BYD Crisis
"In the next five or six years, if the BYD electric cars to abandon the project entirely within reason." Shanghai such a senior automotive analyst for financial weekly said.
Recently, the market suddenly pass from "IBM ThinkPad R52 battery， IBM ThinkPad T40 battery， IBM ThinkPad T41 batteryBYD crisis." Weekly financial news in-depth investigation, the question directed at the headquarters in Shenzhen BYD 1394 kilometers away from Ningbo. BYD semiconductor company in Ningbo in the weft.
"At least BYD to fill in. 2 billion." Ningbo, a very well-known mid-latitude source, "and that there is no prospect of a solution do not know."
Chip sales reached the 200 million Gold Cave
"It's probably a loss of 50 million a month, the rate of firing at least three years." Insider revealed today to the financial weekly newspaper reporter.
Hole so large? This person, it is October 6, 2008 BYD to 200 million acquisition of Ningbo in the Wei semiconductor company, that time, Buffett's stake from just over the past week. Wang Chuanfu whirlwind action once again stirred up the market response. It was speculated that Wang Chuanfu intends to intervene in the semiconductor foundry.
In fact, Wang Chuanfu's ambition is much greater than this. These people said, "Wang Chuanfu want to do electric vehicle drive motor (mainly by the driver IC and power management device component) and R & D and production, he wanted to control the entire electric vehicle industry chain."
But on the actual situation in Ningbo, in the weft, but little known.
According to the above-mentioned whole electronics sources, Ningbo, Ningbo Municipal Government weft is completely a failure of the project, invested about 30 million, but eventually became a mess.
Mid-latitude in May 2004 after the first piece of chip shipments, spent two years to reach 10000 / month of production, the company chairman Feng Mingxian has said that a plant is expected to reach 40000 / month, but until the bankruptcy time has not been reached.
And this is known as "Zhejiang Province, the largest and highest-tech IT flagship project," the equipment used is TSMC has already eliminated a 6-inch production lines. Finally, the Ningbo Municipal Government intends to sell the company at very low prices.
According to the above-mentioned sources, another well-known domestic enterprise groups have been very interested in hi-tech, but also very curious. So were a number of senior technical people Qutan What exactly is the "last found that a hole every day to burn 50 million, according to the chip industry growth in the cultivation of the law of BYD on the project to achieve the standard output, to burn for three years, and burning can not afford. "
This acquisition is also not optimistic about being in the industry. Chip design industry is showing an integrated, platform-oriented trends, Intel and other giants are taking a similar route. "Integration is a small design company of the enemy, and small companies to design a chip may be sold to 3 money, but rather an integrated chip in the same functions plus a few cents just need to increase the cost of money. In this area there is no accumulation of Zambia Di may be counterproductive. "Frost & Sullivan analyst Chang Yuan-Xiang said.
"Transformation of the enormous costs involved." Shanghai an auto industry analyst commented. "BYD alone in this one link is necessary to put two or three billion of the funds."
High cost of new energy vehicles Wang Chuanfu a huge emphasis on this is just a dream in the dismal corner.
Entered after 2009, in BYD Auto has launched an intensive, while the traditional, electric cars are almost reluctant. In this year, 400,000 BYD targets, F3 to sales of 180,000, F6 for the 50000, F0 for the 90000, F3R of 2 million vehicles this year's planned listing of five new models bear the 60000 ... ... almost no new energy vehicles thing.
All this with a two years ago, BYD singing in 2009 to achieve mass production of new energy vehicles far from the goal.
Do new energy vehicles is not only a dream Wang Chuanfu, but also the reality faced by BYD strategic choice. In the traditional automotive sector, and always at the edge of BYD, wanted to use new energy cars in the "low threshold", first of all to seize the market.
Wang Chuanfu consider themselves in the new energy vehicles have two major advantages: first, BYD is "Battery king", is the only one across the battery, the two areas of automotive manufacturers; second, they have a low-cost manufacturing experience.
However, the threshold of new energy vehicles, and there is no imagination so low BYD, BYD first face, whether their mobile phone battery manufacturing capacity of flat, low-cost manufacturing to a new energy vehicles up?
In fact, the BYD's first encounter a huge challenge that lies in showing off their "technology", especially in the batteries.
If only from the process on the considerations, lithium iron phosphate batteries and the general production process of lithium-ion batteries roughly the same, "but the biggest problem is that you do not know how to do. Tianjin, China BAK Battery Engineer MAO Huan-Yu explained.
"Battery is actually a half-life of the living body, its energy release rely on chemical reactions, and mechanical parts compared to a much larger flexibility." Mao believed that through the power http://www.digital-battery.net/ battery management system to compensate for lack of battery performance is an effective way to . However, China has accumulated in this area of technology rather scarce.
"The battery management systems, one of the most simple challenge is how to ensure that the temperature inside the battery. Tianjin Lishen have been involved in a vehicle test engineer's interpretation of" best adapted to the work of the battery temperature is 30 degrees or so, Low point higher will not work. "In his opinion, F3DM reason for using air-cooled technology, Naishi no choice." This technology is not mature, even if the world's leading Toyota did not use water-cooled technology. "
In the battery system, coherence, BYD faces even greater challenges. Far as battery-coating process, in the production process, these slurry and the thickness of the coating uniformity will require real-time automatic monitoring equipment to adjust, or their cell products is bound to consistency problem of incompliance. Automotive Safety and Energy, Tsinghua University State Key Laboratory of Dr. Qiu Enchao said. "And a number of small caliber 3CM diameter O-ring materials, it costs only 50,000 yuan of money, but also Japan and South Korea-site engineers to debug."
Wen Xuhui even believe that the requirement for consistency will be completely destroyed before the adoption of BYD decomposition automation equipment, the use of "mass strategy" created a competitive advantage. A little-known fact is that in 2005, BYD enter the notebook battery market, hopes to become supplier of Dell notebook batteries, but coherence can not be solved but playing with toys.
And "a little careless, and thousands of batteries will be scrapped, and you do not find the cause. All the factors will ruin the battery." MAO Huan-Yu said.
The cost of mistakes is very expensive: a 30 million-an when the power battery production line put on up to 1.5 billion, a station's equipment was up to 500 million yuan. These precision equipment is not only expensive but also easy to damage itself. Equipment, the opportunity cost of debugging is also very high, this complete set of automated production close to rigid production, but the quantity produced can not simply enlarge. "Only the loss of productivity improvements of up to tens of millions on every turn, and the effect is not satisfactory to improve." Jia Xinguang said.
In order to ensure consistency, we had to use imported. However, a high degree of dependence on imports which have led to two fatal problems, first of all can not control costs, followed by the core components do not understand the basic design, without the ability to change the design, it is impossible according to the actual use will require continuous optimization of the controller.
Wang aware of this. Nevertheless, he was the dilemma was the motor control module accounts for F3DM no small cost, a set of 140 kilowatts of the motor drive module, if imported outsourcing, cost-optimistically estimated that at least 15,000 yuan.
"I think this price is hard to imagine, unless the motor drive technology, the big breakthrough Caixing." Wen Xuhui said pessimistically. In accordance with their experience, the cost is not with the production of scale and direct down, but curved down, down to about one-third of the cost of a decade.
And "new energy vehicles BYD, until almost no accumulation." Shanghai a senior auto industry analyst told reporters. Therefore, even in some of the most basic parts, the BYD also need hands-. Even they must be manufactured in Shenzhen for their own construction of electric car charging pile.
"BYD's new energy vehicles are facing the great challenges of technology and cost." The above-mentioned interview a number of analysts have expressed such views to reporters.
"I do not know how much profit you can make"
In addition, the profitability of BYD's existing business has been worrisome.
While the automotive business since the first half of this year, sales of substantial increase in their sales revenue increase substantially, but the net profit margin in 2008 but never dropped to 15% in a substantial 9% over the same period in 2009.
"BYD decline in net profit is mainly due to its main business, automobile caused the decline in gross margin." Societe Generale Securities auto industry, said a senior analyst.
The analyst said: "As far as I know, BYD's automobile sales gross margin than other national brands much lower."
Main reason for the substantial decrease in gross profit margin cars, direct from BYD In order to take the traditional automotive market, and has been implemented in industry summarized as "imitation" and "cheap marketing" strategy.
So far, BYD announced by almost all of more or less each vehicle involved in a number of right and wrong.
Why is Wang Chuanfu to pursue this strategy? Jia Xinguang senior experts in the automotive industry view, "For one thing, BYD is not too strong R & D team, and secondly, can not produce too BYD brand and consumer recognition."
Thus, imitation can help BYD quickly open the market. 2009 January-August, BYD Auto completion of 206.8 thousand production and sales of 246.9 thousand results, has already IBM ThinkPad R32 battery， IBM ThinkPad R40 battery， IBM ThinkPad X60 batterysurpassed the 2008 full year production and sales. BYD F3/F3R/F0 and other vehicle models, there are doubling year on year trend, F3 sales is 130% -140% year on year to achieve high growth.
When the F3 such as the main vehicle by a few thousand units a month sales rose to tens of thousands of vehicles, the contribution to the overall interest of the company growing, the more inclined to BYD F3 sales.
But the F3 as a typical anti-attack works, that it does not have the brand value, its biggest competitive advantage is only relative Corolla is cheaper by almost half the price. Therefore, BYD in order to maintain this performance of the main products in the market, the only can do is to continuously drive down prices.
However, gross margin had fallen to a dangerous threshold. Currently operated as the main force of the F3 BYD sales price, or even worse than the configuration of the Jetta's price should be lower for nearly 10000.
"I do not know how much profit it can be further concessions." The analyst said.
Wang Chuanfu what means are driven crazy dream repairer
Because of these reasons, both the industry BYD abnormal hematopoietic barren.
"From 2002 in the H-share listed BYD has been raised from previous fund, according to bank rates over the same period, interest is more than 4 billion yuan." And BYD from 2002 to 2008, the sum of net profit, there is no more than 3.8 billion.
"Might as well keep the interest." The anonymous corporate executives say.
"In some ways, this can be said that a few years I did not earn any money."
The BYD released in 2009 mid-year report shows the carrying amounts of funds 2.055 billion, asset-liability ratio of 56%
This points to Wang Chuanfu facing the most serious challenge: how could drive repairer crazy dream?
In addition to the battery and chip R & D two exams in the past year, Wang Chuanfu even purchased more than 200 tons of lithium iron phosphate-based raw materials to manufacture lithium iron phosphate batteries, he even is by far the world's largest buyers in this area .
In the past six years, the BYD electric vehicle project at least invested in more than 10 million, In addition, if the count in order to produce electric vehicles based in Shenzhen, the new base, its total investment will be more than 5 billion.
"I am very worried that Wang Chuanfu in the end it can come up with dozens of 100 million Laigao chips." The senior said.