"Oil and electricity" chaos

Produced by: Observer Network auto channel official number: engine line of sight

Not subversive, but new. The consumer market regards electrification as an epoch-making change in the new automobile era, which is good or bad, and it is difficult to argue. But at least from the global understanding of carbon neutrality and the steady growth of market sales, electrification has long been an irreversible trend.

Looking back on the history of the automobile industry for more than one hundred years, the use of internal combustion engines has always been regarded as the symbol of the birth of automobiles. However, if electric vehicles are also included in the category of automobiles, the history of automobiles is likely to be pushed forward for another four or five years. However, even in the 1970s, people realized mass production of electric vehicles, but due to many factors such as battery life and safety, most car companies still chose fuel vehicles as the main force to capture the market.

In the early days when electrification was put back on the charter in recent years, some people said that the barriers to entry for electric vehicles were low. Compared with the automobile industry in the past century, the injection form, supercharging form and multi-cylinder timing of fuel engines are changeable; With the evolution of gearbox MT, AT, DCT, etc., it seems that electric vehicles only need to transform the chassis technology of one of the three major parts of traditional cars, and then buy out the patent of No.73 Power Company to lay eggs by backdoor. But the fact is, according to the classification of current electrification technology, complex power structure can also bring rich space for technological change for electric vehicles.

In addition to the common BEV (pure electric) form, hybrid vehicles represented by PHEV (plug-in hybrid) have gradually appeared in the market.

However, in the development of the new energy market, the balance between pure electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles has never been balanced by the market and policies. Due to the lag of independent brands in hybrid technology, many early scholars suggested that hybrid technology is only a transitional technology, and the future energy situation is destined to change to pure electric. Instead of spending money and energy on transitional technology research and development, it is better to do it directly in one step.

Trends are not transitions.

However, in fact, the electrification development of the automobile market is difficult to directly skip the hybrid models.

In terms of sales volume, although the pure electric vehicle market has maintained a rapid development momentum, it is not difficult to see the rise of PHEV models and their promotion to the mainstream consumer market of new energy from the vehicle market segment. From the market share of only 65,438+0% for three consecutive years to 2.7% in June this year, PHEV is providing consumers with more diversified and practical car purchase options.

In the policy environment, with the decline of new energy subsidy policy and the maturity of automobile enterprises' technology, many scholars began to justify hybrid technology. Zhao Fuquan, president of Tsinghua University Automotive Industry and Technology Strategy Research Institute, once mentioned that "hybrid power is a cross technology of open source and throttling, not a transition."

In the Technical Roadmap for Energy-saving and New Energy Vehicles 2.0 officially released in March this year, the expert group agreed that "by 2035, the annual sales of energy-saving vehicles and new energy vehicles will each account for 50%, and energy-saving vehicles should be fully mixed." When the automobile market in China adheres to the strategic orientation of pure electric drive, the correct logic of industrial development is that diversified new energy technology routes compete equally and complement each other.

The sales volume of market segments proves the correctness of this development logic. From June to June this year, 65438, in addition to the A00 pure electric vehicle headed by Wuling Hong Guang MINEV, the rapid growth of the B-class PHEV sedan and A-class PHEV SUV market has gradually revealed its unique market position.

When consumers increasingly accept the polarized positioning of pure electric vehicles in the mini-car market and high-end luxury market, hybrid power has successfully found its own position in the mainstream consumer market range of 654.38+0-200,000 yuan.

At this time, only the balance between technology and price is in front of car companies.

It's not technology that's wrong with hybrid power.

Aside from PHEV, the earliest hybrid technology (hybrid electric vehicle) started with the first Prius launched by Toyota in 1997, and it officially entered the public's field of vision. In the next 20 years, while other car companies were still immersed in the technical research and development of traditional fuel engines, Toyota and Honda have embarked on mature THS and i-MMD hybrid technologies, which have been tested by the end market and entered the consumer's field of vision.

However, for such a product that perfectly undertakes traditional fuel and pure electric, it has never been able to gain a place in the market. For the high efficiency and low energy consumption advocated by low-carbon travel, the high price of HEV has become the biggest obstacle to the promotion of new technologies in the two major fields.

When they first entered the China market, the price was often 40,000-50,000 yuan higher than that of the same fuel vehicle, which was divided by the policy of shutting out new energy sources, making consumers flinch in front of these high-quality products.

However, in recent years, the cost of hybrid electric vehicles has been influenced by the electrification trend of the industry, and it is getting closer to fuel-powered vehicles. The maturity and perfection of motor, battery and hybrid layout assembly technology make hybrid vehicles become the main sales force in the "two fields" of the market. Honda, Toyota and Nissan, which now have HEV technology, have controlled the price difference between models and fuel vehicles within 30 thousand yuan. Although there is still a certain price difference, from the market feedback, consumers have begun to accept this mature and reliable form of power.

According to Zheng Heng, executive deputy general manager of Guangqi Honda, "At present, the sales volume of Guangqi Honda hybrid vehicles has exceeded 60%. In order to give play to the brand effect and better popularize the i-MMD hybrid technology, Guangqi Honda established the' Sharp Hybrid Alliance' to establish the overall image of Guangqi Honda hybrid models. "

The future of those who mix together.

Driven by the "two fields", the vacancy of domestic hybrid power market is gradually revealed. According to the concept of "Technology Roadmap for Energy Saving and New Energy Vehicles 2.0", in 2035, energy saving vehicles and new energy vehicles will each account for about 50%. However, it is difficult to make a breakthrough in technologies such as hydrogen energy in the short term, and the hybrid form of "oil+electricity" is bound to become the biggest incremental point in China's automobile market in the next stage.

At the same time, the data shows that in 2020, the sales volume of HEV passenger cars in China is about 4,654,380+0.4 million, a year-on-year increase of 40%. Among them, Japanese brands represented by Toyota and Honda have a market share as high as 95%. In the face of market share near technical blockade, other car companies want to gain a place in the hybrid market, and PHEV is undoubtedly the fastest shortcut.

As a leader in the domestic PHEV market, BYD officially launched the economical DM-i technology route this year. Since the first Qin Plus DM-i equipped with the "DM-I Super Hybrid" system was officially launched on March 8, BYD's technology accumulation for many years has finally got feedback in the market. In May, the total order volume of BYD DM-i series cars exceeded 65,438+10,000. In the following two months, the proportion of BYD's new energy vehicles in the total sales of passenger cars continued to increase. In July, new energy vehicles accounted for 87.95% of BYD's total sales, while DM vehicles accounted for more than half of new energy vehicle sales.

The birth of DM-i not only won BYD the champion in China's new energy market, but also opened the door to China's new energy market in PHEV field. From an average of 200,000 vehicles in 2065,438+08-2020 to 654,387,000 vehicles in the PHEV market in June, the overall market grew by 65,438+074.6% year-on-year, which seems to indicate that BYD has taken the lead in getting the golden key to the next stage of the new energy market.

With the rapid rise of DM-i, Dongfeng, Chery, Great Wall and other independent car companies with excellent technology research and development capabilities have also released their hybrid results, hoping to lay out the PHEV market in advance.

This year, Chery introduced Kunpeng hybrid system, which consists of DHE hybrid engine, DHT hybrid gearbox, battery pack and rear axle drive motor. It is also determined that the assembly will be realized on the Tiggo 8 plus PHEV model listed in June of 5438+00.

Dongfeng, a veteran state-owned enterprise, has also released hybrid technology in Mach powertrain in recent months. Its system adopts multi-mode electrically driven stepless speed change architecture with MMe-CVT as the core. The principle of the system is mainly series mode, which directly drives the engine at high speed, and parallel mode can also be used when the power demand is high. Higher integration and higher engine thermal efficiency make it the key to competitive market.

The Great Wall's DHT lemon mixing platform was released last year. Because the engine, motor, gearbox and various controllers in the whole system are developed and produced by Great Wall, lemon hybrid DHT also has outstanding price advantages in the domestic market in terms of design cost.

The hybrid gearbox of Lemon Platform consists of two motors and a fixed-axis gearbox, which can cover EV mode, series mode, engine direct drive mode, full-load parallel mode and energy recovery mode. At the same time, the whole system can also develop HEV hybrid vehicles and p HEV plug-in hybrid vehicles, which is more flexible.

At present, the first WEY Macchiato model equipped with the Great Wall DHT hybrid technology has completed the preliminary test and will be officially launched this year.

Observe:

Even though the high threshold and complicated market environment once shut hybrid technology out of the market, although the new energy market is still in the transition period from policy-driven to market-driven, hybrid vehicles with more mature technologies are moving towards a new stage of history on the premise of favorable policies and markets.

As one of the power forms complementary to pure electric power, hybrid technology will also face the diversified challenges of various emerging energy sources such as hydrogen fuel, natural gas, methanol and solar energy. Maintaining technological competitiveness will still be the key for car companies to win the market in the future. Facing Volkswagen, General Motors and other car companies bent on building a pure electric platform, while luxury brands are still taking PHEV as the transitional stage of oil and electricity, independent brands are once again welcoming overtaking opportunities in the electrification transformation.

Only at this stage, in the process of exploring various forms of hybrid technology routes, most car companies have not been able to leave the Japanese model. Experts in the industry pointed out that in order to achieve the goal of energy-saving vehicle 100% hybrid power by 2035 proposed in Technology Roadmap 2.0, independent brands still need to concentrate on solving core technologies such as hybrid vehicle integration, special engine, special power coupling mechanism, high-performance drive motor, high-level power battery and overall optimization of electronic control system.

But in any case, the hybrid vehicle market, which once only accounted for 1%, has challenged the traditional fuel vehicle and pure electric vehicle market with the application of DM-i and other technologies. When Japanese car companies realize the vacancy in the market and start to make efforts in the PHEV market, a new round of mixed market disputes is bound to be triggered.

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