When I went to the Mitsubishi Chemical Research Institute a few years ago, I went to see the battery testing and laboratory there. In the battery function test, if you can get the report from this laboratory, you basically get the world's most authoritative report. Whether it is materials or battery products, manufacturers from all over the world line up to test here. Most of the latest battery research and development trends in the world are controlled by the technical and R&D personnel in this laboratory.

 

 

 

Japan has accumulated a considerable amount of technology in battery materials and battery research, and is one of the largest countries in the world in terms of the production of new batteries. But one thing that is surprising is that Japan's electric vehicle production and sales have been relatively backward in the world, and it is unlikely that it will quickly become the world's major electric vehicle producer. Japan is likely to become a lagging behind in this round of industrial revolution.

 

 

 

If you look at battery production, Panasonic should be the world's leading manufacturer. A few years ago, Panasonic acquired its sister company Sanyo, with a larger purpose to obtain Sanyo's battery production technology. For a long time before the merger, Panasonic executives believed that the battery had no future, and reduced the battery department, making battery research suddenly fall behind. When it learns about the future of batteries again, Panasonic can only rely on the acquisition of Sanyo to catch up with the world trend.

 

 

 

With the battery research conducted by Sanyo, Panasonic has become a battery supplier for Tesla in the United States. After the battery factory in the United States began operations in January 2017, it provided Tesla with only batteries. Panasonic's position in the electric vehicle industry It cannot be shaken.

 

 

 

Other manufacturers, such as Mitsubishi Chemical’s production capacity in electrolytes and Asahi Kasei’s manufacturing of battery separators, have world-leading technologies. In the future, they want to take the leading position in related R&D and material manufacturing from Japanese companies. An easy thing.

 

 

 

At the same time, because Japan is the world's most important automobile producer, with battery materials and cutting-edge technology in manufacturing, Japan should be the world's most important producer and seller of electric vehicles, but this is not the case.

 

 

 

For example, in October 2006, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation has launched a pure electric vehicle i-MiEV, and mass production began in June 2009. When I went to Japan for an interview, I drove hundreds of meters on the company's internal test track. Although the distance was short, it felt good. The Japanese government provides some price subsidies for the purchase of pure electric vehicles, each priced at 2 million yen (about 120,000 yuan). The author asked the person in charge of the company about the production capacity. At that time, the other party said that the annual production capacity was 10,000 units. When asked if he could export to China, the other party was unclear. When writing this article, I checked the sales of i-MiEV, and a total of 22,000 units have been sold so far.

 

 

 

Compared with the American Tesla that appeared in 2008, Mitsubishi Motors was two years earlier in production. From the price point of view, Tesla ModelS sells for 70,000 US dollars (about 450,000 yuan) in the United States, which is much more expensive than Mitsubishi Motors. However, in terms of sales volume, Tesla sold 47,000 units in the first half of 2017, which is completely unmatched by Mitsubishi Motors.

 

 

 

It has battery production technology and the world's advanced automobile manufacturers have launched mass-produced products ahead of other countries in the world. However, Japanese electric vehicles have not yet become popular. A big reason is that Japanese automakers have misjudged the electric vehicle market, believing that gasoline vehicles have a life span of several decades, and that fuel cell vehicles are also promising, and they have spent a lot of energy in developing fuel cell vehicles. It is estimated that it will be difficult to catch up with the backwardness of Japanese automakers in the process of this vehicle product upgrade. (The author is the Executive Dean of the Japanese Enterprise (China) Research Institute)

发送反馈

历史记录