From 100 million to 25 billion, the BMS market is developing rapidly

BMS (Battery Management System), also known as the battery management system, is the key link between the "battery", the core component of electric vehicles, and the entire vehicle.

As a control system to protect the safe use of power lithium-ion batteries, BMS monitors the battery's usage status at all times and takes necessary measures to alleviate the inconsistency of the battery pack, thereby ensuring the safe use of new energy vehicles and extending the service life of the power battery.

Development Trend of BMS

BMS is an indispensable and important component in power and energy storage battery packs, and its cost accounts for about 20% of the total cost of the battery pack on average. Benefiting from the development of the new energy industry chain, the market size of BMS is growing rapidly. It is predicted that the compound annual growth rate of the BMS market brought by global new energy vehicles will reach 21.1% from 2015 to 2025.

Lithium Battery Big Data learned that BMS as a sub-sector has only been developed for a short period of four or five years. In 2012, the market size of the entire BMS field was only about 100-200 million. At that time, some vehicle manufacturers even believed that the BMS system was just an accessory to the power battery. Professional BMS companies had a hard time surviving.

In recent years, with the booming new energy vehicle industry, the BMS industry has finally stood at the forefront of national policies. The relevant industries in the industry chain have paid more and more attention to BMS, and the competition in BMS has become increasingly fierce. In addition, in November 2015, the Ministry of Science and Technology issued a special document on the 2016 national "new energy vehicle" pilot project, in which BMS was listed as a key research task.

With the expansion of application scale, the replacement speed and mass production scale of BMS circuit boards and chips are increasing rapidly, and the price of BMS is also slowly decreasing, and is expected to drop to about 80% of the current price in 2020. However, even after the price reduction, by 2020, the demand for BMS brought by domestic new energy vehicles will exceed 25 billion yuan.

Tesla is the driving force behind the rapid development of the BMS market. In fact, among the "three major components" of Tesla cars, the battery comes from Panasonic, the motor comes from a Taiwanese supplier, and only the battery management system is Tesla's independently developed core technology. Between 2008 and 2015, most of the core intellectual property rights applied by Tesla were related to the battery management system. This shows the importance of the battery management system to new energy vehicles.

The domestic BMS market is dominated by three major players

The core of traditional fuel vehicles is inseparable from the so-called "three major parts": engine, chassis and gearbox. It is a consensus that China's technology lags behind foreign automakers led by Germany, Japan and the United States in these "three major parts". New energy electric vehicles also have the so-called "three major parts": battery, motor and electronic control. Since new energy electric vehicles are still a relatively new industry worldwide, the starting points of companies in various countries are not much different, which also allows Chinese companies to compete with foreign companies in the field of new energy electric vehicles.

in the country, the research and development and production of battery management systems (BMS) are mainly concentrated in the following three types of enterprises:

1. New energy vehicle companies,

2. Battery PACK enterprise,

3. Professional BMS enterprise.

New energy vehicle companies: my country's first-tier vehicle manufacturers have more or less BMS teams, and SAIC and BYD are the most representative. In April last year, SAIC's Zhu Jun made it clear that "the battery management system should be left to the vehicle manufacturers."

Most of the current new energy vehicle companies have a huge scale and strong R&D capabilities. It is not a problem for them to cultivate a complete BMS team and invest a lot of R&D expenses. For example, in 2009, SAIC established Jieneng, which is dedicated to the development of new energy. In June 2013, SAIC launched a project to independently develop BMS. In the four years before and after the development of e50, SAIC invested more than 6 billion yuan in new energy R&D. Looking at the world, most first-tier car companies at least develop the main control unit of BMS by themselves, and suppliers only provide slave control at most.

However, the biggest factor in developing a good battery management system is to understand the battery itself. The in-depth understanding of the battery is often linked to the design system of the battery itself, which is not what the vehicle manufacturers are good at. Not all vehicle manufacturers have the patience to establish their own battery technology research center, build a battery laboratory and have a set of evaluation and calibration systems that are completely their own. This limits the depth of their understanding of batteries.

Battery PACK companies: The transformation of the new energy vehicle industry originated from power batteries, and the main object of BMS system management is also batteries. This is a unique advantage of battery PACK companies in the BMS market.

However, if battery PACK companies do not invest enough in the research and development of BMS, the cost of their own development will often be greater than the cost of directly purchasing a third-party BMS, and the reliability of their own development is difficult to guarantee under the premise of conditions.

Professional BMS companies: Most third-party BMS companies are asset-light and relatively professional and complete. Although there are not many people in this type of company, they are all very professional in BMS. This neat team structure often includes teams including BMS software and hardware development, testing, battery calibration, etc., and even more detailed software is further divided into different groups such as architecture, driver, and application layer development. Hardware is also refined into teams including schematic design and layout. There are also product managers, functional safety analysts, and professional modeling experts in the battery field. Professional people do professional things, and such a professional and sound team is often not available in the BMS teams of general car companies or battery companies.

Third-party BMS companies target more complex customers. In addition to the automotive field, they also cover energy storage, communications and other fields. The large amount of data they have accumulated in the development process of different cases provides a wealth of experience for the design of their core algorithms. The standardized BMS products they design can often be applied to more scenarios, so their ability to respond quickly to projects in different fields has also become a major advantage.

However, third-party BMS companies are often more likely to be acquired in the capital market due to their light asset nature. As of May 2017, SAIC's A-share market value was 320 billion yuan, CATL's valuation was nearly 100 billion yuan, and the latest round of financing of Keli Technology, one of the leading third-party BMS companies, was only 6 billion yuan, which is indeed not the same size as the other two leading companies. In the capital market, third-party BMS companies are also often more likely to be acquired.

BMS market needs regulation

Compared with the three-electric technology, BMS is not very mature. As one of the key technologies of electric vehicles, BMS has made great progress in recent years, and many aspects have entered the practical application stage, but some parts are still not perfect, especially in data reliability, SOC estimation accuracy and safety management.

In addition, there are hundreds of BMS companies in China, but only a few in developed countries in Europe and the United States. Large new energy vehicle manufacturers either choose to develop their own battery management systems or adopt internationally competitive BMS manufacturers led by Germany, Japan and the United States.

The lack of technical parameters and standards in the domestic BMS market, and the lack of authoritative organizations to conduct authoritative testing on the BMS produced by manufacturers, have led to uneven quality of BMS products, making it difficult to promote them on a large scale. At the same time, many domestic automobile manufacturers and battery PAC companies currently do not fully understand the importance of BMS, thinking that as long as the individual battery cells can be connected, the vehicle can be guaranteed to operate, and they are lucky about its safety. In the purchase of BMS, they blindly pursue low prices. In order to sign contracts, some bad BMS suppliers have to reduce BMS functional indicators or simply castrate some functions, thus burying safety risks, which is also irresponsible and harmful to the entire industry.

Only by establishing unified industry standards as soon as possible, suppressing manufacturers that do not meet market requirements, and establishing a sound testing system, can battery management systems and new energy vehicles have a sustainable development future. This is also the demand of many manufacturers and consumers.

In general, the BMS market is growing rapidly, and whether the BMS market develops healthily is related to whether the new energy vehicle industry can develop smoothly.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.