The industrial chain advantages of China's new energy vehicles are radiating to the world. Whether in the field of supporting infrastructure, or in vertical market segments, whether in more advanced intelligent technologies or richer product lines, many links of China's new energy vehicle industry chain have broken into a blue ocean in the international market with high cost performance, high technology and high stability. China's automotive industry has been rushing towards a low-carbon and intelligent future, and its industrial competitiveness accumulated for many years has begun to show itself in global competition. Industry "linked" globally

The overseas layout of Chinese charging pile enterprises relies on cost advantages

According to data disclosed by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China's new energy vehicle exports continued to grow at a high rate, exporting 499,000 units in the first 10 months of 2022, a year-on-year increase of 96.7%. With the acceleration of domestic new energy vehicles to the world, charging pile companies have also begun to layout overseas markets, market analysis believes that overseas charging piles in policy subsidies, new energy vehicle penetration rate increase stimulus or in 2023 into the demand inflection point, China's products are expected to quickly open overseas markets with cost-effective advantages.

Since 2021, many countries in Europe and the United States have intensively released charging pile policies and subsidy plans to promote the rapid development of new energy charging infrastructure.

In November 2021, the U.S. announced that it would invest $7.5 billion in EV charging infrastructure. The investment goal is to build about 500,000 public charging stations across the United States by 2030.

On October 27, 2022, the European Union agreed on a plan to "zero CO2 emissions for all passenger cars and light commercial vehicles sold in the EU market from 2035", which is equivalent to banning the sale of gasoline and diesel vehicles from 2035.

Sweden introduced incentives for EV charging stations in August 2022, providing up to 50% for investment in public and private charging stations, up to 10,000 crowns per unit for private charging piles, and 100% for fast charging stations that are fully used for public use.

Iceland plans to provide about $53.272 million in subsidies for infrastructure such as public charging piles between 2020 and 2024, and the United Kingdom announced that from June 30, 2022, all new homes in England must be equipped with at least one electric vehicle charging pile.

Xiong Li, chief analyst of the computer industry of Guosen Securities, said that the current penetration rate of new energy vehicles in Europe and the United States is generally less than 30%, and subsequent sales will maintain rapid growth. However, the speed of the new charging pile and the growth rate of the new electric vehicle sales are seriously mismatched, which makes its construction demand urgent and has a large space for development.

According to the International Energy Agency, sales of new energy vehicles in Europe and the United States will reach 7.3 million and 3.1 million units respectively in 2030. The rapid growth of electric vehicle sales will stimulate the outbreak of demand for charging pile construction in Europe and the United States.

Compared with China, the current infrastructure construction of charging piles in Europe and the United States is seriously insufficient, containing huge market space. Everbright Securities Research Report pointed out that as of April 2022, the vehicle pile ratio in the United States is 21.2:1, and the overall vehicle pile ratio in the EU is 8.5:1, of which Germany is 20:1, the United Kingdom is 16:1, France is 10:1, and the Netherlands is 5:1, all of which have a large gap with China.

Guosen Securities estimates that the total market space of charging piles in Europe and the United States will be about 73.12 billion yuan in 2025, and it will increase to 251.51 billion yuan by 2030.

Since the second half of 2022, many listed companies involved in charging pile business have disclosed their overseas business layout.

Daotong Technology said that since the company's exchange pile products began to be sold at the end of 2021, it has successively obtained orders from the United Kingdom, Singapore, France, the Netherlands, Germany and other countries and gradually delivered.

Xiangshan Co., Ltd. said in an institutional survey that the company has been developing European standard and American standard charging and distribution products, and the company's European standard charging pile products have been developed and are gradually investing in overseas markets through overseas teams and channels.

Shenghong revealed in the semi-annual report that the company's Interstellar exchange pile passed the European standard certification and became the first batch of Chinese pile suppliers to enter the British Petroleum Group.

"The rapid growth of exports of electric vehicles made in China has directly driven domestic charging pile companies to accelerate the layout of overseas markets." Deng Jun, vice president of Guangdong Wancheng Wanchong Electric Vehicle Operation Co., Ltd., said. According to him, Wancheng Wanchong is also laying out overseas markets and taking the export of charging pile host as a new profit point. At present, the company's charging pile equipment is mainly exported to Southeast Asia and South America, and is developing European standard and American standard products.

Among them, the European market is the main export destination of China's electric vehicles. According to statistics from the General Administration of Customs, in the first half of 2022, the Western European market accounted for 34% of China's exports of new energy passenger vehicles.

In addition to optimism about the overseas blue ocean market, domestic charging pile companies "turn the rudder to the sea" is also due to the saturation of domestic market competition, charging pile companies are facing the dilemma of profitability, and it is urgent to find new market space to create profit points.

Since 2016, China's charging pile industry has developed explosively, attracting all kinds of capital to compete for layout, including many large energy enterprises such as State Grid and China Southern Power Grid, traditional car companies such as SAIC Motor and BMW, new energy vehicle companies such as Xpeng Motors, NIO, Tesla, and giants from all walks of life such as Huawei, Ant Financial and CATL.

Enterprise investigation data shows that there are currently more than 270,000 charging pile-related enterprises in China, and they are still growing rapidly. In the first half of 2022, 37,200 new ones were added, a year-on-year increase of 55.61%.

In the case of increasingly fierce competition, the better profitability of the overseas charging pile market is attractive to domestic charging pile companies. Huachuang Securities analyst Huang Lin pointed out that the domestic charging pile market has high competition intensity, low gross profit margin, and the price of DC pile single W is only 0.3 to 0.5 yuan, while the price of overseas charging pile single W is currently 2 to 3 times that of China, which is still a blue ocean of prices.

GF Securities pointed out that unlike the fierce competition in domestic homogenization and the high entry threshold for overseas certification, domestic charging pile companies rely on cost advantages to have greater profit space in overseas markets, and products are expected to quickly open overseas markets with cost-effective advantages.

China's heavy-duty automatic guided transport vehicle runs out of "hidden champion"

Hearing others evaluate the company's products, Ren Zhiyong, general manager of Tianjin Longyu Robot Co., Ltd., smiled happily. Having just completed an online meeting with a Swedish customer, he had to review an order from Russia and target the heavy-duty AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) segment and become a "hidden champion", Ren Zhiyong felt that the company had found the right way.

AGVs with a load of more than 2 tons are generally called heavy-duty AGVs, which are widely used in industrial application scenarios such as engineering sites, terminal transportation, and bulk logistics. This private enterprise from Tianjin, China, raised this standard to more than 300 tons in one go, becoming the record holder for the highest heavy-duty AGV in China.

As the "hidden champion" of the industry, eight of the world's top ten wind power companies have applied Longyu's products.

In the past period, wind turbine factories used diesel vehicles and other tools to handle in the production and logistics process, which was neither environmentally friendly nor efficient. The heavy-duty AGVs delivered by Langyu are widely used in the transportation of castings, bearings, blades, hubs, complete machines and other large accessories of wind power enterprises, and are favored by customers with their advantages of large bearing capacity, simple operation, use of clean energy and various transportation solutions.

"In the global supply chain system, we play the role of a supporter." The idea of Ren Zhiyong and his team is simple, to help the logistics of the supply chain be a little smarter, greener and loaded a little more.

In recent years of complex and changeable global economic environment, Longyu's business performance has risen year after year, but at the beginning of the establishment of the company, it has done many years of addition in the field of AGV, but has not found a truly suitable path for enterprises, and fierce technology and price competition have made enterprises come to the key junction of choice several times.

A customer's "muttering" changed Ren Zhiyong's thinking. At that time, the competition of light-load AGVs in the market was becoming increasingly fierce, and there were many domestic and international brands. "If only there were a big guy who could hold 100 tons of cargo", a sentence from the customer touched Ren Zhiyong, who immediately decided to start subtracting the enterprise business and fully tackle the heavy-duty AGV.

Increasing the load capacity is not only a simple number increase, materials, CNC systems, overall reliability and many other difficulties are in front of Ren Zhiyong and the team. Hundreds of failed experiments did not make the team back down, but strengthened their determination to overcome technical difficulties.

The laboratory and test site worked day and night, in exchange for a positioning error of only plus or minus 5 mm, which is a technical standard for outdoor driverless products delivered by the company this year.

Ren Zhiyong recalls that in the early days of the launch, a small company with only a few dozen people was difficult to gain market trust, and in order to reassure customers, many projects were sold at near-cost prices. The load capacity of hundreds of tons has also attracted some questions - what is the use of such a high load? But soon, the practicality of scenarios such as engineering material transportation and terminal container transshipment made large-tonnage heavy-duty AGVs shine.

On the sand and gravel test ground, there are ramps, turns, and pits, and the latest products equipped with autonomous driving functions are being tested. This blue "iron pimple" about 10 meters long moves smoothly driven by multiple motors. According to reports, this new product can carry a 40-foot specification container, which will play a role in terminal transportation. Big guys like this are customized according to the different needs of customers.

"Heavy-duty AGVs are not standardized products, and the application scenarios of each project may be completely different." Ren Zhiyong said.

In recent years, a number of "hidden champion" enterprises have emerged in China, while deeply cultivating the domestic market, many enterprises have taken a long-term view overseas, Chinese enterprises and the international industrial chain continue to blend, similar to heavy-duty AGV domestic large-scale machinery and equipment, in the past few foreign customers interested, now cross-ocean orders are coming.

Today, while setting up agents in many countries, Langyu has delivered products to internationally renowned enterprises such as Siemens in Germany. "Heavy-duty AGVs can be used in many industrial scenarios, and we estimate that the current global market size of heavy-duty AGVs is about $1 billion, with an annual growth rate of more than 10%." Ren Zhiyong hopes that in any factory in the world, the figure of Made in China can be seen.

Chinese companies build self-driving buses to drive on the streets of France

CRRC Times Electric Vehicle Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "CRRC Electric"), a subsidiary of CRRC, recently completed various commissioning in the suburbs of Paris, France, and is preparing to officially start passenger operation.

The autonomous bus manufactured by CRRC Electric was measured in part of the route 393 of the Paris Mass Transport Company in France. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Gao Jing

This self-driving bus is CRRC Electric "New Bus" City Series C12AI, which was designed in 2020. The body is about 12 meters long, relying on intelligent driving, intelligent power and intelligent interconnection, and can comprehensively implement real-time interaction of people, vehicles and road dynamic information. The bus is scheduled to carry passengers on parts of one of the PST lines in the near future.

Peng Zhichuan, director of CRRC's electric autonomous driving technology department, said that CRRC Electric has made further technical upgrades to autonomous buses in recent months, including the improvement of vehicle running speed and the accuracy of running trajectory, so as to ensure that vehicles can run more safely on the line.

He said that CRRC Electric has also cooperated with a number of French companies to optimize the "intersection priority traffic" technology, allowing autonomous buses to trigger a limited pass signal when approaching an intersection, shortening their waiting and passing time at the intersection, and shortening the running time of the vehicle from 40 minutes to 23 minutes in the entire road section. In the process of cooperation, CRRC Electric and France have accumulated valuable experience in upgrading the special technology of autonomous buses operating in France by comparing the differences in road traffic conditions in China and France.

Deng Jiali, president of CRRC Electric's partner in France, Clément Bayar, said that the three-way cooperation between Clemão Bayar, CRRC Electric and Paris Volkswagen is progressing very smoothly. CRRC Electric was chosen as a partner to develop autonomous buses because of the company's advanced technology in this field and its ability to provide the most comprehensive technical support during the project implementation process.

Chinese brand electric car Thailand auto show "touch the future"

The Thailand International Auto Show with the theme of "Touch the Future" recently came to an end, with a number of Chinese car brands unveiling their latest models.

Held annually, the Thailand International Motor Show attracts 35 mainstream car brands and 17 motorcycle brands from more than 10 countries and regions. All major international well-known brands have taken electric vehicles as their highlight of their exhibitions, and nearly half of the pure electric models exhibited are Chinese brands.

Great Wall Ora Lightning Cat pure electric vehicle attracts many visitors with its novel and fashionable appearance. According to reports, Great Wall Motor unveiled a total of 7 models, in addition to 3 pure electric vehicles, including Haval H6 hybrid and other models.

Zhang Jiaming, president of Great Wall Motor's ASEAN region, said that since the establishment of its plant in Thailand at the end of 2020, Great Wall has launched a total of five new energy models with more than 13,000 users. The company is promoting the layout of the battery and parts supporting industry, and plans to achieve local production of pure electric vehicles in 2024.

SAIC's MG brand, which has been deeply engaged in the Thai market for nearly 10 years, exhibited a total of 9 models, including 3 pure electric vehicles, of which the MG4 model is the first rear-wheel drive electric vehicle launched by the brand in the Southeast Asian market.

BYD, which announced in September this year that it will invest in a plant in Thailand, brought its first model, the Yuan PLUS, to enter the local market. Nezha Automobile, which has just entered Thailand this year, exhibited three pure electric models, of which the NETA V, which was launched in August, has received more than 6,000 orders.