(Economic Observation) Can the Tesla Miracle of China's PV Market Continue?
China News Agency, Shanghai, March 8th (Zhuo Zhuoao) Recently, Tesla's official WeChat recruitment platform in China has added two recruitment notices for positions in the energy sector. In addition to its core business pure electric vehicles, Tesla also operates solar energy. Rooftop power generation systems and solar power storage products, this recruitment is also seen as Tesla is expanding its energy business to the Chinese market.
In fact, in February this year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated on Twitter that the company is stepping up the installation of solar roofs in the San Francisco Bay Area, and that the business will soon enter the Chinese and European markets. The media here also released news on the 6th that Tesla China's solar roof team has been set up at the Tesla China headquarters in Shanghai.
In 2019, Tesla Shanghai Super Factory completed factory construction and product delivery in one year, showing the "Tesla Speed" to the world. This time, Tesla's solar business has also received extensive attention from the outside world.
Unlike electric vehicles, the photovoltaic industry is very mature in China. Chen Li, director of the operation department of Hangzhou Hongsheng Power Design Consulting Co., Ltd., said in an interview with a reporter from China News Agency that China ’s photovoltaic industry has undergone many rounds of reshuffle. It has strong first-mover strength, and the upstream and downstream industrial chains and marketing channels have been relatively complete.
"Tesla's photovoltaic products do not have technical breakthroughs. In terms of cost, Tesla has a short-term advantage over Chinese leading photovoltaic companies such as Longji, Jinko, and Tongwei who have already opened the entire industry chain." Chen Li Say.
Yue Peng, a senior practitioner in the photovoltaic industry, told China News Agency that Tesla's solar business is currently focused on investing in, constructing, leasing, and selling solar power systems including residential, industrial and commercial rooftops, that is, distributed photovoltaic power generation projects. This model is very mature in China.
With the government's subsidy for the photovoltaic industry, the price of photovoltaic modules has dropped significantly, and the application market has been fully competitive. According to data released by China's National Energy Administration, China's new photovoltaic power generation installed capacity in 2019 is 30.11 million kilowatts, a year-on-year decrease of 31.6 %, "It can be said that there are more monks and less porridge, and practitioners are looking for high-quality, increasingly scarce industrial and commercial user rooftops to invest in parity distributed photovoltaic projects." Yue Peng said.
Yue Peng pointed out that in addition to investing in distributed market-oriented projects, Tesla's tile-type components and energy storage systems are mainly targeted at high-end users, which are relatively economical, and more concerned about the spread of environmental protection concepts. The market size is not large, and China With similar quality products, "Whether Tesla will invest in domestic production to reduce costs needs further observation."
In such an external environment, Chen Li and Yue Peng reached similar conclusions-Tesla is likely to enter China as a solar power solution provider rather than a producer.
Chen Li believes that Tesla can stand out from the competition by working with Chinese companies to take advantage of its brand advantages and personalized services.
Yue Peng believes that Tesla now integrates electric vehicle business, solar energy business and energy storage business. If a closed-loop innovation model of clean energy “generation-storage-use” is created, it may not have no development prospects.
Tesla's advantage lies in resource integration. Yuepeng uses high-speed charging piles as an example. If Tesla combines the three businesses of photovoltaic, energy storage, and charging piles, it will provide photovoltaic charging facilities at locations where high-speed lines do not have good access to city power On the one hand, it solves the mileage anxiety of the owner, and on the other hand, due to the exclusivity of the Tesla charging pile, it will also stimulate consumers to buy Tesla cars. "A similar market size is still very large." (Finish)