A billion yuan investment is targeted at Beijing, Xiaomi Automobile Established a joint venture with Ningde Times
Recently, the "King of Ning" settled in Beijing for another journey.
According to Tianyan, Beijing Shidai Power Battery Co., Ltd. was officially established on May 17, with Meng Xiangfeng as its legal representative, a registered capital of 1 billion yuan and a business scope of battery manufacturing.
Photo source: Tianyancha Equity penetration shows that the company is jointly held by Xiaomi Auto Technology Co., Ltd., Ningde Times New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., BAIC Hailianxin Energy Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd., Beijing Jingneng Technology Co., Ltd., etc. According to the previous report, the company will invest in the construction of a smart chip manufacturing factory in Beijing.
Joining Beijing in the Ningde era is widely expected
In fact, the news that Ningde Times settled down in Beijing to invest in building a battery cell factory is no longer news.
As early as January this year, the official website of the Beijing Municipal Development and Reform Commission published the article "Beijing will launch version 1.0 of the industrial map", in which it mentioned "opening and building the Beijing factory in the Ningde era". At that time, the Ningde Times kept silent on this news, and only responded that "there is no information to disclose."
By February, "the first phase of the Ningde Times core factory project" appeared in Beijing's "List of Key Tasks in the 2024 Municipal Government Work Report". Until the evening of March 8, BAIC Bluevale announced that Ningde Times would make joint contributions with BAIC Hailianxin, Beijing Energy Technology and Xiaomi Automobile, The establishment of a joint venture - Beijing Times New Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Beijing Times"), in which Ningde Times contributed 510 million yuan, accounting for 51%, was the official conclusion of the news.
Interestingly, until the release date of the manuscript, the total investment, site selection, capacity planning and mass production time of the joint venture project have not been relaxed.
One thing is certain, however, that Beijing has been longing for the Ningde era for a long time.
As early as June 20, 1958, China's first independently developed "Jinggangshan" car entered Zhongnanhai, officially opening the curtain of Beijing Auto production. Then, in 1983, BAIC Motor Engineering Corporation signed a joint venture contract with American Motor Corporation (AMC), creating Beijing Jeep, which officially set a precedent for Sino foreign joint ventures. It can be said that the development history of Beijing's auto industry is a magnificent epic that witnessed and participated in many historic breakthroughs in China's auto industry.
In 2009, it became one of the first batch of cities in China to deploy new energy vehicles by virtue of the solid "family background" of the automobile industry and the "ten cities thousand energy-saving and new energy vehicle demonstration and application project".
However, when we look at the layout of the new energy vehicle industry in the first tier cities in China from the new historical node of 2024, it is not difficult to find that Beijing has already withdrawn from the ranks of leading cities in the new energy industry.
In September 2023, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology officially issued the Implementation Plan for High Quality Development of New Energy Vehicles in Beijing (2023-2025), which clearly states that by 2025, the contribution of new energy vehicles will be significantly improved, and the production in Beijing will exceed 300000 vehicles.
However, compared with other key cities in the new energy vehicle industry, Beijing's goal is obviously conservative. For example, cities such as Hefei, Liuzhou, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Xi'an, Shanghai and Chongqing have set a grand goal of producing more than one million new energy vehicles by 2025, and the cumulative output has even exceeded 13 million. Wuhan Economic Development Zone, a traditional automobile manufacturing center, has set the production target of new energy vehicles to exceed 400000 in 2024, and plans to hit the one million mark in 2025.
Because of this, in the face of the rapid development trend of new energy vehicle industry such as the introduction of Tesla in Shanghai, the strong support of Weilai in Hefei, and the settlement of Xiaopeng in Guangzhou, Beijing urgently needs to find new breakthroughs to achieve breakthroughs in the layout of new energy vehicle industry. As a result, we can see that in October 2021, the Beijing Green Intelligent Manufacturing Base of Ideal Auto will officially start construction in Shunyi District; One month later, Xiaomi Auto headquarters also successfully landed in Beijing.
Photo source: Xiaomi Automobile In 2024, with the first pure electric model of the ideal car MEGA (Configuration |Inquiry) The first model of SU7 and Xiaomi Auto has been released and delivered to users, and Beijing's demand for the upstream new energy vehicle industry chain system has become more urgent. In particular, these two models are equipped with the Kirin battery of the Ningde era, which further highlights the core position of the Ningde era in the layout of Beijing's new energy vehicle industry.
Grasping the traffic password, Beijing may usher in the golden age
Compared with March and before, people held different reservations about this joint venture project due to the uncertainty of sales prospects of BAIC, Ideal and Xiaomi. Now, this cooperation has been widely recognized by the market, and is generally considered to be another major strategic alliance of Ningde Times in the new energy field.
If I ask about the peak traffic in the automotive industry in 2024, I think the answer is Xiaomi Motors. Since the official launch of Xiaomi Auto brand at the end of last year, whether the debut, listing or delivery of the first model, or even the Beijing Auto Show, which was supposed to be a hundred flowers, has become a stage for Lei Jun to show the charm of Xiaomi Auto.
Photo source: Xiaomi Automobile Under such high attention, Xiaomi Auto announced its 10000th vehicle on May 15 Xiaomi SU7 (Configuration |Inquiry) Formal delivery. However, its locked order volume has exceeded 100000, which undoubtedly poses a serious challenge to Xiaomi's delivery capacity.
From the delivery time shown on the official website of May 15, the delivery time of Xiaomi SU7 is 29-32 weeks, that of SU7 PRO is 30-33 weeks, and that of SU7 MAX is 33-36 weeks. The long delivery time has deterred many consumers who are more interested in this car.
In view of this, in order to improve production capacity and shorten delivery time, Xiaomi Automobile Beijing Plant plans to start the "double shift mode" in June, that is, the daily production time will be extended from 8 hours to 16 hours. According to this calculation, after the implementation of double shift production, the monthly production capacity of Xiaomi Automobile is expected to increase significantly to the level of nearly 20000 vehicles.
Photo source: Xiaomi Automobile It was also mentioned in "Xiaomi SU7 Answers to Netizens' Questions (Episode 40)" released on Xiaomi Auto's official microblog on May 13 that "in order to increase the production capacity of this year, our engineers took advantage of the May Day holiday to carry out a round of equipment maintenance and transformation, which is ready to continue to rapidly improve the delivery capacity in the future. In the near future, we will have some good news to report to you one after another."
At the same time, Xiaomi Automobile is actively working closely with upstream suppliers to seek to significantly increase the supply of parts to meet the rapidly growing market demand. "Xiaomi SU7 increased the order by about 80%." The supply chain said, "One type of parts increased from about 10000 sets per month to the latest 18000+sets."
"We are still making continuous efforts to improve production capacity and ensure the delivery target of 100000 units this year is achieved." Lei Jun again emphasized the plan of Xiaomi Motors this year.
It is worth mentioning that Xiaomi's product line is also gradually expanding. According to the plan, after the Xiaomi SU7, the second and third models of Xiaomi are also under preparation. In order to ensure the smooth launch and production of new models, Xiaomi Automobile Phase I Plant is going all out to produce, while the construction of Phase II Plant is also advancing in an orderly manner.
It is understood that Xiaomi Automobile Phase II Project is located in Fangxindian Village and Xiaozhangwan Village of Yizhuang New City, with an annual planning capacity of 150000 vehicles. According to the established plan, the Phase II plant will be started in 2024, and is expected to be completed and put into operation in 2025. This means that by 2025, Xiaomi Automobile, a new energy vehicle enterprise alone, will need at least 250000 new energy vehicles for power batteries.
At the same time, the ideal car also has ambitious ambitions for the pure electricity market. The superposition with the development demand of BAIC BJEV shows the development trend of this field, or far exceeds the 2025 new energy vehicle production target set by Beijing.
Game with auto giants to lock the future market
Ningde Times has become a typical strategy of deeply binding downstream customers through joint ventures with automobile enterprises.
Looking back over the past few years, especially in those years when new power enterprises have just emerged, both Li Bin, the founder of Weilai Automobile, and He Xiaopeng, the leader of Xiaopeng Automobile, have visited the Ningde era for many times, aiming to ensure a smooth and stable battery supply. In the three years of the epidemic, the new energy vehicle industry has ushered in rapid development, and the situation of power batteries in short supply has become increasingly prominent. This phenomenon has become more common in the industry.
At that time, the Ningde era was extremely powerful. In order to stabilize the battery supply, more and more automobile enterprises have to join the project of co building production lines.
So far, Ningde Times has successfully established joint ventures with FAW, Dongfeng, Chang'an, SAIC, GAC, Geely and many other domestic leading automobile groups to share risks and interests, so as to build a stable strategic partnership. It also breaks the era of traditional fuel vehicles, and the absolute voice of automobile enterprises in the whole supply chain relationship.
As a result, Zeng Qinghong, the chairman of GAC Group, was invited to speak frankly at the 2022 power battery conference: "Battery manufacturers have taken away all profits, and GAC has been working for Ningde Times."
As a result, automobile enterprises began to accelerate the pace of self manufactured batteries. According to incomplete statistics, more than ten domestic automobile enterprises have started to develop batteries by themselves. Among them, in addition to a few car companies such as ZeroRun and Landau, which choose to use external power cells in addition to their own research, most car companies such as BYD, GAC, SAIC, Geely, Great Wall, and Weilai have chosen a full industrial chain layout from 0 to 1. Some giants, such as BYD and GAC, even extended their tentacles to the upstream raw material field.
At the same time, in order to enhance their voice and bargaining power, those new energy vehicle enterprises that originally relied on the exclusive power battery supply of Ningde Times also began to actively cultivate second suppliers to achieve diversification of the supply chain.
Against this background, with the gradual slowdown of sales and penetration rate of new energy vehicles in China since last year, the sequelae of the once radical power battery production expansion began to appear. Even industry giants like Ningde Times have to face the awkward situation of idle production capacity. According to the performance data, the capacity utilization rate of the battery system of Ningde Times in 2022 will be 83.4%, but in 2023 this figure has dropped to 70.47%.
Photo source: 2023 Annual Report of Ningde Times But at the same time, when looking at the production capacity layout of Ningde era in China, there are only three bases in the north, which are located in Jining, Shandong, Luoyang, Henan, and Xining, Qinghai. If the registration place of Xiaomi's headquarters in Daxing, Beijing is taken as the starting point, whether it is Jining or Luoyang base, the driving distance is more than 6 hours, It is far from enough to meet the needs of the optimal 4-hour supply chain circle, let alone the ideal green intelligent manufacturing base located in Shunyi, Beijing.
Photo source: Ningde Times Considering the demand of Beijing for the Ningde era mentioned above, it is better to believe that this is a win-win situation than to argue whether the Ningde era is active or invited to Beijing. As for whether this cooperation can finally bring breakthrough business increment to Ningde Times, the answer can only be given to the future market.
(This article is from Gasgoo)
