Core Components of New Energy Vehicles: Global Trends in Drive Motors

With the continuous improvement of the global vehicle electrification penetration rate, the drive motor industry will usher in a rapid expansion of the overall scale. In this process, third-party motor manufacturers with economies of scale and technological advantages will have the opportunity to rapidly expand their market share and gain substantial growth in performance.

Global drive motor market trends

According to estimates, with the rapid advancement of global vehicle electrification, the new energy vehicle motor system market will expand rapidly, and the market size is expected to grow from $2.3 billion in 2015 to $31.8 billion in 2030.

The electric motor system of new energy vehicles mainly includes two parts: electric motor and inverter. Although these two parts are under pressure to reduce prices for a long time like most other auto parts, due to the increase in the total number of new energy vehicles, the industry as a whole still has a relatively low price. Great upside. We expect the average annual growth rate of the market size to be around 18%-20% by 2030.

In terms of system unit price, the overall development of the motor system in the direction of high power has also brought about an increase in the assembly price.

According to estimates, under the neutral assumption, the sales of electric vehicles will reach 20 million units in 2030, accounting for about 16%-18% of the total sales of passenger vehicles in that year. However, under the optimistic scenario, that is, under the condition that battery prices drop sharply and environmental protection policies are more stringent, the growth rate of electric vehicle sales may increase significantly. We expect that under the optimistic scenario, the total annual sales of new energy vehicles may be It reached the level of 30 million units, accounting for about 25%-27% of the car sales that year.

It is estimated that the power demand of single-motor hybrid vehicles is about 30kw, the power of dual-motor plug-in hybrids is about 50-100kw, and the motor power of pure electric vehicles is about 200kw.

Electric motor market situation

We expect the average annual growth rate of electric motor sales to reach 18% by 2030, and the industry's overall sales will reach $19.5 billion by 2030, an increase of nearly 17 times compared to the level of $1.2 billion in 2015.

It is expected that the sales of electric motors will increase from 3.6 million in 2015 to 49 million in 2030. At the same time, the number of single-motor motors is expected to decline, from 1.8 to 1.4, mainly due to the increase in the sales of single-motor pure electric vehicles.

However, we expect that the unit price of electric motors will further increase, from the current $350 to $380, mainly driven by the wider application of high-priced and high-power motors.

In terms of market share, the Toyota Group is far ahead in the 2016 data, and the Honda Group ranks second. At the same time, the two major groups also occupy the world's leading positions in the hybrid field. Then came BYD and the Taiwanese motor maker Tomita Electric, which supplies Tesla.

In the long-term development process of the motor industry, the rise of third-party suppliers will be the general trend. If we observe the current industrial chain of the Japanese automobile industry, it is not difficult to find that the top three leading positions are all inclined to self-powered motor products, which is not only related to the traditional genes of Japanese manufacturing companies, but also related to the stage of industry development.

If we compare the development history of the PC and mobile phone industries, it is not difficult to find that these two industries are highly integrated upstream and downstream production in the early stage, whether it is HP, Apple, Silicon Graphics in the PC industry, or Nokia and Motorola in the mobile phone industry. They are all highly integrated in the industrial chain. Because the product replacement speed is relatively fast in the initial stage, upstream parts suppliers need to respond quickly and cooperate with each other, so the mode of integrated production has a high cost performance;

However, in the middle and late stages of industry development, due to the expansion of the entire market, and the speed of product replacement does not need to be as fast as in the initial stage, the scale effect of third-party suppliers taking the entire market as their customers is reflected, which also gave birth to Foxconn, The rise of a series of third-party suppliers such as Micron and Hynix.

The new energy vehicle motor industry is no exception. From the current point of view, Honda has announced that it will cooperate with Hitachi to produce motors. At the same time, Nissan also mentioned at the investor exchange meeting that it may start to source electric motors in the future.

In October 2017, Mitsubishi Electric announced that it would supply motors and inverters to Daimler Benz. With the popularization of high-efficiency and low-cost products from third-party motor manufacturers, it is an irresistible trend for the market share of the motor industry to shift from self-supply by OEMs to third-party companies.

At present, Japanese motor companies have begun to respond to the trend change brought about by electrification. We expect Denso and Aisin Seiki will be the first to take advantage of their existing scale advantages to gain market share at lower costs, while Denso and Meidensha will follow quickly.

At present, the average gross profit margin of the motor industry is about 30%, and the scale of production is one of the main factors that determine the level of gross profit margin.

Inverter industry situation

We predict that the inverter industry will also usher in rapid growth. According to estimates, the sales revenue of the inverter market will increase from $1.2 billion in 2015 to 13.3 billion in 2030.

In terms of sales, because the ratio of inverters to motors is basically 1:1, it is expected that its total sales will increase from 3.6 million in 2015 to 49 million in 2030.

At the same time, the price of the bicycle package will drop from $300-$400 to $200-$300, mainly due to the cost scale effect after the increase in volume.

Similar to the motor field, the Toyota Group is also currently in a leading position in the inverter industry. At the same time, Denso Group, a subsidiary of Toyota Group, is currently expanding its inverter customers on a large scale. After Toyota, Mitsubishi Electric also has a considerable market share.

technology evolution

From the perspective of motor classification, there are mainly four types: DC, AC induction, permanent magnet synchronous and switched reluctance. New energy vehicle motors are mainly used in the latter three.

At present, permanent magnet synchronous motor is the mainstream motor type due to its superior performance. The price of AC asynchronous motors is moderate, but the performance is slightly worse, and some manufacturers use them in the United States and China. The main advantage of the switched reluctance motor is its lower price, but there are also technical problems of noise and vibration. If these problems can be solved, the switched reluctance motor will have a large market.

AC asynchronous motor: Although from the current point of view, AC asynchronous motor has no advantages over permanent magnet synchronous power, its cost is much lower than that of permanent magnet synchronous motor. In terms of volume, the AC asynchronous motor is larger than the permanent magnet synchronous motor, which is mainly limited by the design structure.

Permanent magnet synchronous motor: There is a rotor wrapped with permanent magnets inside the motor, the overall system power is large, and the volume is small. The cost is relatively expensive, mainly due to the high price of permanent magnet materials. Research is currently underway on reducing the use of permanent magnets, and the research also focuses on improving the output performance of the magnets. Permanent magnet motor is a widely used motor type in the current electric vehicle motor industry.

Switched reluctance motors: Switched reluctance motors are very competitively priced, mainly due to the absence of high-cost permanent magnets in their rotors, and their moderate power. Since the tension of the stator and rotor is used to provide power, the vibration and noise caused by the process are the main problems. Since electric vehicle motors are currently in a period of rapid growth, we believe that the increase in demand will speed up technological innovation and replacement.

The direction of motor technology improvement

By studying the technical evolution trend of motors in the past 20 years, we found that there is still a lot of room for further improvement in motor technology. First look at the thickness of the steel used in the movement. For the stator and rotor, it is mainly composed of thin electromagnetic steel layers. The first-generation Toyota Prius in 1997 used a 0.35mm steel layer, which was then reduced to 0.3mm, and recently dropped to 0.25mm in 2016. Generally speaking, the increase in the number of thin steel layers can increase the efficiency of the motor, and also help to control the temperature of the motor.

At present, the manufacture of thin steel is a major technical problem in the industry. The main difficulty lies in controlling the springback in die casting and maintaining the consistency of the steel sheet material. Judging from the current situation, rotary forging technology will increasingly become the mainstream manufacturing method in the industry due to its advantages in cost and production efficiency.

Secondly, in terms of winding density, the amount of winding in the stator is an important factor in determining the power of the motor. What determines the amount of winding is the number of turns that the copper wire can wrap around the movement in a limited space. In terms of technology, the current use of interposer is suitable for high-power stator processing, and has gradually become the standard for industry production.

In terms of coil types, there are mainly two types: square and round. At present, mainstream manufacturers use round shape. However, due to the high space utilization rate of square technology, it is gradually replacing round shape as the general direction of the industry, while Toyota and Honda are currently Mass adoption of square winding technology has already begun. On the side of other manufacturers, Yaskawa Electric has begun to develop electronic winding technology with the aim of improving control and efficiency.

Then, in terms of the cooling system, it is divided into two parts: the motor and the inverter: for the motor, since the magnetic force of the permanent magnet motor will weaken as the motor temperature increases, the efficiency of the cooling system is very important for the high-power operation of the motor.

From the technical evolution trend, the mainstream cooling technology has developed from air cooling and water cooling to the current stage of oil cooling. The main technical means is to immerse the motor in the oil cooling chamber to achieve the purpose of cooling. Although some experts believe that the friction with oil will reduce the efficiency of the motor, but considering all aspects, oil cooling is still an effective cooling mode under the current technical conditions.

In terms of inverter, the cooling system is also important to the performance of the inverter. Nissan recently claimed that in the new 2017 Leaf model, the output power of the motor was increased from 80kw to 110kw by improving the cooling system of the inverter. Parts are the same as the previous generation.

This reflects the importance of the inverter cooling system. Although the use of silicon carbide will improve the heat resistance and pressure resistance of the motor, its higher cost and the time point for its large-scale application may be difficult to come in a short period of time.