On August 25th, at Shanghai New International Expo Center, Gao Weimin, CEO of Hanergy Solar Automotive Division, conducted a forward-looking project road show for Hanergy Solar Vehicles at the MMC. In the 20-minute speech time, he sat down for 30 minutes. Most of them are explaining the feasibility of Hanergy Solar Films' application in automobiles.
Gao Weimin revealed after the speech that Hanergy had promoted solar chips to auto makers in the early days. “It is hopeful that they can talk about solar chips with them. You use them, we provide chips, and one did not succeed.†This has become an introduction to Hanergy Motors. Hanergy hopes to convince the auto industry by making cars that solar film chips can power cars and drive them on the road.
At the beginning of last month, Hanergy released four solar cars: Hanergy Solar O, Hanergy Solar L, Hanergy Solar A and Hanergy Solar R. Then came a query.
In fact, Hanergy’s “repair dream†has been questioned since its birth. On the one hand, because most people have never seen solar-powered cars, they are more or less skeptical about the feasibility of commercial production; on the other hand, Hanergy’s stock price was cut in May last year, and the market value of 100 billion yuan evaporated. A lot of people's confidence.
Gao Weimin also knows the outside world's doubts about Hanergy Solar. After the speech, he told the media that many auto industries are not optimistic about solar energy. They don't know much about the progress of solar chips today. Every solar energy, he thought (conversion rate) is still 6% to 7%. A solar energy chip is used in cars. They do not believe it.
In the past few years, Hanergy has accumulated thin film technology by successively acquiring four overseas solar thin film companies: Alta Devices, Solibro, MiaSolé, and Global Solar Energy, and has achieved an energy conversion rate from 15% to 18% of the industry level through technology integration . Increased to 31.6%. To a large extent, the power of Hanergy to build cars comes from their confidence in thin-film chip technology.
According to Hanergy's plan, the conversion rate of GaAs thin-film solar cell technology will continue to increase, achieving a conversion rate of 38% by 2020 and 42% by 2025.
"Photovoltaic technology and vehicle technology are two completely different disciplines. People who do cars only want to do cars. People who do photovoltaics only want thin-film power generation. Therefore, Hanergy solar-powered vehicles will not combine these two items together. Gao Weimin has already made this point on several occasions. He believes that solar car is ultimately an innovation of two interdisciplinary automotive and solar energy, which is very valuable. This is one of the reasons why Gao Weimin, who once served as the dean of the institute at SAIC and BAIC, joined Hanergy.
At the press conference in early July this year, the cooperation plan between Hanergy and Foton Motor was to use solar energy to provide the electricity needed to meet the air-conditioning needs of bus operations. It now appears that this is the transition plan that Hanergy has given before building a full solar car.
Zhang Bin, senior vice president of Hanergy, told us, “With chips, we can become a transitional program, not to say that it is in place. For example, as a basic auxiliary power source, we can slowly transition to a full solar car solution . This is a path problem. ."
Although the mass production of solar-powered cars still needs to solve some technical bottlenecks, Zhang Bin’s statement also shows that Hanergy’s first solar-powered car is likely to be embedded in solar cells based on lithium batteries, namely solar energy and batteries. Work together to increase the cruising range of pure electric vehicles and reduce battery weight while meeting the lightweight requirements of the car body. Gao Weimin said that Hanergy is currently in contact with some auto makers, trying to sell this program to the latter.
Regarding Hanergy's preference for selling solutions or building its own cars, Gao Weimin said that both have the will, but prefer the latter. He explained to Lei Fengwang (searching for the "Lei Feng Net" public number) that by building his own car, he can understand how the car industry's chips should be developed. This is because the automotive-grade solar chips will differ from the original chips in terms of process, equipment, and raw materials. The research and development of automotive-grade chips is currently an ongoing work for Hanergy.
At this stage, Hanergy's solar cars still have a lot of work to sort out. Gao Weimin said that the current path of Hanergy Motors is still in progress:
Hanergy will establish a car company in accordance with relevant regulations and apply for qualifications to obtain approval from relevant departments. He said that in the future there will be various ways of cooperation, such as through acquisitions, joint ventures with third parties, and foundry operations. Gao Weimin said that in accordance with the current progress, Hanergy's first solar car will be listed within three years. In terms of costs, he also said that if it can produce 300,000 electric vehicles, the cost of the chips will be around 6,000 yuan.
According to Hanergy's plan, all solar cars do not need to deliberately charge to a fixed charging facility. Under conditions of good lighting conditions, the car can be parked in the sun and charged. In addition, conventional lithium-ion energy storage batteries equipped with all-solar power vehicles can be charged at fixed charging facilities in rainy weather or long-distance travel requirements, with a maximum life of 350 kilometers.
Today's Hanergy is similar to the earlier BYD. 13 years ago, BYD had battery technology and related patents, but at the time there was not much auto manufacturers willing to focus on pure electric vehicles. BYD had to build their own cars. After more than ten years of accumulation, this car maker who started with battery technology came to this day. For Hanergy, which owns solar thin-film chip technology, the road to building a car is just as long. But the bigger challenge is that building a car still requires a lot of money.
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