On the 1st of this month, Zhejiang auto brake manufacturer Wanan Technology acquired a 10.36% stake in Protean Electric (Protean), the world leader in automotive wheel and hub motors, for US$20 million. At the same time, the two companies also established joint ventures in China, including Wanan. Technology invested 6 million US dollars, holding 60%. Last month, Protean just announced that it will produce a wheel motor based on Protean Drive® technology in the Tianjin High-tech Zone in the second half of this year, and plans to build a permanent production base in Tianjin High-tech Zone by the end of 2017.
Coincidentally, just in July last year, Zhejiang Asia-Pacific Electromechanical Co., Ltd., a supplier of automotive brake systems, also entered into a shareholding agreement with Slovenian wheel hub motor manufacturer Elaphe Propulsion Technologies. The former contributed 10 million euros to hold the latter’s capital increase and share expansion. 20% equity. Although not as famous as Protean in the United States, Elaphe is the world's leading hub motor company. These two overseas mergers and acquisitions are examples of the re-addition of new energy vehicles in the Chinese auto industry in recent years.
New energy: there is no perfect technology yet
The hub motor is a driving technology for new energy vehicles, also known as "In-wheel Motor", which integrates an electric engine into a hub. The biggest difference between this electric drive mode and the traditional electric vehicle is that Disperse one of the original large engines onto two or four wheels and eliminate the gearbox and transmission that originally occupied the huge space of the car. In addition to using clean energy, this technology can make the car more space-efficient.
The hub motor was invented very early, and the rear wheel of the battery car widely used in China is also a kind of hub motor. The real development of the car hub motor is still in the past 20 years. According to the announcement, Protean acquired by Wanan Technology has more than 60 approved patents and more than 160 approved patents in this field, which is the leader in the industry. Its products can improve fuel economy by more than 30%, but can output very high power. Each of the hub motors produced can achieve 81 kW of power and 800 Nm of torque, and weighs only 31 kg. It is installed in wheels with a normal diameter of 18~24 inches, and it can recover up to 85% of the available kinetic energy during braking.
Wheel hub motors with many advantages also have some key technologies to be improved. The first is that traditional cars will want to reduce the unsprung mass of the body as much as possible (the quality not supported by the elastic elements in the suspension system, including wheels, springs, shock absorbers and other related components), because the unsprung mass is low. This means that the car has better ride comfort, dynamic response and handling. The result of embedding the motor in the tire will be counterproductive.
Another problem with the hub motor is that it is easy to affect the braking effect and energy consumption of the vehicle. Generally speaking, the driving power of the passenger car needs to be driven by the engine, but after replacing the motor with the hub, the energy source of the vacuum pump will come from the motor. This may mean more power consumption, and the power reserve of the hub motor is usually not very large. At the same time, the working environment of the hub motor is harsh, facing the influence of water, dust, etc., and also has high requirements in terms of sealing. The design also needs to separately consider the heat dissipation problem for the hub motor.
Therefore, in general, just like the battery life problem that the new energy vehicle itself has to solve, the weight of the battery itself, or the charging pile problem in the infrastructure, the hub motor is still not perfect as a component in the new energy. At the office. This is also the root cause of the current electric car can not replace the fuel car.
US electric car bubble promoted the acquisition of Chinese enterprises
For years, the United States has been hoping that electric vehicles can end their dependence on oil imports, but this dream was basically shattered three years ago. At that time, Tesla's losses continued to expand, requiring investors to continue to transfuse blood. Fisker, another American electric car company that had been opposed to Tesla, was not so lucky, went directly into bankruptcy, and was finally won by Chinese component maker Wanxiang in 2014 for $149.2 million. Another US lithium battery giant, A123 Systems, was also included in Wanxiang’s $256.6 million in 2013.
The main reason for the sluggish sales of electric vehicles is that the battery life is not up to expectations. Tesla's battery life is far from the actual number of kilometers. Second, the price of plug-in hybrid vehicles is generally higher than that of ordinary gasoline vehicles. For the people, the money saved by the fuel consumption will take several years to return to the difference; the third is that the infrastructure of the charging pile and the charging efficiency fail to meet the demand, resulting in the shortcomings of the practicality of the pure electric vehicle.
All kinds of problems have caused the good technology of the electric vehicle companies in the United States to be difficult to realize, and they have given Chinese buyers the opportunity to bargain. For Chinese buyers, on the one hand, China needs electric vehicle technology, and it needs to master this technology in the future, instead of being led by the three car powers in Europe, America and Japan as in the past, the development of new energy vehicles is like the world. Countries once again stood on the same starting line. Wang Chuanfu, president of BYD, once said: "If the Chinese auto industry wants to achieve catch-up, is there a second way besides the electric vehicle route? No."
On the other hand, in the face of multiple pressures such as the increase in oil prices, the emission of PM2.5, and the congestion of urban roads, local governments have implemented relevant policies for the development of new energy vehicles and introduced new energy vehicle subsidies. In order to capture this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, car companies have also launched new energy vehicle projects.
Protean received a $84 million financing in 2012 before the participation of Wanan Technology, including Oaktree Capital, China's Jinshajiang Venture Capital, New Era Group and Jiangsu Fuyang Municipal Government. Protean used this early attention to lock in the largest market for new energy vehicles in China. For the shareholding of Protean, Wanan Technology also said that this will help improve the company's competitiveness in emerging markets such as new energy vehicles, which will further optimize the strategic industrial layout of the company's smart cars in the future; Vigorously promote the "distributed drive" technology, fully embodies the country's confidence and support for the wheel hub motor technology. Therefore, the hub motor drive technology has great development prospects in the future."
In recent years, under the government's subsidy policy for the promotion of new energy vehicles, China's new energy automobile industry has witnessed an explosive growth. However, the promulgation of favorable policies did not take long to encounter some local “cheat†scandals. Therefore, the government has issued a document stating that it will gradually decline due to factors such as energy conservation and emission reduction, and comprehensive consideration of production costs, scale effects, and technological progress. A number of new energy vehicle companies have indicated that the development of new energy vehicles at this stage is inseparable from good policies.
Therefore, in such a situation, we still have to ask: Is China's new energy vehicle market dominated by market demand or policy-led? If the policy subsidy is cancelled one day, will this heat continue? As a key supporting facility for electric vehicles, when will the arrangement of charging piles be kept up? In the case that the technology is still not perfect, will China's new energy vehicle development take the old road in the United States?
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