The era of new energy vehicles: Where will the motor and transmission go?
With the announcement of the ban on the sale of fuel vehicles in various countries around the world, and the comprehensive efforts of major auto companies in the field of new energy vehicles, new energy vehicles ushered in a major outbreak in 2018. From the perspective of the new energy vehicle data released by the China Automobile Association in September, the production and sales of new energy vehicles increased steadily in September, with a total sales of 121,000 units, an increase of 19.8% from the previous month and a year-on-year increase of 54.8%. Compared with the year-on-year decline in China’s car sales in September, new energy vehicles can be described as “counter-current”. While new energy vehicles continue to increase market share, they also bring about changes and advances in automotive technology. The arrival of new technologies will inevitably lead to the regression or even disappearance of some traditional technologies.
As the global automotive electrification penetration rate continues to increase, the drive motor and transmission industry will usher in a rapid expansion of the overall scale. According to estimates, with the rapid advancement of global automotive electrification, the new energy vehicle motor system market will expand rapidly, and the market size is expected to grow from $2.3 billion in 2015 to $31.8 billion in 2030.
The new energy vehicle motor system mainly includes two parts, the electric motor and the inverter. Although the same as most other auto parts, these two parts are facing price pressure for a long time, but due to the increase of the total number of new energy vehicles, the industry is generally better. Big upside. We expect the average annual growth rate of the market in 2030 will be around 18%-20%. In terms of system unit price, the overall development of the motor system to the high power direction also brings about an increase in the assembly price.
In terms of market share, Toyota Group is far ahead in the 2016 data (the group mainly produces motor companies including Denso and Aisin Seiki), and Honda Group ranks second, while both groups are also The hybrid field is a global leader. This was followed by BYD and Taiwanese motor manufacturer Tomita Electric, which supplied Tesla.
In the long-term development of the motor industry, the rise of third-party suppliers will be the general trend. If we look at the current industrial chain of the Japanese auto industry, it is not difficult to find that the top three companies (Toyota, Honda, Nissan) occupy the leading position tend to be self-powered products, which is not only related to the traditional genes of Japanese manufacturing companies, but also The stage of industry development is related.
If we look at the history of the PC and mobile phone industry, we can easily find that these two industries are highly integrated upstream and downstream in the initial stage, whether it is HP, Apple, Silicon Graphics in the PC industry, Nokia or Motorola in the mobile phone industry. All of them are highly integrated in the industrial chain, because the initial product upgrades are faster, and upstream component suppliers need to react quickly to each other, so the integrated production model has a high cost performance. However, in the middle and late stages of the development of the industry, due to the expansion of the scale of the entire market, and the speed of product replacement and replacement does not need to be as fast as the initial stage, the scale effect of the third-party suppliers as the target of the entire market is reflected, which also gave birth to Foxconn. The rise of a range of third-party suppliers such as Micron and Hynix.
The new energy automotive motor industry is no exception. From the current point of view, Honda has announced that it will cooperate with Hitachi to produce motors. At the same time, Nissan also mentioned in the investor exchange meeting that it may start mining motors in the future. In October 2017, Mitsubishi Electric announced that it will supply motors and inverters for Daimler Benz. With the popularity of high-performance, low-cost products from third-party motor manufacturers, the market share of the motor industry from the self-supplied to the third-party enterprises is the general trend.
At present, Japanese motor companies have begun to respond to the trend changes brought about by electrification. We expect Denso and Aisin Seiki to first take advantage of their existing scale and occupy market share at a lower cost, and the closely following electric and Mingdian will follow quickly. At present, the average gross profit margin of the motor industry is around 30%, and the production scale is one of the main factors determining the level of gross profit margin.
Let's talk about the transmission, the transmission is one of the core components of the traditional fuel car, it has two basic functions, one is to cooperate with the clutch to ensure the car starts normally, not to be extinguished due to the excessive starting load; the second is that the owner is constantly changing During the speed of the vehicle, the engine is stabilized at the operating speed by switching the gear position (speed ratio). It has a crucial impact on the driving experience of the car, but in the field of new energy vehicles, the transmission does not seem to be that important. Because the electric motor's motor can already rely on its own perfect system to make the vehicle run normally, and the transmission has limited effect on improving the drivability, adding another transmission will increase the vehicle's weight and increase the cost.
In the future, hybrid vehicles will still be equipped with AT, DCT and ECVT; pure electric vehicles will use the reducer as the mainstream in the short term, and the secondary transmission is the trend. Many industry insiders who recognize that the secondary transmission will be the future trend also believe that the use of a two-speed transmission can make the motor work more in the high-efficiency zone. The reason is that when the two-speed transmission is used, the working torque of the motor is higher than that of the fixed gear. The reducer is much smaller, which reduces the operating current of the motor, reduces the burn-in loss of the motor, and improves the working efficiency of the motor. There are also people in the industry who believe that for pure electric vehicles, in order to improve the traditional ratio and achieve maximum speed and maximum grade, the transmission can be improved, and the five-speed transmission can improve the performance of the vehicle. At this stage, the five-speed transmission has achieved industrial development, and the development of the two-speed transmission is obviously not obvious. Therefore, the five-speed transmission can directly apply the existing technology and results, and achieve the reduction of research and development costs, while the five-speed transmission is on the battery. The requirements of the motor are not high, and it may be the main direction of the development of electric vehicles in the future.
At present, from the perspective of the development of new energy vehicles, the supportive subsidy policies of various countries have played a major role, which is similar to the support subsidies of the photovoltaic industry, but the new energy vehicles are behind the photovoltaic industry by a stage. With the gradual emergence of the role of the second phase of the subsidy policy and the sustained investment of countries, new energy vehicles are gradually entering the harvest stage.
