In the Donggang area of Quzhou Intelligent Manufacturing New City in Zhejiang Province, the factory of Quzhou Jidian Electric Vehicle Technology Co., Ltd. is located here. This is a battery factory built by Geely with heavy investment. Geely's automotive brand, Jike, recently released a self-developed 800V lithium iron phosphate ultra fast charging battery - the Golden Brick Battery - which is produced here.
"This project has an investment of over 10 billion yuan and started construction in July last year. It only took about 15 months to complete the entire production line of the equipment, including about half a year of battery capacity ramp up time." On December 15th, the relevant staff of the above-mentioned factory introduced to a reporter from First Financial News that the planned total construction area of this three electric factory is about 619000 square meters, and the depth of the battery cell factory alone is about 700 meters.
Xie Shibin, Vice President of Jike Intelligent Technology, also told media outlets including First Financial that in order to independently develop the battery cell technology for gold brick batteries, there are over 1000 R&D engineers and nearly 100 industry experts in the team alone.
Coincidentally, on December 12th, GAC's Inpai Battery Factory was officially completed, covering an area of 666 acres with a total investment of 10.9 billion yuan.
Power batteries belong to the heavy asset industry. In 2022, there will be 113 expansion projects for power and energy storage batteries in China, with a planned investment of nearly 900 billion yuan, and an average investment of about 8 billion yuan per project. Why are car companies keen to invest billions of dollars in self-developed batteries, despite the severe profit erosion caused by industry price wars?
President of Geely Holding Group An Conghui, CEO of Jike Intelligent Technology, stated at a media communication meeting after the release of BRICS batteries, "Batteries are very important and are the foundation of electric vehicles, regardless of battery, motor, and electronic control (three electric)." All of them are the foundation of electric vehicles, which is our understanding and definition of the importance of batteries. Jike believes that for an intelligent electric vehicle enterprise to form competitiveness in the future, batteries are the core and most basic element, which is also one of the moats for Jike's future development
In short, the three electric systems of the era of electric vehicles have replaced the three major components of the era of gasoline vehicles (engine, gearbox, chassis) and are becoming the core competitiveness of car companies. And car companies are bound to grasp these core technologies in their own hands.
According to backend system data, just 2 hours after the release of the Extreme Krypton Gold Brick Battery, the order for its first model, the Extreme Krypton 007, increased by 487 units. An Conghui said that this is enough to prove that the Gold Brick Battery has contributed to the orders of 007 and even the entire Extreme Krypton.
Especially after three years of the epidemic, maintaining stable and self controlled supply chains has become a profound lesson for automotive companies.
A senior executive from a leading power battery company told First Financial reporters that after experiencing a sharp rise in lithium carbonate prices and tight power battery production capacity in the first two years, car companies have developed a strong sense of insecurity and anxiety, which has prompted them to make up their minds to develop and manufacture their own batteries. However, the main starting point for car manufacturers is for self controlled safety considerations, which does not mean that they need to be closed off in the power battery supply chain.
This reason can also be indirectly verified from the time when Geely officially started investing in factory construction. An Conghui revealed that as early as around 2009, Geely's laboratory had already started researching batteries. Through years of continuous investment and research, various technological routes have been taken, and multiple samples have been developed. Finally, Geely made up its mind to invest in building a factory to produce gold brick batteries two years ago.
And two years ago was the time when the power battery industry experienced a "battery shortage" and a sharp rise in lithium carbonate prices. At that time, there were also rumors in the industry that He Xiaopeng, the chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, had been "guarding" Ningde Times for a week to grab batteries.
At present, the main source of JiKr power batteries is the joint venture between JiKr and CATL. After the release of BRICS batteries, they will also use self-developed and manufactured batteries. Extreme Krypton has two paths in terms of batteries: one is to continue using batteries from CATL, and the other is to plan to use brick batteries at the same time.
However, one issue for car companies to develop and manufacture their own batteries is how to balance the huge investment and profits.
NIO is one of the representative car companies that independently develop and manufacture batteries. On December 14th, NIO Chairman Li Bin stated that in the long run, developing batteries by car companies can improve gross profit, but it is indeed difficult in the short term. So NIO's current strategy is to invest fixed assets in projects with large and long return cycles, such as self-developed and self manufactured batteries, and push them forward. Li Bin acknowledged in response to the issue of streamlining personnel that the NIO operating system and intelligent departments have not been affected overall, while the battery manufacturing department has been relatively affected.
Regarding the cost issue of self-developed and self manufactured batteries, Jike has not provided specific values. However, An Conghui stated that currently, Jike's energy supplement network is self-developed, self manufactured, self built, and self operated. If calculated independently, it still incurs losses until today, but the business is expected to achieve profitability in 2025.