies in batteries, motors, electronic controls and intelligent driving man-machine systems.
Due to the high cost of batteries, the cost difference of new energy vehicles should be 15% to 20%, or even more than 30%. This means that new energy commercial vehicle companies need to spend more funds and other resources to support the research and development of batteries, motors, electronic controls and intelligent driving man-machine systems. As a result, it will also drive up the cost.
In addition, the size and dimensions of commercial vehicles have strict standards, and the main frame and structure of the product cannot be changed. High customization will further increase the cost of car companies. Production costs of car companies.
On the other hand, in recent years, the production and sales of new energy commercial vehicles have shown a downward trend year by year. In 2020, the production and sales of new energy commercial vehicles reached 120,000 and 121,000 respectively, a certain degree of decline compared to 2019. Among them, in 2020, the production and sales of new energy trucks will only account for 34.74% of the overall production and sales. To a certain extent, it also shows that the current market and consumers have a relatively general attitude towards new energy commercial vehicles or trucks at this stage, which will also cause progress for the immature intelligent and customized new energy commercial vehicles. degree of hindrance.
In terms of the current overall competitive landscape, Chery Commercial Vehicles, Geely Commercial Vehicles and Chongqing Ruichi New Energy have three new energy commercial vehicle companies occupying the majority of the market share in the current market, basically realizing the situation of "three points in the world". For players who entered the game later, the market competition space is gradually compressed. Differentiation advantages may become the key to the competition of these players.
New energy commercial vehicles, an efficiency revolution in production tools
Similar to new energy passenger cars, both models have obvious bottlenecks due to the energy density of lithium batteries.
For new energy passenger vehicles, the most obvious bottleneck is range anxiety and how long the battery life can last. On the contrary, new energy commercial vehicles are more like a production tool, and the factors considered are more comprehensive and broader than those of passenger vehicles. This bottleneck from electric commercial vehicles is not only a consideration of mileage, but also other factors such as load capacity and operating efficiency.
In order to solve these problems, different segments of the commercial vehicle field have chosen different models. The difference between heavy-duty trucks and light-duty trucks is not only the difference in usage, load, and battery life, but more importantly, the change in the two modes of battery replacement and charging.
Although the two different modes can provide guarantees on battery life, the core lies in the energy form of commercial vehicle batteries. At present, with the main direction of the development of China's entire new energy commercial vehicles, it is still vacillating between pure electric and hydrogen fuel technologies. Whether to choose pure electric form or hydrogen fuel technology is not necessarily a perfect choice for the final market.
But this also means that at the level of battery energy, there are greater requirements for commercial vehicle companies. How to achieve this breakthrough in the form of battery energy is to achieve the extended program as ideal as passenger cars. Behind this, more car companies are needed. considerations. At the same time, to achieve this breakthrough in energy technology, or to further enhance the efficiency revolution.
In addition, the initial purchase cost of new energy commercial vehicles is higher than that of traditional fuel vehicles. Even if electricity is cheaper than oil for subsequent vehicles, the increase in initial purchase costs will also be a headache for consumers. So, for car companies, how to reduce the cost of the whole vehicle is the consideration of the industrial chain and production line.
According to reports, Zhidian Automobile Assembly Factory has established the most modern intelligent system production line in China, which can realize the production and manufacturing of 50,000 commercial vehicles in the whole process. It is estimated that the cost of commercial vehicles can be reduced by more than 5% compared with the field under full production conditions. . This means that Zhidian Automobile has achieved further cost control in the production line and cost of new energy commercial vehicles, which has played a role in promoting the subsequent mass production of commercial vehicles.
In addition, the current smart logistics has become one of the mainstream trends in the development of the logistics industry. The rapid development and application of new technologies such as AI, Internet of Things, big data, and cloud computing have further promoted the improvement of the efficiency of new energy commercial vehicles. At present, Zhidian Automobile has developed a set of "smart logistics AI scheduling system", which is used in logistics business discovery, vehicle and cargo scheduling, cargo loading, logistics monitoring and other scenarios, bringing more possibilities for the intelligent upgrading of the logistics industry.
Even at present, new energy commercial vehicles adopt two modes of charging and battery replacement, but there are still difficulties in the actual situation, and we need to face the problem of having money but not being able to charge/replace batteries. The lack of infrastructure such as power stations and charging piles still restricts the performance of new energy commercial vehicles in actual use scenarios.
Deduced in this way, under the current circumstances, there may only be one possibility for the driving factors of electric commercial vehicles, that is, like the early new energy passenger vehicles, to be promoted by policies and various subsidies, but such subsidies and policies can bring What an effect. Perhaps this answer has been confirmed in the development of new energy passenger vehicles.
Source: New Industry Insights