The Romance of the Three Kingdoms in the Lithium Battery Industry
With the rapid development of my country's new energy vehicles and low-carbon economy, the development of vehicle power technology has been accelerated. Lithium-ion batteries have the advantages of long life, high energy density, extremely small self-discharge rate, and environmental protection. They are the first choice for new energy vehicle power batteries. best choice. Lithium batteries have become an inaccessible product in people's lives. If we say that the only energy device that humans carry with them is lithium batteries, lithium-ion batteries to be precise. The smartphones, tablets, and laptops we usually use, as well as the electric taxis and electric buses on the streets of cities such as Shenzhen, Beijing, Hangzhou, Taiyuan, and Shanghai, all have lithium-ion batteries inside. It has been about 30 years since the lithium-ion battery industry was born in the early 1990s. This industry has gone from being monopolized by Japan to fighting for hegemony between Japan and South Korea.
So what is the current state of competition among the three countries? Among the top ten lithium battery companies in the world, there are two in Japan: Panasonic and Sony, and two in South Korea: Samsung and LG. The rest are all Chinese companies, of which BYD is the leader in China. In terms of countries, Chinese manufacturers accounted for 60% of global sales, Japan accounted for 17%, and South Korea accounted for about 23%. More importantly, the growth rate of Chinese manufacturers is faster than that of Japan and South Korea, which means that China's share of the world continues to increase. Let's look at the top 20 in the world. In 2016, there are 15 global TOP 20 lithium battery manufacturers in China, 3 in Japan, Panasonic, Sony, AESC, 2 in South Korea, LG and Samsung. Founded in 2011, Ningde Times focuses on power batteries for automobiles. The founder Zeng Yuqun comes from ATL. Sony is the seventh in the world with 8 billion yuan, the domestic manufacturer Waterma is the eighth with 6.5 billion yuan, and Tianjin Lishen is the ninth with 6 billion yuan. But in terms of growth rate, the four major families in Japan and South Korea are completely incomparable with the Chinese wolf pack. In 2016, Panasonic, which ranked first, increased by 15%, LG, which ranked second, increased by 18%, Samsung SDI, which ranked third, increased by 11.4%, BYD, which ranked fourth, increased by 28%, and CATL, which ranked fifth, increased by 145.6%. Dongguan ATL, which ranked sixth, increased by 13.4%, Sony, which ranked seventh, decreased by 20%, Walmart, which ranked eighth, increased by 199.5%, and Lishen, which ranked ninth, increased by 71.4%.
Lithium batteries have become an indispensable product in people's lives, and as raw materials for lithium battery production, pole pieces are prone to cracks, spots, scratches and other types of damage due to coating, rolling and other links during the production process Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the detection of surface defects of lithium battery pole pieces. The batteries for Apple mobile phones are mainly produced by Chinese companies such as Xinwoda, Desai Battery, and ATL. Samsung's Note7 battery explosion in 2016 was because he used its own Samsung SDI battery, while Samsung mobile phones using lithium batteries from China's ATL company had no problems. The safety and reliability of lithium battery product quality has become one of the focus of competition among lithium battery manufacturers. The supplier of ATL’s lithium battery electrode defect detection equipment is Guangzhou Supersonic Automation Technology, which has been intensively cultivating in the field of lithium electrode defect detection for many years. Co., Ltd., the lithium electrode sheet detection system developed by Supersonic Company has realized the strict inspection of the coating defect of the lithium battery pole piece, the total length of the pole piece, the paste length of the pole piece, and the dislocation size of the paste, which increases the flexibility of detection. , and it is easy to expand its functions, which is of great significance for improving detection efficiency, reducing detection costs, and improving the quality of lithium battery products.
In the next few years, the era when Chinese lithium battery manufacturers will completely overwhelm Japan and South Korea in terms of market share, operating income and profits will come. Among them, Ningde Times is likely to replace BYD as China's largest lithium battery manufacturer in 2017. In May 2017, Ningde Times announced that it had established a joint venture with Shanghai Automotive, the largest domestic automobile company, to produce lithium batteries for electric vehicles. BYD, which supplies lithium batteries, has brought a relatively large stimulus. BYD is also considering exporting lithium batteries for electric vehicles to expand sales. Otherwise, it is only a matter of time before its lithium battery business is overtaken by CATL.
In June 2017, Ningde Times announced that it was about to enter the A-share market, and its valuation exceeded 120 billion yuan. The strength of China, Japan and South Korea in the field of lithium batteries has changed. We have surpassed Japan and South Korea in terms of amount, but the top three in the world are still occupied by Japanese and South Korean companies. BYD and Ningde Times are fourth and fifth, and there is a gap between the top three. It is not big, and it is expected that the two will quickly break into the top three in the world.
Next, we have to care about the localization of lithium battery equipment. Domestic equipment has not only occupied a dominant position in the newly built lithium battery factories in China. For example, Ningde Times, which has developed rapidly in the past two years and is launching a new lithium battery production line on a large scale, has achieved 86% of its new production lines. Moreover, it also began to counterattack and break into the production lines of lithium battery manufacturers in Japan and South Korea. The battery production lines of Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony all have Chinese production equipment. For example, Guangzhou Supersonic Automation Technology Co., Ltd., a lithium battery equipment supplier in the Ningde era, is an innovative national high-tech enterprise integrating development, sales and service. It has core technologies with high thresholds in the industry, mainly in visual images. Recognition technology, motion control technology, precision optical device technology and other core areas have made a lot of achievements. Over the years, supersonic speed has been intensively cultivated in the lithium electrode sheet visual inspection industry. In addition to CATL, its products are favored by many domestic lithium battery manufacturers, such as Shenzhen BYD, Zhengzhou BAK, Tianjin Lishen, etc. have largely replaced similar products imported from Japan and South Korea. Some performance indicators have surpassed similar products in Japan and South Korea, such as detection speed and accuracy, but the price is less than half of Japanese and Korean products.
The achievements of Supersonic’s continuous R&D investment and technological innovation in the field of lithium electrode sheet inspection for many years have begun to appear. For example, in terms of visual inspection, the traditional visual algorithm is divided into 5 steps: feature perception, image preprocessing, feature extraction, feature screening, reasoning prediction and recognition. Supersonic deep learning algorithm: the first thing learned is the edge, and then the part of the object, and then the whole object can be abstracted at a higher level; the process of simulating abstraction and recursive iteration, the information from the most trivial pixels Level, abstracted to the concept of "category". In the convolutional neural network, in addition to the convolutional layer, there is also an operation called pooling. The entire convolutional neural network is simulating the process of human abstraction and iteration to achieve surface defects. Accurate classification that mimics the human eye. In Ningde New Energy ATL, supersonic machine vision has successfully achieved a classification rate of 99% of the surface defects of the pole piece, surpassing the classification accuracy rate of imported equipment (about 80%).
Looking back at China's lithium battery industry, although there is still a gap in technology between Japan and South Korea, it has gradually expanded its advantages over Japan and South Korea in terms of share. In fact, domestic lithium batteries are not completely in the mid-range, but have the ability to be in the high-end front. compete. The power batteries used in China's electric vehicle industry are basically purchased from domestically produced batteries. Among them, apart from BYD's own batteries, other automakers buy Ningde Times the most. Due to the large capacity of car batteries, a car's battery is equivalent to The power of more than 1,000 mobile phone batteries can be equivalent to 5,000 mobile phone batteries if it is a pure electric car, and tens of thousands of mobile phone batteries if it is an electric bus battery. Therefore, Ningde era is developing very rapidly, and it is likely to become the world's largest lithium battery supplier in the next two to three years. BYD may also rush to the second place in the world, second only to Ningde era.
The arrival of the era of electric vehicles will open up a very broad space for lithium batteries and their upstream and downstream industries. Ningde era only makes automotive power batteries, and its revenue has easily surpassed Sunwoda, Desai, ATL in just a few years These domestic well-known mobile phone lithium battery manufacturers supplying Apple, Samsung, and Huawei, and their revenue growth rate is still very alarming. We must know that domestic electric vehicles are only just getting started. Domestic lithium battery manufacturers have seen the strategic opportunity window of electric vehicles, and they are crazy about increasing production capacity this year. There may be a risk of excess in the short term. However, in the long run, it is only a matter of time before Chinese battery manufacturers surpass Japan and South Korea.
