Large-scale expansion of production puts forward new manufacturing requirements, and lithium-ion robots enter a period of explosive demand

In the past two years, power battery manufacturers have launched large-scale expansion plans, and the production capacity planning of the entire lithium battery industry is moving towards 2TWh. Large-scale production capacity puts higher requirements on the production efficiency and quality of the production line, and the landing scene of robots has emerged. The main products include industrial robots , mobile robots , machine vision, sensors, etc.

The "2022 Lithium Battery Industry Robot Application Development Blue Book" jointly released by Gaogong Consulting, Gaogong Robot, Gaogong Lithium Battery, Estun, Huichuan Technology, Xinjingcheng, Stand Robot, Huarui Technology, UAI, HikRobot, Jiashun Intelligence, Jiazhi Technology, Chuangzhi Technology and other participating companies shows that in the lithium battery industry, the sales of industrial robots and mobile robots in 2021 were 19,700 and 6,839 units respectively, with year-on-year growth rates of 98.18% and 83.84% respectively. It is expected that the demand in 2025 will exceed 67,000 and 25,000 units respectively; the market size of machine vision in the lithium battery industry in 2021 was 1.139 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 60.8%, and the potential order demand in 2025 is expected to exceed 10 billion yuan.

Robotic companies have already felt the signs of rising demand. In an interview, Niu Shiju, president of Jiashun Intelligent, said that with the increase in market size, a relatively effective robot industry chain has basically been formed in China, which has brought about economies of scale, and the price reduction of robot products is also objective. "From the perspective of customers, the original investment balance point was mainly in high-end industries, but now more industries can recover their investment costs in about 2 years, so they are more willing to use mobile robot products."

Similar to other manufacturing industries, the application of robots can make up for the shortcomings of traditional employment methods. Guan Jian, marketing director of UAI, said that the underlying value of mobile robots lies in addressing the difficulties in recruiting and retaining workers, as well as reducing the inconsistency caused by personnel handling and the resulting loss of raw material costs.

"We joked internally that the automation of logistics operations is the last step from Industry 2.9 to Industry 3.0. Mobile robots can not only connect the raw materials on the production line, but also make the data of the production process more complete, providing a data closed loop for the factory," said Guan Jian.

In addition, the increasingly diversified technical routes of lithium batteries have also spawned the demand for flexible production lines. In the past few years, the domestic battery structure was mainly square aluminum shells. In the past two years, car companies and battery manufacturers have frequently innovated in structural systems, and new forms such as blade batteries, magazine batteries, and large cylindrical batteries have emerged one after another. The single-line production capacity of lithium batteries continues to increase, and at the same time, the differentiation and discreteness of production lines have also become a trend.

"The demand for manufacturing is increasing, and orders are oriented towards multiple batches and small batches. Mobile robots can adapt to such complex changes, dynamically adjust the operation path, and adapt to the complex changes of various processes and products." said Sun Yichao, CTO of Jiazhi Technology.

Under the pressure of rising raw material prices, battery manufacturers are paying more and more attention to cost control and production efficiency. Niu Shiju believes that compared with the cost reduction brought by robots replacing labor, customers may pay more attention to the improvement of precision and quality brought by robots . The additional output brought by a conversion link may help improve the production capacity of the main equipment.

"From the experience of other industries, the application of mobile robots can help lithium battery factories reduce water level inventory. This is similar to the blood flow becoming smooth and efficient, and the stagnant inventory on the production line and cache line is reduced, and this part of the pledged funds can be released. This can improve the utilization rate of all machines and the overall production capacity to a certain extent." Guan Jian said.

*This article is reproduced from Securities Times