Who’s Leading the Way in New Energy Technology Reserves?

There’s a question on a Q&A forum that asks who has the strongest reserve of new energy technology.

In my mind, there are immediately a few names that come to the forefront: Toyota, General Motors, and Nissan.

Yes, there aren’t any German automakers mentioned.

Toyota: A Respectable Contender

As I’ve mentioned, Toyota is an all-around prepared contender. It was one of the first automakers in the 1990s to explore new energy technology and almost single-handedly pushed the worldwide adoption of hybrid cars. As of January 2017, Toyota’s total global sales of hybrid vehicles surpassed 10 million.

With a profound understanding of hybrid technology, Toyota can easily transition into producing all-electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. When it comes to battery technology reserves, Toyota is undoubtedly one of the best in the industry.

Meanwhile, Tesla is likely focusing on photovoltaic battery technology for the future. It is true that the Model 3 uses higher-energy nickel-cobalt-lithium batteries, but Tesla has focused all of its energy since its inception on the present, leaving little room for reserves. I think it’s not appropriate to talk about technological reserves in this case.

Toyota is a heavyweight in reserves, but it won’t strike until the time is right—it’s like holding a trump card. Toyota’s new energy technology route can be seen as a representative of Japan’s national strategy for technological reserves, so it’s impossible for them not to be strong. After all, they can’t afford to make a mistake.

You can see more about Toyota’s technological reserves here.

General Motors: The Toyota of America

If Toyota is an all-around prepared contender, then General Motors is the Toyota of America.

According to Reuters, based on the latest data provided by the US Patent and Trademark Office, from 2010 to 2015, General Motors obtained 661 US patents for battery technology, second only to Toyota’s 762 US patents.In addition, it is a fact that the first electric car in the world was produced by General Motors (GM). The GM Impact concept car caused a sensation worldwide in 1990. The EV1, designed based on the Impact in 1996, was the world’s first mass-produced electric car.

At that time, Alen Cocconi, the chief designer of the EV1, later founded AC Propulsion, the first to try to drive a car with lithium batteries. This suggestion was made by Martin Eberhard, one of the founders of Tesla. Later, he founded Tesla, and based on the T-ZERO technology produced by AC Propulsion, he used the Lotus sports car chassis to make the Roadster. It can be said that Tesla’s early technology came from Alen Cocconi’s team at General Motors.

Just as Toyota found that electric cars had not yet come of age after the RAV4 and turned to hybrid cars, General Motors temporarily abandoned the pure electric route and turned to range-extended hybrid cars at the beginning of the 21st century.

The Volt, released in 2007, was the world’s first mass-produced range-extended hybrid car and began selling in the United States in 2010. Speaking of this, I remember Toyota’s hybrid strategy. They used strict technical patent barriers to force American carmakers to choose other paths when switching to electric vehicles. It was also interesting that BMW followed the range-extended hybrid route but came out with their products a little later.

Anyway, if we talk about history, General Motors is not inferior to Toyota and Tesla. If we discuss technical advances, General Motors may not be afraid, especially in the field of electric propulsion systems. AC Propulsion was famous for designing electric propulsion systems. The Voltec, released in 2010, was designed to standardize and integrate the components of electric propulsion systems as much as possible while remaining flexible and compatible with multiple electric propulsion forms. Therefore, the platform was initially named E-FLEX.Currently, Voltec has developed its second-generation products which have higher integration and complexity compared to THS by Toyota and IMMD by Honda, and thus, stronger compatibility.

In terms of integration, the second-generation Voltec achieves deep integration of the motor controller and electric drive system, reducing connectors and wire harnesses, lowering costs, and enhancing the safety of the high-voltage system.

In terms of compatibility, Voltec’s EVT electric control intelligent continuously variable transmission generates various power distribution and output methods by controlling the coordination between two sets of clutches and a dual-planetary gear system. It can achieve various driving modes such as pure electric (Blot), extended-range (Buick VELITE 5 EREV), plug-in hybrid (Cadillac CT6), and hybrid (Buick LaCrosse Hybrid). With the application of multiple models and an increase in sales volume, the cost of the entire parts will significantly decrease, such as mold, production line, and R&D costs, accelerating the market’s popularity.

After discussing electric propulsion, let’s talk about battery energy.

Let’s first talk about Toyota. Toyota’s Mirai is the world’s first mass-produced FCEV (hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle), with the most hydrogen fuel cell patents in the world, far exceeding the number of patents held by the second-ranked enterprise in Japan (hydrogen energy technology is one of Japan’s national technologies).

However!

The world’s first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is made by GM!

In 1966, due to politics, GM’s team spent ten months developing hydrogen fuel for use in vehicles as part of Nick’s lunar program for lunar vehicles. The team made the Electrovan, the world’s first hydrogen fuel cell car, with a top speed of 120 km/h, acceleration of 0-100 km/h in 30 seconds, and a range of 240 km. This vehicle, of course, was not mass-produced, and GM’s next fuel cell vehicle was born almost half a century later.

In 2000, GM Opel presented the HydroGen 1 at the Geneva Motor Show, with a range of 400 km, a top speed of 140 km/h, and acceleration of 0-100 km/h in 16 seconds. The HydroGen series went on until HydroGen 4.

Later, General Motors (GM) worked with the US military and delivered the first fuel cell-powered truck, a modified Chevrolet Silverado, to the US military in 2005, although these trucks were only used to transport weapons.

However, GM has not yet produced any mass-market products in this field. When it announced the electrification strategy last October, it mentioned that it would continue to develop hydrogen fuel cell models. In February 2017, it established a joint venture with Honda to develop mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell products.

Unlike Toyota’s Mirai, it is difficult to judge the technical advantages and disadvantages of GM’s lack of mainstream models in this regard. Starting with the truck platform, it is unknown whether it is pessimistic about the future or intends to take a different route. The abandonment of the EV project in the past was greatly criticized by the industry.

In the battery sector, GM seems to be less active or aggressive than Toyota, perhaps due to national strategy.

However, under the efforts of the Chinese government, GM has begun to attach importance to this matter and has invested in battery factories in China. The battery factory in Shanghai Jinqiao is GM’s second factory worldwide. In January of this year, GM CEO Mary Barra publicly stated that GM will achieve profitability of EV models in 2021.

When Reuters reported this news, it also called this statement quite bold. According to Reuters, GM’s plan is mainly based on the reduction of battery costs and the expansion of scale, and one of the biggest driving forces is China’s battery factory.

The answer is a big bet on combining proprietary battery technology, a low-cost, flexible vehicle design and high-volume production mainly in China, according to six current and former GM and supplier executives and six industry experts interviewed by Reuters.When talking about the advantages of their new battery technology, General Motors expressed two main points to Reuters: first is to reduce the proportion of cobalt and expand the proportion of nickel; second is that they have considerable patented technology in battery thermal management and energy distribution, which is expected to reduce the cost of batteries by over 30%, from $145 per kilowatt hour to less than $100 in 2021.

This may be why General Motors is full of confidence about making profits in 2021.

Nissan: Leaf in Hand

Nissan appears in the “Top 3 Intuitive Ranking” for a reason – The Leaf is one of the best-selling electric cars in the world.

Nissan’s battery technology accumulation doesn’t seem to have any special reputation, possibly because they are only in second place in the industry. Panasonic, yes, the supplier Tesla and Toyota both chose, is the world’s number one battery manufacturer.

In 2007, Nissan established the Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC) in a joint venture with NEC. After several years of development, AESC had a market share of 21% in 2014, second only to Panasonic. In 2017, Nissan sold AESC to China’s Envision Group, and began using batteries from external suppliers such as LG and CATL.

Making batteries is a physically exhausting and expensive activity, and battery technology line is constantly changing. For example, AESC used to produce lithium iron phosphate batteries, but after 2013, this road slowly went downhill and everyone started producing ternary lithium batteries. So if automakers want to make their own batteries, they really need to be fully prepared to switch tracks at any time. For example, they need to start working on solid-state batteries or hydrogen fuel cells.

Now let’s briefly talk about Leaf. Actually, Nissan’s e-Power is also worth studying.

Coincidentally, to celebrate the cumulative sales of 100,000 Leaf cars in Japan, Nissan has released a convertible version of the Leaf, which looks cool and has a range of 400 kilometers. The Leaf has been steadily in the top three of global electric vehicle sales rankings (it was No.1 before 2015, when it was overtaken by Model S). As of January this year, global sales have exceeded 300,000, with a global market share of over 10%.

Leaf, as a cost-effective pure-electric product, Nissan has come up with many ideas to enhance its cost-effectiveness, such as battery leasing projects to reduce the threshold for consumers to buy and use cars. This is unique among major automobile manufacturers. Therefore, compared with General Motors and Toyota, Nissan not only pays attention to batteries, products, etc., but also pays more attention to consumers’ usage experience. This is a different tendency, leading to different styles of the company.

Leaf is not Nissan’s first electric vehicle. The first one was Altra, which was released in 1997 and provided to some company fleets in California and Japan from 1998 to 2001. Only 200 units were produced. The prototype of Altra was Nissan R’nessa. In 2009, based on the Tiida platform, Nissan introduced the concept car EV11 of LEAF.

Nissan’s early attempts were similar to those of the two companies mentioned above. However, probably because Leaf sold relatively well (which feels a bit related to the timing), Nissan has always insisted on accumulating technology and experience in the field of electric vehicles through Leaf. Although Leaf is not a brand new car designed based on battery structure and electrical architecture requirements, it has been adjusted and optimized through multiple generations, and the Leaf platform can now well leverage the advantages of electric drive.

The Nissan-Renault Alliance is also of great benefit to enhancing Nissan’s advantages in the field of new energy.

Speaking of technology accumulation, it seems that Nissan is more inclined to establish advantages and accumulate experience in science and technology and intelligence fields, which is not on the same level.In addition to GM and Toyota’s strong efforts in autonomous driving testing, Nissan has taken the unique approach of developing the B2V brain-to-vehicle technology. When I saw it last year, I was excited about it, as I mentioned in my coverage of the Tokyo Motor Show. This is undoubtedly the most forward-looking black technology, surpassing even Musk’s brain-machine interface technology in terms of innovation. However, it seems that there is still a long way to go before this technology can be put into practical use, as scientists still have a long way to go before successfully decoding the brain.

In summary, Nissan’s approach may seem simple, but its partnership with Renault still offers plenty of potential topics for discussion. On the other hand, GM and Toyota are clearly part of their respective national teams, and their choices regarding electric vehicle and autonomous driving strategies reflect their corporate will.

And what about German companies?

• Hybridization vs. Pure Electric, the Battle of Industrial and Industrial Mindsets* The Electric Car Alliance That Will Never Make the Headlines

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.