Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On May 31, 2023, SAIC and Qingtao Energy signed an agreement to increase capital and shares and a strategic cooperation framework agreement.

According to the agreement, SAIC will invest in Qingtao Energy (which has participated in Qingtao Energy E + round financing in 2020 and 2022 respectively), making SAIC the largest institutional investor in Qingtao Energy.

At the same time, the two sides will work together to promote the mass production of "100,000 vehicles" of solid-state battery technology in 2025, and rely on the world's leading innovative technology to create truly safe, energy-efficient and cost-effective "popular electric vehicles" for consumers.

There is no doubt that this will ignite another fire for the already hot solid-state battery track.

Solid-state battery breaks the bottleneck of energy density and promotes the new energy vehicle market to enter a new stage. in recent years, the market scale of new energy vehicles has been expanding, but battery life anxiety has been a key factor hindering more consumers from buying new energy vehicles. At present, the liquid lithium battery is close to the upper limit of energy density, and the power battery of new energy vehicle urgently needs a technological change to drive the whole industry to develop by leaps and bounds.

Solid-state batteries are the key to the next round of technology competition.

Different from traditional lithium-ion batteries composed of liquid electrolytes such as solvents, lithium salts and additives, solid-state batteries using solid-state electrolytes can effectively avoid the safety risks caused by battery leakage and lithium dendrite puncture, and greatly improve the safety of batteries.

At the same time, the energy density of solid-state batteries is also significantly higher than that of traditional liquid batteries, which will help to greatly improve the range of electric vehicles in the future.

Solid-state battery is the long-standing technical direction of the current material system, and it is also a hot value highland in the current new energy vehicle industry, attracting numerous car companies and lithium enterprises to compete for investment. The next 2-3 years will be the critical period for the landing of solid-state batteries.

In the upstream technology industry chain of solid-state battery, Qingtao Energy, which was founded in 2016, is undoubtedly one of the industry leaders.

Qingtao Energy's innovation in solid-state battery technology mainly focuses on core materials, technology and system integration.

In terms of materials, Qingtao Energy has achieved international technological leadership in solid electrolyte and composite cathode materials, and has completely independent intellectual property rights. At the same time, it has also achieved technological leadership in lithium battery nano-ceramic separator materials. In terms of key processes, the dry mixing and dry pressing process of Qingtao Energy can maximize the capacity of existing battery materials. In terms of system integration, Qingtao Energy has also achieved innovation in the shape and composition of the battery, significantly improving the overall safety and integration efficiency of the battery pack.

Generally speaking, the independent control of core materials and production process is the key competitiveness of Qingtao Energy. On this basis, they took the lead in realizing the industrialization of solid-state lithium battery, built the first solid-state lithium battery production line in China, and built a complete independent intellectual property system.

SAIC + Qingtao, this is an ideal combination as the leader of the domestic automobile industry, SAIC also began to pay attention to the development of solid-state battery technology from a long time ago, and their cooperation with Qingtao Energy has a long history.

For example, SAIC participated in the e + round financing of Qingtao Energy in 2020. In 2021, they also jointly realized the real vehicle verification of ultra-high energy density solid-state lithium battery, using a single energy density 368Wh/kg solid-state battery combined with a new generation of steam pure electric platform, the measured CLTC comprehensive life reached 1083km.

In 2022, SAIC and Qingtao Energy set up a solid-state battery joint laboratory to jointly promote the joint development of automotive solid-state battery materials, batteries and systems.

By the beginning of this year, the joint laboratory has achieved preliminary results: in SAIC Rubik's cube battery system, the solid-state battery product matrix with different sizes, different power levels and different mileage has been planned, and will be loaded and produced on schedule; an overall and scientific evaluation of the safety of solid-state batteries will help to achieve cost reduction and efficiency; and the energy density of the second-generation solid-state battery will break through 400Wh/kg.

This time, SAIC and Qingtao Energy signed an agreement to increase capital and shares and a strategic cooperation framework agreement, which can be summarized into three aspects of cooperation.

First of all, SAIC will participate in Qingtao Energy G + round to increase capital and shares, becoming the largest institutional investor in Qingtao.

Secondly, SAIC will accelerate the industrial application of Qingtao Energy's existing solid-state battery products in its own brand models. In the first half of 2024, Zhiji's high-performance, long-range models equipped with solid-state batteries will first achieve large-scale mass production.

Third, SAIC and Qingtao Energy will set up a joint venture this year to jointly develop a new generation of solid-state battery products, which are superior to traditional lithium iron phosphate batteries in terms of safety performance, energy density and cost.

On this basis, we will strive to apply the new generation of solid-state battery products jointly developed by both sides in Shanghai Automobile Group's Zhiji, Feifan, Roewe, MG and other mass production models from the second quarter of 2025, and the annual sales volume has exceeded "100, 000 vehicles".

It can be said that this additional investment and strategic cooperation in Qingtao Energy indicates that SAIC's layout of solid-state batteries is stepping into the deep water area, and begins to move forward from technology and product research and development to real mass production and application.

Promoting the technological innovation and progress of solid-state batteries and speeding up the process of commercial mass production is the common ideal of SAIC and Qingtao, which is the basis on which they can maintain in-depth cooperation for a long time. It is believed that this combination of "common ideals" can really promote the large-scale application of a new generation of solid-state batteries in new energy vehicles in the future.

The spring of solid-state battery, not far from 2020, our country listed solid-state battery as the key development object of the industry for the first time and proposed to speed up the process of research and development and industrialization. This year, we further proposed to strengthen the research of solid-state battery standard system. The sustainable development of solid-state battery industry is inevitable. For the majority of car companies, deeply bound to the industrial chain joint research and development, card position next-generation battery technology is a top priority, especially for SAIC.

According to the production and sales information released by SAIC for April 2023, they sold 374000 vehicles in April this year, of which sales of new energy vehicles increased by 80.6 per cent compared with the same period last year. At present, SAIC is in the stage of speeding up the transformation of electric intelligence, and new energy vehicles, together with independent brands and overseas sales, have become one of the "troika" driving SAIC's development.

The solid-state battery is also an important component of SAIC's new energy strategy. SAIC has been looking forward to the layout of solid-state battery for many years. This cooperation with Qingtao Energy into the deep water area will undoubtedly help SAIC to clamp the new era of power battery technology, deepen their technical moat in the new energy track, and consolidate their industry leading position.

As for Qingtao Energy, on the one hand, SAIC provided a lot of resources for Qingtao Energy in terms of project research and development, human resources and equity investment during the cooperation, which supported the rapid growth of Qingtao Energy. At the same time, with the help of SAIC's industrial scale and industrial chain resources, it can also help Qingtao Energy to transform its technological advantages into market and product advantages more quickly.

From a broader industrial point of view, on the one hand, it is the leader in the industrialization of solid-state lithium batteries, on the other hand, it is actively building core competitiveness in the electric intelligent race track, and the leading car enterprises with long-term layout of solid-state batteries, the further cooperation of the two is undoubtedly heading for more advanced solid-state battery products and applications. For example, in the cooperation, the two sides mentioned that the two sides will jointly launch a new generation of solid-state batteries from 2025, and the relevant technical solutions will greatly increase the range of electric vehicles and completely solve the "mileage anxiety". At the same time, the battery cost is 10% less than the equivalent lithium iron phosphate or ternary battery. If it can be realized, it will obviously promote the new energy vehicle industry to a new stage of development.

At the same time, the efforts of SAIC and Qingtao Energy to promote the large-scale introduction of solid-state battery products will also contribute to the gradual reduction of the cost of solid-state batteries and gradually lower than the current lithium iron phosphate batteries, making new energy vehicles more competitive in the market. lead us to enter the era of comprehensive popularity of intelligent electric faster.

Perhaps, the "spring" of solid-state batteries and the "midsummer" of new energy vehicles are not far away.

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