Safety has become the focus of the current electric vehicle industry.

　　Last weekend, Tesla (TSLA) announced the results of the investigation into the spontaneous combustion incident in Shanghai, saying that it was a single battery module failure. At the same time, Tesla is stepping up the development of its own batteries.

　　In the same week, NIO announced that it would recall its ES8 electric car due to battery module-related issues.

　　In this regard, industry experts told China Business News that at present, electric vehicle companies and battery suppliers have both technical cooperation and business-level competition.

　　Tesla's latest statement stated that the Tesla joint investigation team has investigated and analyzed the vehicle's battery, software, production data and vehicle historical data, but the investigation did not find any system defects. Preliminary results show that the individual accident was Caused by a failure of a single battery module located at the front of the vehicle.

　　Japanese battery maker Panasonic supplies batteries to Tesla, but not modules.

　　Tesla's statement also said that the company has modified the charging and thermal management settings of Model S and Model X vehicles through OTA software updates to help further protect the battery and extend battery life.

　　Regarding the Tesla spontaneous combustion incident that has attracted much attention, Shi Shuai, an electric vehicle battery analyst and director of Roland Berger, told China Business News that from a narrow technical and probability perspective, Tesla has experienced several generations of A failure of a relatively mature battery product for a car model is an accidental phenomenon, and consumers do not need to panic.

　　However, Shishuai also pointed out that from a broader perspective, it is not surprising that new car manufacturers have quality problems compared to traditional car companies. Because first of all, the compatibility of the independent design parts of emerging car companies represented by electric car companies with supplier products has yet to be tested, and independent research and development capabilities still need to be iterated. In addition, electric vehicles mostly use customized battery module designs, and the quality stability also takes time to verify.

　　Coincidentally, just last Thursday, NIO, a representative of China's new car-making forces, also announced the recall of 4,803 ES8 electric vehicles equipped with power battery packs produced between April 2 and October 19, 2018. In "About Its "partners" were mentioned in "Notes on Several Problems with the Battery Recall". It was later confirmed that the supplier of the NEV-P50 module of the ES8 that needs to be recalled is CATL, which currently ranks first in domestic power battery supply, and the one that integrates the battery pack is NIO itself.

　　In response to this, CATL immediately issued a "Statement on the Recall of Parts of NIO's ES8" in response, stating that "the battery pack box recalled this time interferes with the module structure supplied by our company, which may occur under certain extreme conditions." There is a risk of short circuit in the low-voltage sampling wire harness, which poses a safety hazard. This batch of modules adopts a customized design, which is only used in the 4803 ES8 products recalled this time."

　　"There is both cooperation and competition between the two." Shi Shuai, who has long been paying attention to the battery subdivision industry of car companies, told China Business News that as the two major protagonists in the current electric vehicle industry, electric vehicle OEMs and battery suppliers There is technical cooperation, including deepening the depth of independent research and development and technical coupling with supplier solutions, but at the same time there is also a game at the business level, including a game between the right to speak based on brand and sales.

　　Senior automotive industry analyst Mei Songlin also pointed out that the global electric vehicle industry, represented by Chinese electric vehicle companies, currently has a high concentration of battery supply. Unlike many other auto parts, relatively speaking, sellers of electric vehicle batteries have more say than buyers. The global market has formed several major leaders such as CATL, Panasonic, and LG. The shipment volume of these battery suppliers is very large. .

　　According to the latest data from the China Chemical and Physical Power Supply Industry Association, in May 2019, CATL won the first place in the country with 2.38GWh, accounting for 41.96% of the Chinese domestic market.

　　In Mei Songlin’s view, this situation is expected to ease with the liberalization of the battery industry. "Openness and market competition are effective ways to solve current problems."

　　Tesla is stepping up in this regard. Last month, news came from within Tesla that its secret laboratory is stepping up research and development of its own batteries, hoping to reduce its reliance on Panasonic's battery supply to reduce the cost of electric vehicles and improve battery performance. Currently, employees in Tesla’s battery R&D team are focusing on lithium-ion battery research, with the goal of allowing Tesla to mass-produce its own batteries to significantly reduce costs.

　　In early June, at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting, Tesla CEO Elon Musk also said that Tesla was subject to “battery constraints” in the past because the shortage of batteries limited Tesla’s electric vehicles and storage capacity. Systematic production and sales.

　　"There is no better or worse between independent research and development and outsourcing." Shi Shuai said that from a development perspective, for electric vehicle companies, independent research and development and production of batteries are mainly to master core technologies and control costs from the perspective of future development, which does not mean that There will be no outsourcing at all in the future. The specifics will depend on the development strategies and actual situations of different electric vehicle companies.

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