The 250 Billion New Energy Giant Broke The News: The Supply of Lithium Batteries Is Extremely Tight!

In the past November, China's new energy vehicle market has sold out again. After the market on December 8, the Passenger Federation released data showing that the wholesale sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 429,000 in November, an increase of 17.9% month-on-month and a year-on-year increase of 131.7%. A more critical indicator is that the retail penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles in November reached 20.8%.

At the same time, the Federation of Travel Services issued an important signal: the dark moment of automotive chip supply has passed. The improvement in chip supply was originally expected to bring production back to the level of last November, but the actual chain growth rate was 14%. This has exceeded market expectations, which means that the biggest weakness that restricts automobile production: the lack of core, is improving.

Behind the strong sales of new energy vehicles, the supply of upstream lithium batteries does not seem to be optimistic. On December 8, a person from Xiaopeng Motors, with a market value of 250 billion, said that due to the epidemic, the industry is facing extremely tight supply of lithium iron phosphate batteries, which has brought great uncertainty to the production of Xiaopeng P7 480E/N models. Due to the nature, the 480 model orders cannot be delivered in time within the scheduled delivery cycle.

New energy vehicles are selling again

It really sold out! The sales of new energy vehicles once again astounded the market.

On December 8, the data disclosed by the Passenger Association showed that the wholesale sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 429,000 in November, an increase of 17.9% from the previous month and a year-on-year increase of 131.7%; from January to November, the wholesale sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 2.807 million. , An increase of 190.2% year-on-year. In November, the retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 378,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 122.3%, and a month-on-month increase of 19.8%; from January to November, the retail sales of new energy vehicles was 2.514 million units, a year-on-year increase of 178.3%.

This is after the month-on-month decline in new energy vehicles in October, it has once again ushered in a month-on-month growth and hit a new monthly high during the year, which means that under the background of the gradual withdrawal of subsidies, the market demand for new energy vehicles is still rapidly releasing .

At the same time, in November, the number of new energy passenger vehicle manufacturers whose wholesale sales exceeded 10,000 units rose to 14, including BYD 90,546, Tesla China 52,859, SAIC-GM-Wuling 50,141, Great Wall Motor 16136, and Xiaopeng Motor 15613. Cars, Guangzhou Automobile E'an 15035, Chery Automobile 14,482, Ideal Car 13,485, Geely Automobile 13,090, SAIC Passenger Car 12,225, SAIC Volkswagen 11986, Weilai Automobile 10878, FAW-Volkswagen 10705, Hezhong Automobile 10013 Vehicles.

In fact, the November sales of new energy vehicles broke out against the trend. Overall, China’s passenger car market did not perform satisfactorily in November, with retail sales of 1.816 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 12.7% and a decrease of 6 compared to November 2019. %, an increase of 6% month-on-month. It can be seen that the trend of new energy vehicles and traditional fuel vehicles has formed a strongly differentiated feature, which realizes the substitution effect on the fuel vehicle market and drives the auto market to accelerate the pace of transition to new energy.

Under this trend, the penetration rate of China's new energy vehicles continues to rise. According to data from the Passenger Association, the retail penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles in China reached 20.8% in November, again exceeding the 20% mark. Among them, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in independent brands reached 37.4%, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in luxury cars was 19.4%, and the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in mainstream joint venture brands was only 3.6%. The penetration rate from January to November is 13.9%, and the penetration rate of new energy vehicles this year is expected to exceed 15%, which is a significant increase compared to the penetration rate of 5.8% in 2020.

The Passenger Association stated that, in fact, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles is not a smooth linear increase. It will be difficult to continue to increase substantially in the future. It is judged that the penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles should exceed 20% in 2022. Previously, CICC also predicted that the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in the global mainstream market in 2022 will break through the 10% critical point and will enter the steep stage of the S-shaped growth curve.

It should be pointed out that part of the reason why the penetration rate of new energy vehicles has increased so rapidly this year is that the chip industry chain in the automotive market has been hit by the epidemic this year, resulting in insufficient chip supply, which has affected the overall supply of passenger vehicles.

The "darkest moment" of car chips is past

A sentence in the latest report issued by the Federation of Travelling Associations has aroused market attention. It clearly stated: "The dark moment of automotive chip supply in the third quarter has passed. The improvement in chip supply was originally expected to promote production to the level of November last year, but the actual growth rate was 14% compared with the previous month." This obviously exceeded market expectations, meaning that, The biggest weakness that restricts automobile production: core shortage, which is improving.

2021 may be the most helpless year for the automotive industry. On the one hand, there is strong demand, while on the other side, key materials such as semiconductors and chips continue to be in short supply. As the epidemic has swept across the world, many countries have encountered problems in automobile production, and the impact of the "core shortage" and the skyrocketing price of raw materials has been huge.

The chip market has repeatedly staged chaos such as chip purchases, hoarding, and driving up prices. At one time, the price of some car chips continued to rise, some by 3-10 times, and some by 30-40 times, and they were out of stock for a long time.

As a result, the auto industry has seen a "three-volume reduction" pattern in which production, sales, and inventory are simultaneously declining, and this has continued for half a year. This is the first situation in the past ten years. In September of this year, consulting company Alixpartners issued a forecast that the continued shortage of semiconductor chips is expected to reduce the global automakers' car production by 7.7 million vehicles this year, and total revenue losses of US$210 billion (approximately RMB 100 million).

Since the third quarter, the lack of cores in the automotive industry is alleviating, and the latest setting of the Federation of Passengers has further eased the panic in the automotive market. It can be predicted that the output of automakers will further increase for some time in the future, and the sales momentum of new energy vehicles may continue to be maintained.

Behind this is the recovery of the global chip industry chain and the rapid expansion of chip production capacity. A report from IDC Research stated that as "large-scale capacity expansion begins before the end of 2022," chips may even experience overcapacity in 2023.

Among them, TSMC is building a new super factory in Arizona, and Samsung Electronics announced that it will invest $17 billion in a factory in Texas, and plans to start production in the second half of 2024.

China is also expanding wildly. Chip foundry leader SMIC has built three 28-nanometer fabs in Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai. Once mass production is achieved in the next three to five years, the total monthly production capacity of 240,000 12-inch wafers will be almost twice the current output.

A Shenzhen chip industry insider analyzed that the tight supply chain of chips has been eased. The risk is that when the new fab is put into production, the production capacity will exceed demand, and the demand of end users is slowing down. It is not communicated to the foundry, and the excess chip production capacity is likely to be seen in the next period of time.