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300 GWh, 350 Wh/kg, lifetime quality assurance, one stop bettery, globalization…
These were the keywords mentioned at the “2021 CATL Global Partners Conference.”
On June 1, 2021, the “2021 CATL Global Partners Conference” was held in the scorching city of Wuhan.
At the conference, CATL Chairman Liu Jinyu deeply analyzed the company’s values and guiding principles and “spoiled” relevant plans for capacity and products.
Comprehensive Leading Strategy
In the past two years, CATL’s installed capacity has increased from 1.48 GWh in 2019 to 3.55 GWh in 2020 and now requires over 16 GWh of installed capacity this year. CATL’s composite growth rate over these two years has reached 300%, with a year-on-year growth of more than 500%.
This is the performance since Liu Jinyu took charge of CATL in 2018. While the company’s performance continues to grow, CATL’s development strategy has also been changing all the way.
Or, from another perspective, it is this kind of evolving development strategy that guides CATL to continuously refresh historical records.
In 2021, Liu Jinyu updated the strategy again – the Comprehensive Leading Strategy.
Liu Jinyu summarized it as a culture-leading, product technology-leading, and service market-leading strategy.
Liu Jinyu’s goal is to build CATL into a great company. A great company needs both hard power and soft power. In Liu Jinyu’s view, the soft power of a product is reflected internally as culture and externally as market recognition.
Regarding culture, CATL adheres to continuous innovation for the benefit of humanity. Externally, it wins respect by having zero defects and creating value.
If there is no real achievement, it is difficult to imagine that the seemingly vague ideal and mission of “benefiting humanity, pursuing excellence, co-creating and win-win, and achieving greatness” can truly lead the rapid development of CATL.
Liu Jingyu seems to have achieved this. It is precisely because of such guiding goals that CATL can clarify what to do and what not to do in practice.
For example, Liu Jingyu proposed in practice that the guiding ideology of CATL is to strictly follow the “dual principles”, namely high principle and high flexibility.
Liu Jingyu explained that the so-called principle is to achieve maximum product output with minimal consumption after inputting; flexibility is reflected in the means and processes to achieve the goal, not bound by past experiences and processes, and dare to break through and innovate.
Looking back on the past, Liu Jingyu’s strategy has always been changing.
In 2018, Liu Jingyu proposed a strategy of transformation, including cultural, ideological, operational, organizational, system, and technological transformation.
For example, CATL implemented employee stockholding, and “hundreds of PhDs in the company are shareholders. More excellent employees will become shareholders in the future.” The series of changes proposed at the time have basically been realized.
In 2019, Liu Jingyu proposed a strategy of focus. Liu Jingyu recalled that at that time, the focus was on the passenger car field, and the commercial vehicle field was temporarily not continued. The production line was transformed, and the pressure at that time was very high.
Liu Jingyu described his feelings at the time as “anxiety at every step”, but was reassured that every step was firm.
In 2020, CATL’s strategy changed to differentiation leadership. After making certain progress in the passenger car market, CATL relied on NCM5-series products to establish a foothold in the passenger car field.
Based on this series of accumulations, Liu Jingyu has the confidence to propose a comprehensive leadership strategy.
Mass production of 350 Wh/kg products within 3 years
Of course, the implementation of the comprehensive leadership strategy will ultimately be reflected in products.
300 Wh/kg and 350 Wh/kg products may be the basis and confidence for CATL to achieve comprehensive leadership strategy.
At the conference, Pan Fangfang, the deputy general manager of CATL, revealed CATL’s new goals and products.In terms of goals, Pan Fangfang stated that Aviation Lithium Battery (CALB) has succeeded in developing a new product this year which will be mass-produced next year, with an energy density of 280-300 Wh/kg for the cell and over 225 Wh/kg for the system, which can support a range of over 800 km.
“Our next goal is 350 Wh/kg,” said Pan Fangfang, “and this product will be mass-produced within three years.” However, this product is not the recently popular solid-state battery. According to Pan Fangfang, the commercial feasibility of semi-solid-state batteries is relatively low, so they will still use liquid electrolyte technology for 350 Wh/kg.
Pan Fangfang also stated that CALB’s 350 Wh/kg product will integrate the latest technological advances in current liquid batteries and solid-state batteries that can be mass-produced and promoted.
While increasing energy density, safety and longevity cannot be left behind.
In terms of safety, Pan Fangfang said that CALB will be able to achieve system-level safety in 2022, meaning that “users won’t need to consider which is safe and which is not when buying a car.”
“Starting this year, all CALB products with the new platform can achieve system-level safety,” Pan Fangfang said. “By the end of this year, some products introduced by CALB will also achieve the overall safety of the system through replacement and upgrading.”
In terms of longevity, Pan Fangfang believes that “the million-kilometer level lifespan is not an empty promise and can really be achieved.” Their next goal is to achieve complete mileage quality assurance without worries.
CALB has developed a new generation of products called “One Stop Battery” which will be officially launched in the second half of this year.
Regarding this battery, Pan Fangfang did not disclose much, only mentioning that this is a product under a new platform with material innovation, structural innovation, manufacturing technology innovation, and battery management system innovation.
Regarding the design concept of this product, Pan Fangfang expressed, “We want to launch a truly future-oriented product, and the future is a comprehensive electrification transformation. From now on, maybe we still need to do addition in some aspects, but from a whole perspective, we need to start subtraction.”
In addition, Pan Fangfang proposed a global research and development layout, bringing in the world’s finest resources. During the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, CALB’s research and development investment will exceed 10 billion yuan.Of course, the demand for raw materials and equipment is also huge for such a large-scale production capacity.
According to Geng Yanan, Deputy General Manager of CATL, achieving a production capacity of 300 GWh means that CATL will have material orders of over 200 billion yuan and equipment orders of 40 billion yuan. This will have an obvious driving effect on the industry chain.
Throughout the conference, Liu Jingyu never mentioned CATL’s ranking targets in China or globally. The most frequently used words were benefiting humanity, a great era, and symbiosis and win-win. Perhaps continuous growth is CATL’s development goal, and ranking is just a byproduct.
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.