Standing at the forefront of new energy, everyone wants to get a share of the pie.
The first wave of Internet-based car manufacturing represented by "Wei Xiaoli" has begun to spread after the wind and rain, followed by technology companies represented by BAT, Huawei Mobile phone companies represented by Xiaomi and Evergrande, as well as real estate companies represented by Evergrande and Baoneng, have begun the second round of the grand car-building undertaking.
In fact, in recent times, many home appliance brands have intermittently released many automobile-related technology or product patents. In addition to Skyworth's Tianmei Automobile, which has been launched before, and Gree's Yinlong Automobile. Ever since, the industry has begun to spread rumors that the car-making momentum of home appliance companies is making a comeback.
If we want to trace the origin, the cross-border car-making journey of home appliance companies was planned much earlier than imagined. Around 2003, when my country's automobile industry was booming, a large number of home appliance companies such as Midea, Chunlan, Oaks, Bird, and Greencool entered the automobile industry. As for the results, looking at them now, they all fell apart.
"If you are early, you may become a martyr, but if you are late, you may become a laggard." This sentence is the truest portrayal of the automobile industry. However, today's China's automobile industry has brought profound changes to the automobile industry due to the trend of electric intelligence. New energy automobiles have huge future development space, which also makes many outsiders "ready to make a move."
If a home appliance company that has been in business for 10 years joins the car-making army, it will fail. So now, it may be the right time to raise the banner of car manufacturing again. Of course, judging from past experience, only by actually building cars or empowering car companies can we truly taste the dividends of the times. Entrants must weigh this carefully.
Including today’s new home appliance giant Midea Group, it has always maintained close ties with the automobile industry. It entered the field of vehicle manufacturing in 2003, but five years later its vehicle-building plan was shelved. Today, another five years later, the three major product lines of Midea Group's Welling Auto Parts Company were officially put into production.
Many people have begun to tiptoe curiously, wondering how Midea will participate in the automobile industry - the answer is actually not difficult to guess.
From complete vehicles to parts
What many people don’t know is that Midea has been connected with the automobile industry since its establishment. Midea's predecessor was a rural enterprise founded in 1968. It once produced plastic bottle caps, automobile trailer brake valves, diesel generators and other products. Officially entering the home appliance industry in 1980, Midea has now become a technology-based enterprise covering all consumer appliances, HVAC, robotics and automation systems.
Currently, Midea has five major sectors: smart home business group, electromechanical business group, HVAC and building business unit, robotics and automation business unit, and digital innovation business. Welling Auto Parts Co., Ltd. is a first-level company under the Mechanical and Electrical Business Department and is responsible for the auto parts business. It has laid out automotive parts products with motors, electronic controls and compressors as the core. The product lines involve motor drive systems, thermal management systems and assisted/autonomous driving systems.
According to data, Welling Auto Parts Company was established in 2018, and its business scope includes the research and development, design, manufacturing, sales, and technology of automobiles, motorcycles (motor vehicles) parts, systems, and related products. Service and after-sales service. It has R&D centers in Osaka, Japan, the University of Sheffield in the UK, Shanghai, Hefei, Anhui, Shunde, Guangdong and other places. So far, Welling has more than 6,000 basic patents, which can be regarded as technical support for the research and development of automotive parts products.
In fact, the products released by Welling today have already been unveiled at this year's Shanghai Auto Show.
Welling Automotive Parts displayed 3 major systems and 5 categories of products, including 5 new products including drive motors, electric compressors, electronic water pumps, electronic oil pumps, and electronic power steering motors, covering assisted/autonomous driving systems, thermal management systems, and motor drive systems. Waiting for 3 major systems.
Chen Jintao, general manager of Welling Automotive Parts, further explained some parts, "The drive motor has the characteristics of high power density, high efficiency and high speed, and can be applied to pure electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles. The drive system realizes motor drive to improve efficiency and reduce energy consumption. The "electric compressor" uses natural refrigerant CO2, which has efficient and stable cooling/heating capabilities, can effectively alleviate problems such as "mileage anxiety", and is miniaturized and low-noise. The design provides users with a comfortable driving environment.”
This also means that there is a clear answer to the outside world's speculation on whether Midea will build a car. Just like this, Midea stated in an interview that Midea only makes automobile parts and will not directly build cars. In fact, not only Welling Auto Parts Company, Midea acquired the controlling stake of Hekang Xinneng through an agreement in April last year through its subsidiary Midea HVAC, deepening its layout in the auto parts field.
Among Hekang New Energy’s main businesses, the revenue proportions of high-end manufacturing of energy-saving equipment, energy-saving and environmental protection, and new energy products are 74.94, 17.44, and 7.62 respectively. Its core business mainly includes industrial frequency converters and servo systems, which are core control systems closely related to industrial automation in the industrial Internet architecture and are one of the indispensable and important components in the development of industrial robots.
However, at present, domestic servo suppliers are mainly positioned at the mid- to low-end, and there is a certain gap between their technical reserves and R&D capabilities compared with foreign competitors. There is also a large gap between Hekang New Energy and leading domestic manufacturers. . Therefore, Midea's intention to acquire Hekang New Energy must not lie in its technological advantages, but in the synergy between Hekang New Energy and the group's own industrial automation business supply chain and the customer resources downstream of the high-end manufacturing and new energy automobile industry chain.
Relevant information shows that Hekang Xinneng’s new energy vehicle products include inverter motor controllers, ATMS thermal management systems, automatic transmissions, converter frequency converters, charging piles, etc., which will help Midea enter the market Automobile upstream parts field. In other words, with the help of Midea Group's resources and layout in the fields of HVAC and robotic automation, Midea is expected to further expand into new application areas.
Midea has reached out to the field of auto parts and has also achieved good results. In 2016, Midea Group reached China's first strategic cooperation in smart home and Internet of Vehicles applications with SAIC-GM OnStar, and began to extend its reach to the automotive Internet. In 2020, Baoneng Automobile introduced Midea KUKA's welding robots and welding lines as well as automotive parts to start intelligent vehicle manufacturing.
Obviously, Midea has learned lessons from its previous failure to enter vehicle manufacturing and has focused more on components for new energy vehicles. And this is not the Midea family's "sudden awakening". After Gree suffered losses in car manufacturing, it also stated that it "will not blindly follow the trend in car manufacturing." TCL also said that it would not consider entering the field of new energy vehicle manufacturing, but would focus on vehicle-related products.
Home appliance companies will suffer from hardware losses
Electric vehicles were once ridiculed as "a large rechargeable battery box with four wheels", and Tesla was also called "wheels" on iPhone". Everyone thinks that building a car is nothing more than that. In fact, many home appliance companies have tried to enter the field of "car manufacturing" before, including Chunlan, Oaks, and Skyworth earlier, as well as Dyson, Gree, etc. in recent years. Most of the cross-border "car manufacturing" of home appliance companies ultimately failed.
It can be seen that many cross-border companies do not have the ability and strength to catch up with vehicle manufacturing, or they are powerless. At present, when home appliance companies enter the automotive field, in addition to building cars, they also want to "get involved" in new energy automotive related industries.
Some people believe that compared with vehicle manufacturing, the risks in the industry chain related to new energy vehicles are controllable, and home appliance companies can also get a share of the "new four modernizations" wave.
According to my country's "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)" (Draft for Comment), my country's new energy vehicle sales are expected to reach 25% of total vehicle sales by 2035. Moreover, with the advent of the 5G era, home appliance giants are investing in the automotive field to seize the new opportunities brought by smart cars and the Internet of Vehicles in the 5G era. Midea's layout of the automotive supply chain is also a matter of course.
Perhaps the large-scale entry of home appliance companies into new energy vehicles is related to their current transformation difficulties. Taking the air conditioning industry as an example, domestic sales of the air conditioning industry were weak in 2019, and the overall output and sales growth of the industry slowed down: China's air conditioning production in 2020 was 210.646 million units, a decrease of 8.0156 million units compared with 2019, and a year-on-year decrease of 3.7. In the long run, as the market gradually becomes saturated, the home appliance industry may be in a downward growth trend.
In this way, compared with the increasingly solidified future trend of the home appliance industry, the new energy vehicle-related industry chain has unlimited potential for energy release. As Fang Hongbo, chairman and president of Midea Group, said: "Midea stands at the turning point of the great era and must redefine itself and reconstruct itself at an accelerated pace." From home appliances to HVAC, chips, robots and automation...new energy vehicles The field is just one piece of the puzzle.
However, the entry of home appliance companies represented by Midea into the automotive industry is hugely different from the cross-border car manufacturing of companies such as Huawei, Xiaomi and even BAT. Home appliance companies focus on industrial manufacturing parts, mainly Sanden, while the latter focuses on ICT technology or software. It also helps car companies build good cars, but now car companies, especially smart electric vehicles, have shown a completely different attitude towards the needs of hardware and software.
When "software defines everything" is regarded as the norm, its core idea is that what determines future cars is software technology with artificial intelligence as the core, rather than the horsepower of the car and whether it has leather sofa seats. , Mechanical properties are good or bad. Moreover, the parts and components brought by home appliance companies are not yet the core hardware of smart electric vehicles. Based on this bold assumption, why do car companies need home appliance companies to empower them instead of choosing leading Tier 1 companies such as Bosch and Continental?
Cars are evolving from simple means of transportation to smart terminals. "Cross-industry investment requires the co-production of original technology and new industry technology. If you enter a new industry and cannot leverage your own advantages, it will be difficult to succeed." . According to a research report by Ping An Securities, the second round of new forces building cars will focus on intelligence and increase technical barriers. Obviously, "autonomous driving" modules are more competitive than "electrical components".
If you can achieve profitability by mastering high value-added core technologies, why should you continue to follow the old path of vehicle companies and have to shoulder the burden of vehicle integration, production capacity control, and channel operation? Up?
Huawei has embarked on a new path. Midea failed to become the first, but it will never be the last.