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If there are any relevant experiences and lessons learned by the automobile enterprises in the tide of electrification, it is only by mastering the battery technology that they can enjoy the dividends brought by the market boom, and the sooner the better, otherwise they will only get the pain of rising costs and supply shortage.

Aware of this problem, in the past two years, auto companies have bought shares in battery companies and built teams to develop their own batteries, including Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, General Motors, BMW, GAC and other domestic and foreign auto companies, including TSLA.

For example, Volkswagen recruited Anshun Hao, who had served as the head of battery research and development at LG, Samsung and Apple, and appointed him as the CTO of the battery company PowerCo this year. Volkswagen's first battery super factory also started construction in July this year.

In the future market competition in which the annual penetration rate of new energy vehicles will increase from 20% to 50%, the pressure of cost, supply chain and new product development efficiency competition that automobile enterprises will face will only increase.

Especially because batteries determine the overall performance of electric vehicles and the user's perception experience, if we can not develop new models with more market competitiveness based on the technological innovation of batteries, the brand influence of automobile enterprises will be greatly reduced.

It can be said that in the future, the car enterprise that does not make batteries independently will likely become a non-money-making, non-differentiated manufacturer that leads to weak brand power. At that time, it can only watch others eat meat.

BYD saw this as early as 2012. At that time, BYD wrote in its annual report that in the field of electric vehicles, the Group has mastered three core technologies: vehicle control system, power supply and its control system, and motor and its control system. This is also the story of trillions of market value after ten years.

For complete vehicle companies, the key to future competition is whether they can master the technical ability of battery core R&D and manufacturing as BYD does, and whether their product R&D-manufacturing system is efficient enough.

On the one hand, the efficiency of research and development should be based on a solid research and development system.

On the other hand, automobile enterprises should seek combined innovation on the basis of mastering the know-how of mass production, promote the performance of the whole vehicle through battery technology innovation, and cultivate an electric vehicle brand that can play.

These two points are also becoming the driving force of the world's famous automobile enterprises.

01. Battery core R&D capability system and technology application trend for vehicle development

In the era of automobile electrification, battery technology has replaced engine as one of the core technical capabilities in the field of power, and will gradually become the top priority for the careful cultivation and development of various leading automobile enterprises.

For car companies, in the short term, mastering the battery R&D and manufacturing process is to control the cost. After all, the battery cost has accounted for 40% of the vehicle cost. In the medium term, mastering battery technology can effectively guarantee the sufficient supply of battery when the automobile enterprises expand their market share in the future.

In the long run, only auto companies that cultivate battery technology as the core competence of the whole organization can have a competitive advantage in the future, let the battery companies follow the battery technology route under their own product needs, truly grasp the bargaining power and leading power of the industry chain, and form a differentiation with other auto companies in terms of vehicle performance, and form brand competitiveness.

In the field of new energy vehicles, the core R&D capabilities and system composition of power lithium battery for the development of new products of the whole vehicle can be roughly divided into three layers, as shown in the figure below.

Schematic diagram of battery R&D capability system for vehicle development 36 Krypton drawing

The development of new products depends on the core technical capabilities of the company, so the bottom of the pyramid of new product development capabilities in the figure is all kinds of core technical capabilities.

In terms of power lithium battery research and development for the whole vehicle, including battery module design ability, cell design ability, material development ability including positive and negative electrodes, diaphragm, electrolyte and other materials, electrochemical simulation ability, material calculation ability, test and experiment ability, manufacturing process ability, etc.

The middle level is the integration of R&D and manufacturing, because in the process of building the R&D capability system, the core is how to deal with the integration of core capabilities, knowledge and processes within the organization, which is a cross-disciplinary and cross-functional issue.

If the entire product development system wants to operate efficiently, it must form a strong R&D integration capability, which organically integrates various technical capabilities and data and knowledge mastered by various R&D teams.

Especially for automobile enterprises that are transforming from fuel vehicles to electric vehicles, the integration of battery technology research and development and vehicle development is crucial.

In addition, in order to accelerate the launch of new products, it is necessary to consider the integration of design and manufacturing in the R&D system, where the manufacturing capacity includes trial production capacity and mass production capacity.

Only by covering the whole process from trial production to mass production can automobile enterprises fully grasp the technological capability of battery technology and deepen their internal understanding of battery design, simulation test and manufacturing.

The highest level is the new product development capability of automobile enterprises, and the result is that automobile enterprises continue to launch new models with various power lithium battery products.

02. The car factory should also rely on digital R&D capability to build a power lithium battery R&D system

No matter whether the automobile enterprises purchase battery cells from suppliers or develop their own batteries, the product development process of the battery itself will go through several stages such as A sample, B sample, C sample, etc. The R&D process is actually a cycle of multiple prototype method design-test verification (including experiments and simulations).

The whole process should fully consider the battery chemical system and battery structure, battery performance, production process feasibility and cost and other factors, and investigate whether the new battery products meet the expected design requirements of the new vehicle model in terms of safety, energy density, power, etc.

The BMW R&D battery process in the following figure is taken as an example to verify the performance of the material system in theoretical capacity, cycle performance and other aspects in the first two phases of the laboratory.

Sample A product is important to verify the material performance and cell design. Sample B stage is important to verify the manufacturing feasibility, determine the process, and finally put into mass production. It can be seen that this is basically consistent with the internal R&D stage division and decision-making considerations of the battery company.

Figure BMW battery R&D process source is the next generation battery official account

Figure CATL product R&D process

As for automobile enterprises, they should consider the progress of the whole vehicle development process, and the battery development process should match the progress of the whole vehicle development.

Figure Development stage division of complete vehicle and battery-related products

Further, with the same R&D process, for auto companies that want to stand firm in the future competition, in addition to pursuing the stability of mass production, it is more important to compete with battery companies and other auto companies for the efficiency of new product development, and the efficiency of development should be based on an efficient and stable R&D system.

The advantage of battery companies is that a large number of design and process related experience accumulated in the past development process, combined with simulation technology, can effectively guide the development of the next generation of new products. However, vehicle companies cannot accumulate design related experience in a short time by following the battery company's past trial-and-error R&D model, which does not meet the need of vehicle companies to quickly establish a battery technology R&D capability system.

A solid R&D system must include a clear and accurate design goal, pay attention to TTM (TIME to market), integrate internal and external resources, and a high-quality and efficient prototype method design-test verification cycle, which can help automobile enterprises develop more attractive new products faster and explore and verify new production processes.

Therefore, automobile enterprises need to establish a more efficient product R&D cycle of design simulation/test verification and manufacturing in the battery field, and achieve new product development at a faster speed of competitors, so as to win the strategic initiative.

Introduce multi-scale simulation to accelerate battery forward design

In fact, in the field of vehicle system design and development, in recent years, it is important to speed up the efficiency of new vehicle product development by enhancing the confidence of simulation and guiding the use. Taking Chang'an Automobile as an example, Chang'an Automobile has established a 5-level evaluation system of CAE simulation confidence against Ford Motor and General Motors. The number of tests has gradually decreased and the proportion of simulation has gradually increased.

In battery research and development, there is also the same positive design trend, that is, gradually reducing the steps and times of trial and error iterations in the intermediate experiment, gradually increasing the proportion of simulation guidance design, and improving the efficiency of data collection, sorting and analysis process in the design-test/simulation-manufacturing cycle through digital means.

The battery research and development will gradually change from experimental trial and error to simulation-driven forward design, and from independent analysis of each link and team to collaborative research and development of the organization as a whole.

Figure Li Zhe, associate professor of Tsinghua University: advanced design technology and R&D model reform of power lithium battery

It can be seen that automobile enterprises should use digital R&D technology to build an efficient product development cycle.

As far as building the battery R&D system itself is concerned, vehicle enterprises should first combine the underlying material calculation, electrochemical simulation and other technologies to carry out forward product design, minimize the number of sample preparation tests and prevent blind trial and error.

The second is to use digital technologies such as simulation and test data management and analysis to improve the efficiency of research and development and improve the ability of research and development integration in the middle level.

These key digital technologies are also evolving, and there are some new development trends and new research and development tools and software that deserve attention. The details have been described in detail in "What will the head battery company fight for in the future? Digital R&D technology" and "Forward design of simulation drive battery" respectively. The following will be briefly introduced in combination with the application progress of vehicle enterprises:

CAE simulation is one of the classic research and development digital technologies. At present, the important development trend is multi-scale simulation. Micro-scale material genomics, DFT, MD and other methods are based on the intrinsic characteristics of materials to assist in screening new materials such as positive and negative electrodes, electrolytes, separators and adhesives, and developing new chemical material systems.

On the other hand, build a real electrode structure model on the particle scale, optimize the existing P2D model, and improve the overall performance of the battery from the real electrode microstructure. This kind of thinking is based on the existing material system to maximize the material performance. At present, the practical application of multi-scale simulation is also more concentrated in the particle and polar layer.

In addition, the future research and development of solid state batteries will be based on new electrochemical theoretical models, which will rely on electrochemical theoretical innovation to achieve engineering innovation.

At present, automobile enterprises have begun to use emerging material development technologies to prepare technical reserves for the development of the next generation battery material chemical system. For example, Toyota announced a cooperation with quantum computing software company QunaSys in 2021. Toyota will use QunaSys's quantum computing software to find new materials to optimize and improve Toyota's battery performance.

Quantum computing software is based on density functional theory DFT to simulate the electronic structure model of various materials and obtain the performance of various materials. Compared with existing supercomputing resources, quantum computing runs DFT in shorter computing time and more accurate simulation results.

Toyota hopes to use the DFT material calculation method supported by quantum computing to find the best solid state battery material.

In terms of introducing simulation technology, some domestic and foreign automobile enterprises have begun to introduce battery simulation research and development tools.

Taking Geely Automobile as an example, the domestic battery simulation software company Yilaikede will provide Geely Automobile with research and development tools such as cell design, electrochemistry-thermal-life performance simulation, fast charging analysis and loading performance, and accelerate cell model design through modeling and simulation at the scale of 100 microns to reduce the cost of experiment and error. In addition, Elycode will also help Geely build its own knowledge base of materials, processes, testing and comparison.

The new force of domestic car building, such as Weilai, is also seeking high-end talents for cell research and development. From the information of this year's campus doctoral recruitment session, Weilai recruitment positions include electrochemical simulation, battery mechanism analysis, silicon-based directional anode, graphite anode, lithium metal anode, polymer electrode materials and other research and development directions.

Taking the battery mechanism analysis engineer as an example, the engineer in this position should undertake the tasks of exploring battery mechanism, multi-scale simulation, material calculation, experimental testing, simulation model development, etc., and help the company establish the research and development capability of battery simulation-test.

It is reported that the R&D team of Weilai battery has more than 400 people, covering the design of battery materials and cells.

In addition to the use of material computing technology and electrochemical simulation technology to achieve material innovation, there are also automobile enterprises that combine material innovation with battery structure innovation. The typical example is BYD's introduction of lithium iron phosphate blade battery at the end of 2018, leading the lithium iron phosphate loading volume and the market share of square shell battery to rise all the way up to now.

For example, last year TSLA launched 4680 large cylindrical battery, which is an innovation in structure and technology, and has aroused the market's attention on the large-scale application of cylindrical battery technology. In addition, the TSLA4680 also uses a ground-breaking silicon-based anode material to improve the energy density of the battery.

Use digital technology to create efficient R&D collaboration

As for car companies, it is crucial that the data of battery design, simulation and test can be transferred and shared within the battery R&D team smoothly, and that team members can intuitively understand the meaning behind these data.

More importantly, how to feed back the data results obtained from the battery test directly to the teams of other vehicle R&D departments, complete the development of the battery subsystem more efficiently, and meet the design requirements of the upper system. These are the basis of R&D integration, and will also determine the effect of the integration of the entire R&D system.

Therefore, in terms of R&D integration, vehicle enterprises should build a unified R&D data management and analysis platform to realize the whole process of battery R&D data traceability, and lay a solid foundation for the combination of battery test and simulation, battery R&D and vehicle R&D, and battery service condition data analysis.

Further, the company can analyze and mine the test process data and result data by establishing a data platform, and try to use AI and other technologies to extract the internal mechanism rules of the battery.

In terms of data analysis, some auto companies have begun to introduce some new technologies and new R&D tools, hoping to accelerate the construction of their own battery R&D and design technology capabilities. For example, Daimler (Mercedes Benz) introduced the EBI platform of Voltaiq.

The EBI (Enterprise Battery Intelligence) platform developed by Voltaiq can automatically collect a large amount of battery data from battery test laboratories, production lines and battery packs under actual working conditions. The whole subsequent analysis process is based on cloud services.

Figure Voltaiq platform technology and its business model

Voltaiq can help battery companies realize automated test data storage management and analysis through the new battery data analysis platform, change the original manual EXCEL-based data processing method, and provide the development environment for AI technology applications to accelerate the testing and analysis of new materials, chemicals and manufacturing processes. Its platform technology helps vehicle companies and battery companies shorten the development cycle of new battery products, and more effectively design, develop, manufacture and use battery products.

In a word, the material innovation, structure innovation and system integration innovation of battery are inseparable from the application of information technology. It is increasingly necessary to integrate and drive the entire research and development system through calculation and data.

In the construction of battery R&D capability system, automobile enterprises are introducing both multi-scale simulation technology from micro to macro, and building a comprehensive data platform through design, testing, and simulation, so as to realize the whole process of battery R&D data traceability, as well as cross-department and cross-organization research and development cooperation.

In addition, extending from the R&D system, the integration trend of R&D, design and manufacturing has become increasingly important. The manufacturing process and design simulation work together to accelerate the speed of new products entering the large-scale manufacturing process.

As for automobile enterprises involved in battery R&D and manufacturing, they should consider the technological innovation of power lithium battery more from the perspective of vehicle R&D. For example, in the chassis power control domain, the direct integration of the battery pack and the chassis, and the NVH problem involved in the battery as a vehicle component should be considered.

In addition, vehicle enterprises can use cloud battery data to explore the law of battery mechanism, and the feedback attenuation data can be used to deepen the understanding of battery aging mechanism, optimize battery design, and even effectively shorten the development cycle of BMS system.

The vehicle development should also consider the compatibility of the platform with various types of batteries.

For example, GE benefits from its deep involvement in battery testing and verification and material research and development. The battery compatibility of GE's Autotron platform is very strong, and it can be compatible with lithium iron phosphate, ternary and future solid-state batteries.

From the perspective of R&D structure, the battery R&D system itself lays more emphasis on formula+materials, and the production process is also closer to the process industry, while the whole vehicle R&D is a discrete manufacturing method with parts as the core and assembly as the core. How to integrate different types of product R&D systems will be a major challenge for automobile enterprises to establish efficient R&D systems in the future.

03. Build the core competence of battery research and development, and take the lead in material technology research and development

In general, due to the relatively slow change of the battery material system, major changes can only be made once every 10 to 20 years, which gives car companies a window of opportunity to catch up with battery companies and lay out the next-generation battery technology.

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