In order to better understand the development status of the automobile industry, deeply analyze the future development path of China's automobile industry, explore the technological innovation of the automobile industry in the new era, and show the latest technological achievements, on November 17, 2022, sponsored by OFweek, OFweek Electronic Engineering Network, OFweek Laser Network, OFweek Intelligent Automobile Network The "OFweek 2022 China Automotive Industry Conference" hosted by OFweek New Energy Vehicles was successfully held in Sheraton Grand China Hotel, Futian, Shenzhen.
The conference invited scientific researchers, enterprise technical experts and industry research experts from laser and automobile fields, who brought wonderful reports from different perspectives. The following are the report contents:
Liu Henghui, a researcher in the laser industry of WEIKNET Industry Research Center, made a report with the theme of "broad prospects of laser technology in the automotive field".
It is reported that since China became the world's largest auto market for the first time in 2009, China has occupied the first place in global auto sales for 13 consecutive years, with domestic auto sales increasing from 13.64 million in 2009 to 26.28 million in 2021; Its share in global auto sales also increased from 20.8% in 2009 to 32.4% in 2021. Although China has become the largest automobile market in the world for 13 consecutive years, there is still a large demand space for automobiles in China in terms of the number of thousands of people. According to the World Bank's statistics on the car ownership of one thousand people in 20 major countries in the world in 2019, China ranks 17th with 173 cars, which still lags far behind developed countries such as the United States, Japan, Britain and France.
Automobile lightweight is a comprehensive project integrating material technology, manufacturing technology and structural design technology, including the application of lightweight materials, advanced structural optimization or design methods and new manufacturing technologies and processes, which are embodied in three aspects: materials, manufacturing and product structure. At present, the main laser welding processes used in the field of automobile welding include laser self fusion welding, laser filler wire welding, laser brazing and laser arc hybrid welding.
According to customs data, the average unit price of laser welding robots imported from China from 2014 to 2022 is 196000 US dollars/set, about three times that of resistance welding robots and about two times that of arc welding robots. The high cost input in the early stage has made the penetration of laser welding in the automotive field very low. According to the online report on automobile lightweight, the proportion of laser welding applied to all steel car bodies in China is 2%, that of steel aluminum car bodies is 4%, that of all aluminum car bodies is about 2.5%, and that of aluminum+carbon fiber car bodies is about 7.4%.
The application of laser welding in the power battery mainly focuses on the assembly of the middle section of the battery cell and the back section of the pack process, including the matching welding of the middle section of the electrode lug, spot welding of the electrode strip, pre welding of the battery cell into the shell, welding of the liquid injection port, and the welding of the explosion-proof valve, module and pack in the back section of the pack process.
Since this year, due to factors such as the COVID-19 and the increasing uncertainty of the economic environment, the demand for downstream equipment investment has been greatly suppressed, and the equipment investment has slowed down significantly. The performance of most domestic laser equipment enterprises has declined to a certain extent, but the performance of the three laser enterprises focusing on lithium battery business has improved, and the revenue growth in each quarter is significantly ahead of other laser equipment enterprises.
Source: OFweek
