CATL is no longer satisfied with just making batteries and has set its sights on the chassis sector.
In March this year, Yang Hanbing, General Manager of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. (CATL) (Shanghai) Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., revealed at the Hundred People Forum that CATL's first skateboard chassis product based on lithium iron phosphate batteries will be mass-produced in the second half of this year.
In fact, CATL started promoting skateboard chassis products at the end of last year, trying to bring some heat to this once popular but now quiet technology product. However, the reality is that skateboard chassis is no longer the darling of the capital market as it was in the past two years. Currently, most manufacturers making skateboard chassis are struggling to survive, either stuck in mass production or facing worsening losses.
Skateboard chassis, a highly integrated customized vehicle platform, integrates steering modules, braking modules, powertrain modules, suspension modules, etc., into a skateboard-shaped automotive chassis.
Why is CATL diving into this murky water? Is their claim of "unveiling means mass production" just a publicity stunt to hype up interest, or has the skateboard chassis reached a turning point in commercial application?
Today, the Tiger Sniff Automotive Signal Team will reveal the real "bottom" of the skateboard chassis.
CATL Aiming for Big Moves
Six years ago, CATL set its sights on the chassis field.
In 2018, CATL initiated a CTC technology project internally within the group. After three years of internal research and development, it established a company named "Times Intelligent" to carry out industrialization practices. Currently, the team has more than 600 members, led by Yang Hanbing, former president of Schaeffler Greater China Automotive Technology Business Unit.
In January 2023, Times Intelligent signed a contract with the Management Committee of Yichun Economic and Technological Development Zone in Jiangxi Province. Times Intelligent will build its first skateboard chassis production base in Yichun.
Meanwhile, CATL, under the name of Ningde Times New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., registered several trademarks named "Flexhub" last year. In mid-April, the "Flexhub" official website (www.flexhub-ciic.com) quietly went online. It is reported that CATL will showcase this chassis product during the Beijing Auto Show.
It is evident that from research and development to production, CATL has made sufficient preparations for the launch of the skateboard chassis.
In fact, the skateboard chassis is nothing new. As early as 2002, General Motors proposed the concept of "skateboard," presenting an integrated chassis and wire-controlled technology. In the past few years, a large number of startup companies specializing in skateboard chassis have emerged in the industry, including Canoo and Arrival in the United States, REE in Israel, as well as PIX Moving and Youpao Technology in China.
The reason why the skateboard chassis is not a "novelty" is fundamentally because it is a branch of pure electric chassis platforms.
Initially, automobile chassis were designed around traditional internal combustion power systems, with electromechanical fluid coupling for vehicle control. Each electronic control unit in the electrical architecture was basically responsible for controlling a single functional unit, and they operated independently.
In the era of electric vehicles, automobile chassis are centered around the three electric components, eliminating the need for a large number of distributed electronic control units and instead using a few high-performance computing units. In fact, most OEMs integrate to varying degrees on the chassis, such as Volkswagen's MEB platform, Hyundai's E-GMP platform, and Toyota's e-TNGA architecture, all of which have strong modular integration properties.
Taking Volkswagen's MEB platform as an example, it integrates the battery and motor into the chassis architecture, achieving balanced load distribution between the front and rear wheels and enabling multiple drive modes. This platform covers vehicle classes from A to D, including pure electric sedans, SUVs, and MPVs.
Of course, these products are not the ultimate form of "skateboard chassis," but it can be seen that highly integrated chassis is a major trend in the development of the automotive industry. This also explains why CATL chose to enter this market.
In CATL's words, from battery to chassis, this is "Building Around Battery."
According to official disclosures, CATL's skateboard chassis integrates CTC energy compartments, electric drive, thermal management, and suspension, among other system components. "The vehicle body is the brain of the car, it's the intelligent space. The chassis is the cerebellum, the carrier of energy and motion units," said Wu Kai, chief scientist of CATL.
This is similar to the "integrated technology solutions" launched by MediaTek in the era of smartphones, which enables different brands to release new models by simply changing the shell.
CATL's vision is to support multiple scenarios through a single platform. Based on the skateboard chassis platform, it can develop passenger cars such as SUVs, sedans, and MPVs, as well as B2B scenarios such as ride-hailing, car sharing, and logistics vehicles.
The B2B scenario is easy to understand. Most of the players entering the skateboard chassis market are currently deploying in commercial vehicle scenarios, such as low-speed logistics vehicles and catering vehicles. However, the question is, how will CATL harvest passenger car customers and make OEMs foot the bill?
Making OEMs foot the bill is not that easy.
"We are confident that OEMs can launch a new car within 18 months, greatly shortening the time compared to the previous 36 or 48 months," said Yang Hanbing. "Multiple models of the OEMs can share a single skateboard chassis platform to reduce the initial development costs of vehicles."
Like other players in the skateboard chassis game, CATL's selling point for the skateboard chassis is also "fast manufacturing, cost reduction." To attract B-side customers, Times Intelligent even proposed to "only charge one-third of the development cost for OEMs to develop skateboard chassis on their own."
"That's CATL's algorithm," said a traditional automotive R&D personnel frankly. "If you want to use this chassis, you have to build a new factory production line. Just building a factory would cost five to six billion."
Initial investment is one aspect. For OEMs, how could they, who once shouted "working for CATL" because the battery accounted for 60% of the vehicle cost, completely surrender one of the "three major components" of the car to others and become a mere "assembly factory"? Moreover, even with the reduction in battery costs, the chassis still accounts for up to 70% of the vehicle cost. It can be imagined how difficult it is for OEMs to hand over the chassis.
"Furthermore, if it's for cost reduction and efficiency improvement, this should be something that OEMs should do themselves rather than paying others to do it," said the above-mentioned R&D personnel. In fact, CATL's integrated chassis CTC technology has been developed and applied by OEMs such as Tesla, Leap Motor, BYD, Volkswagen, Volvo, and Ford.
A real-life example is Ford's announcement of cooperation with Rivian to develop electric vehicles, which was quickly terminated. "We also have chassis development capabilities ourselves, so in a sense, we don't need to use their skateboard chassis," Ford said.
