How does the AESC return to the center of the stage in the new battlefield of the giants?

The sale of the Nissan car battery business, which has been postponed for two years and has been reported by many buyers, has finally settled.

On August 3, Vision Group and Nissan Motor reached an agreement to acquire Automotive Energy's electric battery business and production base, Automotive Energy Supply Corporation ("AESC"), and also to acquire NEC energy Devices, a battery electrode manufacturing company owned by NEC. These acquired assets will be grouped into a new company, and Nissan will hold a 20% stake.

According to the agreement, all AESC employees will continue to be employed, and the headquarters and development center operations will remain in Japan, but will build a production base in Wuxi, China. In the early days, Jinshajiang Capital was still raising funds for the acquisition of AESC. At the same time, it attracted the interest of many domestic capitals and enterprises. After a long period of nearly a year of sawing, it was still due to fundraising unsuccessful and regretted out.

The prospective and Nissan parties have not disclosed the amount of the transaction. If you refer to the agreement between Jinshajiang Capital and Nissan, this is a target worth $1 billion. Putting it into the history of China's mergers and acquisitions in Japan, including white electricity and real estate, it is one of the biggest mergers and acquisitions. This is a huge voice when China’s foreign investment is gradually slowing down and global protectionism is on the rise.

Moreover, unlike the strategic abandonment of white goods, the core equipment around the automobile and high-end manufacturing is also the absolute lifeline industry in the eyes of the Japanese economics and economics. It is easy to give up to outsiders. AESC, once the second largest lithium battery shipment in the world, was once the industrial pearl.

But in the past two years, Nissan’s sale of AESC is well known. The two sides are too painful to link. Nissan needs to purchase AESC batteries above market price. AESC is trapped in Nissan's overall strategy and misses more market opportunities in other regions or different industries.

For this reason, in recent years, many internationally renowned electric car dealers such as Bosch and BYD have been or are preparing to spin off related assets. In the emerging industry of electric vehicles, technology has evolved rapidly, and professional battery manufacturers are more likely to adapt to the ever-changing market environment. More importantly, in the current Chinese market, which accounts for 60% of the global share of electric vehicles, only by winning China, is it sure to win the future.

For AESC's New Vision Group, complementing the battery sector is a step closer to the energy IoT blueprint they are planning to build. Wind energy, solar energy, intelligent IoT platforms, charging piles, electric vehicles, energy storage and building intelligent terminals, this ambitious IoT ecological chain is exactly the economist Jeremy Rifkin in "zero marginal cost society" The future world described in the world: under the support of the three pillars of the energy Internet, the communication Internet and the transportation Internet, there is no connection between objects and objects.

Break into the New World

Breaking away from the bondage of Nissan and entering China through the vision, it is like breaking into a strange continent for the former lithium battery giant AESC.

In the past two years, the tide of domestic lithium battery mergers and acquisitions has been surging. Companies planning to enter the electric vehicle and energy storage industries want to make a difference in the battery business: BAK, Yinlong, and Waterma have all been sought after, and the market targets are mixed, and the prices are often high.

Objectively speaking, there are not many good targets that China has suddenly emerged in recent years. Many new energy companies, such as upstream and downstream and even photovoltaics, are investing overseas. The AESC, which has many years of technology accumulation and global market network, is selling in Nissan. In the middle, it is not surprising that Chinese companies have repeatedly competed.

However, there are still many people in the industry who have deep doubts about AESC. They believe that AESC's early technology was lithium manganate with low energy density, and because it only supplied Nissan, sales were degraded by Chinese and Korean companies supplying major OEMs. In the new mainland of the Chinese market, it is now full of wolf smoke, overcapacity reshuffles, BYD and Ningde era are two strong, and now, the prospects are even more optimistic.

This is indeed a problem that AESC must face in the future. How to redefine the future of AESC after leaving Nissan's arm? Or, how many AESC's homes can support the mission in China?

The editor of this edition reviewed the information of AESC in the past few years, and the latest announcement released by Nissan Motor on August 3, and collected the basic financial data of AESC in recent years. In the 2014 fiscal year, thanks to the best-selling of the Nissan Leaf, the AESC indicators are very good-looking. In the mainstream lithium battery rankings at home and abroad, they once ranked second. However, as the Nissan Leaf part of the switch to the purchase of LG and CATL batteries, 2015 and 2016 fiscal year AECS revenue and profits have significantly decreased compared to the 2014 fiscal year.

This is also the main data support from the domestic industry since the acquisition of AESC by Jinshajiang Capital last year. However, in the new data released by Nissan Motors on August 3, in the new fiscal year from April 1, 2017 to March 20, 2017, AESC not only sold 65% year-on-year, but also turned a large profit, which has completely pulled it out of the deficit in the past two fiscal years.

The reason is mainly due to the good performance of Nissan's new Leaf since the second half of last year. But at the same time, AESC's expansion in new business, such as the layout of household energy storage in Japan, is also an important factor.

Unlike the outside world, AESC still has the impression that it stays on lithium manganate. Although the mainstream technology of AESC before 2015 is lithium manganate, high-nickel ternary NCM cathode materials have been widely used since 2016. Currently, the NCM532 improved version (class NMC622) is based on soft pack batteries, and there are related technical reserves and verification data on the NCM811 technology. Their application and reserves in high-nickel ternary technology are no longer lagging behind their main competitors. This is especially important in the market where the main direction is changed to ternary, and the ternary soft pack is currently in the middle of the season.

Once landing in China, this old lithium-ion player who has changed its Chinese status is likely to become an unbeatable opponent in the market. According to data released by Nissan, since its launch in 2010, AESC's lithium-ion batteries have powered 340,000 Nissan Leaf electric vehicles, driving a total of more than 7 billion kilometers without a serious accident. This safety performance and battery management capabilities will be their greatest confidence in the Chinese market.

In addition, unlike Jinshajiang Capital's agreement to acquire AESC at the time, Nissan will hold a 20% stake in the new company after Vision Holdings, which means that AESC will continue to lock in Nissan's battery procurement and lay the foundation for future business development basis. Nissan’s self-sufficiency and self-sufficiency have changed from the competition of battery investment. According to President Nishikawa’s words, it is “can focus on the development and production of pure electric vehicles”. What AESC needs to do is to reduce costs by fully competing in other markets.

Internet of Things Mission

Jeremy Rifkin not only wrote the Zero Marginal Cost Society and the Third Industrial Revolution, but also the author of The Empathy. This young man was the pioneer of the anti-Vietnam war and anti-fossil energy. When he came to China in 2016, he said something emotional:

Life is very difficult for all living things on earth. But whether it is an ant or a spider, they are eager to live and long for prosperity.

Jeremy Rifkin is a world-renowned future economist with a lot of relationship with multinational decision makers including China. His "Third Industrial Revolution" defines the era in which he is now, and has triggered a huge global response.

The future world that Jeremy Rifkin expects is a world of empathy and things, because this is the foundation of "prosperity." The changes brought about by the changes in the Internet of Things will make the world economy tend to be a "zero marginal cost society." During the event, Zhang Lei, CEO of Vision Group, told Rifkin his understanding: "At the time of zero marginal cost, what you really do is the commander and the manager. At this time, when is it dispatched and commanded, Or optimization is the most important element of the future energy world."

It's hard to say how much Rifkin's books have influenced Zhang Lei, but Zhang Lei's vision is just like Rifkin's new energy giant depicted in Zero Marginal Cost Society, is doing a new practice. .

From the perspective of the change and introduction of the official WeChat name, the vision has grown from an intelligent wind turbine company to an energy IoT group through the expansion of ecological boundaries. The group has a vision energy focused on smart wind power, providing intelligent software solutions and The vision of the service is smart, as well as the vision of the venture capital sector.

They built the world's largest energy IoT operating system, connecting 50 million wind, photovoltaic energy storage, charging piles, electric vehicles and building intelligent terminals.

The latest data shows that Vision Energy, a subsidiary of Vision Group, increased its operating income and net profit in 2017 by more than 50%. In 2018, the target hoisting capacity of Vision Energy is more than 50% higher than 2017, and is expected to be 4.5-5GW.

Searching for the layout of the past few years, we can see that the acquisition of AESC is not the first move into the field of energy storage and electric transportation. Vision has previously strategically controlled Sonnen, the world's largest household energy storage technology service company, and invested in Chargepoint, the largest charging network technology company in North America, the domestic electric vehicle manufacturer Weimar and the electric Formula One Virgin.

The vision of the strategy is obvious: they acquired AESC, which is to expand the fragmentation of smart application terminals by having battery assets. At the same time, the electric vehicle is integrated with the energy system, especially for the electric vehicle to provide intelligent dynamic balance for the future fragmented renewable energy system, thereby promoting the electric vehicle to integrate into the global smart energy system they are building.

In this smart energy system, the role of energy storage is increasingly important.

At the beginning of July this year, the National Development and Reform Commission issued the "Opinions on Innovation and Improvement of the Price Mechanism for Promoting Green Development", which proposed to improve the formation mechanism of peak and valley electricity prices, and use modern information, vehicle networking and other technologies to encourage electric vehicles to provide energy storage services. Peak and valley spreads earned. This is a clear signal and the beginning of a trend towards multiple battery power.

In addition to matching electric vehicles, AESC has a very strong business connection with home energy storage company Sonnen and charging pile company charge point. With the integration of renewable energy and the further active activities of the industrial and commercial and grid-side energy storage businesses, many wind farms, buildings and other terminals that have already mastered the vision will also raise their own energy storage needs.

This also means that the AESC category will become increasingly diverse. As a necessary part of the vision of the IoT ecosystem, AESC needs to provide batteries that match the various scenarios.

Accordingly, this puts higher demands on AESC. In addition to a wide variety of product developments, there is a need to build a new team that understands the industry and understands regional differences. These challenges for the vision and AESC are just beginning.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.