New energy vehicles have soared, and equipment manufacturers have ushered in new opportunities for development

New energy vehicles have soared, and equipment manufacturers have ushered in new opportunities for development

In the production and manufacturing process of automotive products, from the body, wheel hub, chassis, to the bumper, pedal, luggage rack, these parts from the blank processing to the assembly of the vehicle need to use various types of processing technology and equipment. Previous data showed that more than half of the investment in the automotive industry was used to purchase advanced manufacturing equipment. Today, with the steady upward development of the automobile industry and the continuous penetration of the "new four modernizations" reform, related equipment manufacturers have also ushered in a new round of development opportunities.

According to the statistics of the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in the whole year of 2020, China's automobile production and sales scored 25.225 million vehicles and 25.311 million vehicles, ranking first in the world for 12 consecutive years. In the first 11 months of this year, China's automobile production and sales have completed 23.172 million units and 23.489 million vehicles respectively, an increase of 3.5% and 4.5% year-on-year, and the association predicts that in the last month of this year (December), production and sales are expected to continue the month-on-month growth momentum, and the annual production and sales will exceed 26 million vehicles.

In this context, Yin Zhengbin, deputy general manager of Guangdong Pradi Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Pradi"), said in an interview with Gaz Automobile a few days ago that since the second half of last year, the performance of auto parts (including new energy vehicles) in the division has increased from 40% to more than 50%.

According to the data, Pradi is a research and development, manufacturing, sales and service in one of the intelligent equipment and automation equipment manufacturers, in the field of high-end CNC machine tools has more than 20 years of development and application experience, equipment is widely used in aerospace, military, rail transit, automotive, 5G communications, home and other fields. At present, the automobile, home and aviation sectors account for 50%, 20% and 10% of the division's business respectively, and the remaining parts are occupied by military industry and 5G communications.

New energy vehicles have entered explosive growth, and equipment companies are in short supply and busy expanding production

"In the second half of this year, while other industries are in decline, Pradi's performance still maintains a large proportion of growth, and one of the very important reasons is the promotion of the trend of vehicle electrification and lightweighting." Yin Zhengbin pointed out.

As mentioned above, caamot predicts that China's automobile production and sales will exceed 26 million units in 2021, of which the annual production and sales of new energy vehicles are expected to exceed 3.4 million units (sales in the first 11 months of this year were 2.99 million units, with a market penetration rate of 12.7%), while the production and sales of new energy vehicles in 2020 were 1.366 million units and 1.367 million units, that is, compared with last year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles this year will increase by more than 150%.

"In the second half of this year, more than 80% of Pradi's orders come from the field of new energy vehicles, especially in recent months, our order volume is very saturated, basically in a state of short supply, and the factory is working overtime to expand the increment." Yin Zhengbin said. In his view, with the introduction of the "3060 double carbon" target policy, the development prospects of new energy vehicles will become better and better.

At the 2021 annual meeting of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association held recently, Ouyang Minggao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and vice chairman of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Association, pointed out that this year, China's new energy vehicle marketization has entered a new stage of explosive growth, and in 2022, limited by battery supply, chip supply and production capacity restrictions, China's new energy vehicle sales will continue to grow to 5 million units, and the market share will reach more than 20%.

In order to meet the rapid development needs of the market, Pradi's CNC machining center in Changzhou was completed and put into operation in May this year, with a total investment of 400 million yuan in the first phase, and will form a production capacity of 1800 sets (sets) of CNC machine tool machining centers after production, with an annual new sales revenue of 1.5 billion yuan. "The commissioning of the Changzhou plant has greatly reduced the production pressure of the Foshan plant in Guangdong Province, and some particularly large products, including some processing equipment for new energy vehicles, are currently produced in the Changzhou factory." Yin Zhengbin said.

He also revealed that according to the long-term plan of the Changzhou factory, the factory will mainly put into production some new products for the future, as well as some important high-precision machine tool accessories. "We have invested a lot of imported high-precision machining equipment, and some key spare parts of machine tools in the future, we will carry out independent research and development and production here."

The automated production of new energy auto parts has become a trend, and equipment companies are actively developing layouts

Focusing on the development trend of automobile manufacturing equipment, Yin Zhengbin said that the entire market is still in the transition period from fuel vehicles to new energy vehicles, taking the battery tray used to carry the new energy vehicle battery cell as an example, the manufacture of the component has not yet formed a large-scale production. "Nowadays, pallet parts are mainly produced in single pieces or small batches, because there are many types of them, and the amount of each kind is not very large." A little comparison can be found that the number of accessories for a single variety of fuel vehicles can reach tens or millions of vehicles a year, while a variety of new energy vehicles can reach 100,000 vehicles a year, which is already very impressive.

In addition, due to standardization problems, the current processing and manufacturing of battery trays has not yet formed automation and intelligence, but large-scale intelligent manufacturing is definitely a trend in the future. "In the next two years, with the gradual improvement of the standardization of the battery tray design of new energy vehicles, there will be more and more automated production accessories, and now we have begun to develop and layout in this regard."

In Yin Zhengbin's view, there are two reasons for the battery tray to move towards automated production: one is because the ownership of new energy vehicles will continue to increase, and the other is to enhance the competitiveness with fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles will continue to improve their cost performance, and reducing costs from spare parts is one of the effective ways. Therefore, the realization of automated production and improved processing efficiency will become the direction of the entire new energy automobile accessories industry.

In addition, from the perspective of processing technology, there are many kinds of structures of the pallet itself, such as steel, die casting, aluminum profile welding, casting plus profile welding and so on. Based on this, in order to meet the development needs of the market, Yin Zhengbin stressed that the processing technology should be continuously adjusted with the changes in the market, and the manufacturing equipment should also continue to develop new products to match it, especially the improvement of efficiency and the guarantee of precision.

It is understood that in response to the diversified production needs of automotive products, Pradi has developed a number of series and models of processing equipment, which can meet the production of generic products and can also match the customized production of personalized products.

For example, profile processing center equipment used in bumpers, luggage racks, sunroof guides, etc., and PW series (horizontal machining center) equipment used in die casting polyhedra processing industry. Among them, pradi's PW series "a horizontal profile five-axis machining center" is the first in China, and won the "22nd China Patent Excellence Award" awarded by the State Intellectual Property Office in June this year.

According to Yin Zhengbin, the horizontal machining center has the characteristics of non-stop material exchange (20% to 30% higher than the traditional shutdown material exchange efficiency), shortening the processing cycle of single-piece products, and realizing single-machine one-stop production of polyhedral products, which can provide more convenience for battery trays and automated loading and unloading processing, and the processing center has been applied in some well-known domestic enterprises. This year's sales in this segment have increased by about 200% compared with last year, and may exceed 200 million next year.

"In 2020, Pradi's overall performance is close to 500 million yuan, and the target for 2021 is 800 million yuan. In the next three years, Pradi's target output value will reach 2 billion, entering the first camp of China's machine tool manufacturing industry. Yin Zhengbin said that at present, Pradi is the world's largest manufacturer of aluminum alloy CNC machine tool equipment, occupying more than 70% of the domestic market.

In the field of machinery and equipment, in the face of rapidly changing new products and new technologies, high-quality products and innovative technologies have always been the core competitiveness of enterprises. To this end, in addition to investing 6% of sales in the research and development system every year, Pradi has also set up a central research institute, and the company currently has more than 100 people focusing on research and development, with a total of more than 140 invention patents. It can be said that Pradi has been at the forefront of the industry in recent years, whether it is in terms of hardware facilities, talent reserves or scientific research results, and its goal of moving towards the first camp of China's machine tool manufacturing industry may also be accelerated. (Gaz Car Thundercloud)

(Put it in your circle and friends will appreciate you)