JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #119 - March 2018 - 23

EV BUSINESS

China: driving the whole car supply chain,
electric vehicles are in full swing
Beijing forecasts that China will be able to produce two million electric and hybrid vehicles annually by 2020. To reach this goal and fulfil a booming demand,
local and foreign automakers are accelerating the timelines. The interest for
lightweight materials such as carbon fibre is growing and local car component
manufacturers are in their ranks.

hina has taken an obvious
leadership role in the electric
vehicle (EV) production
and market demand. According
to the China Association of
Automobile
Manufacturers
(CAAM), new-energy vehicle
production and sales reached
517,000 and 490,000 units
during the January-October
2017 period, a year-on-year
growth of 45.7% and 45.4%,
respectively. Pure electric vehicle
production and sales respectively
rose to 427,000 and 402,000
units, a year-on-year growth of

54.7% and 55.9% respectively.
The Chinese outperformed
estimates in both the supply
and demand. On the supply
side, China's government has
made it a priority to create
favourable conditions for EV
stakeholders, including investors.
To achieve in the electric car
market the global leadership that
they missed in the conventional
car market, China's policymakers
targeted electric cars for special
support in the "Made in China
2025" industrial plan, which aims
to foster upgraded, technologically advanced manufacturing.
By 2020, Beijing expects its
automakers to be able to churn
out two million electric and hy-

For the BAIC's pure electric vehicle ARCFOX-1, Kangdexin Group designed
and developed "the first integrated molding carbon fiber upper body
structure."

brid vehicles annually - six times
the number produced in 2015.
In September 2017, China's
Vice Minister of Industry and
Information Technology, Xin
Guobin, said that the country
is working on a timetable to
end the production and sale of
vehicles that run on fossil fuels,
potentially dramatically reshaping
the global automotive market
in favour of electric vehicles.
The country's component suppliers offered a boost as well. A July
2017 report on electric vehicles
by McKinsey & Company shows
that China's EV supply chain is superior to that of the United States.
Carbon fibre pioneers
A ceremony was held on 6
November 2017 in Changzhou,
a Chinese city located in the Eastern Jiangsu Province, to implement a "new-energy vehicle carbon
fibre body and components project".
KDX Group, BAIC Group and
Changzhou Hi-Tech Group jointly invested CNY 12 billion (US$
1.8 billion) to finance the project,
which is divided into three phases.
The first phase will begin in June
2019, when the factory comes
into operation, and eventually, six
million parts should be produced
annually.
Zhong Yu, chairman of KDX
N°119 March 2018

Group, recalls that in 2014, his
visit to Germany opened the
course of a China-Germany
innovative partnership to build
a lightweight eco-platform for
carbon fibre. "Three years later, on 1
June 2017, with Premier Li Keqiang's
visit to Germany again, I briefed the
two Prime Ministers on the fruitful
achievements of the past three years,
and reported that the lightweight
eco-platform has been successful",
Zhong Yu said in a related press
release.
The eco-platform includes the
ZAX carbon fibre body and parts
manufacturing plant, located
in Langfang, Hebei Province.
According to Zhong Yu, "with a
total investment of CNY 3 billion
(US$ 450 million), the plant will
produce annually 50,000 carbon
fibre bodies and 1.5 million carbon
fibre parts for new-energy vehicles
using technologies such as HP-RTM,
surface RTM, wet pressing, C-SMC
and PCM."
"Our carbon fibre lightweight ecological platform has been recognized by
the world's leading manufacturers.
BMW, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, BAIC,
NIO, Volvo, SAIC, Dongfeng,
Guangzhou Automobile, Chang'an,
Geely Automobile and 57 other car
companies are willing to expand
cooperation to jointly promote the development of new-energy lightweight
vehicles", Zhong Yu asserts.
The Yangtze River Delta region

/ jec composites magazine

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #119 - March 2018