LS Cable & System said on Feb. 3 it signed a deal to supply HV harnesses for eco-friendly vehicles to Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. (BAIC).
The latest deal with state-run BAIC comes after LS C&S signed a similar agreement with BYD, China’s No. 1 EV car maker and Dongfeng Motor, China’s second largest automaker. It will promote LS C&S to hit the gas to explore the Chinese EV automotive market.
LS C&S’s components will be installed into the EV200 BAIC will introduce on the market starting coming August. BAIC, a global top 10 EV automaker, plans to develop 14 kinds of eco-friendly vehicles and establish related new plants by 2017.
Following the latest agreement, LS C&S plans to strengthen marketing activities to sell the automotive parts to models other than the EV200 and other automakers.
“LS C&S has managed to be selected as a cooperative company, beating out Chinese major automotive parts makers, as we’ve gained trust by swiftly supplying products tailored to meet customers’ demand in the course of developing new cars,” LS C&S President Yoon Jae-in said. HV harnesses is one of LS C&S’s future growth engines, and the company plans to secure an upper hand in the growing Chinese EV automotive part market with the HV harnesses having secured a competitive edge, he added.
The Chinese EV market is projected to grow from some 220,000 units in 2015 to 2 million units by 2020 thanks to Chinese government’s policies to promote eco-friendly vehicles. LS C&S plans to increase its share in the Chinese HV harness market from current some 6 percent to 10 percent by 2020.
A harness is a pre-assembled bundle of cables and connectors that supplies the power by connecting electronic control units and communication modules, activating and controlling various sensors. Most electric vehicles use 600V harnesses in comparison with 12V harnesses found in conventional fuel-powered vehicles.
Last April, LS C&S was selected as a tier-1 supplier of HV harnesses for eco-friendly vehicles by Dongfeng Motor, China’s No.2 automotive company. Products of LS Cable & System will be produced by its subsidiary located in Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province and incorporated into the E30, one of Dongfeng’s EV models.
Dongfeng Motor is a state-run company incorporated in Wuhan City, Hubei Province in 1969. It is currently valued at $22.9 billion and staffed with 140,000 employees. Dongfeng Motor is bolstering its eco-friendly business initiatives by incorporating an eco-friendly automotive subsidiary to expand its product lineup and by launching an EV taxi service in Wuhan City.
In 2009 LS Cable & System succeeded in developing HV harnesses by applying extra-high voltage power technology to conventional automotive cable products and actively made inroads into China by concluding a supply contract in 2012 to provide products worth $110 million by 2017 to BDNT of China (an EV joint venture between Mercedes Benz of Germany and BYD of China). To support the deal, LS Cable & System invested $3.67 million in its subsidiary in Wuxi City to expand production capacity. As a result the Wuxi subsidiary has become one of the cash-cows of LS Cable & System, posting profits for five consecutive years in the wake of the recent boom for automotive cable products.
LS Cable & System Wins $57M Transmission Cable Contract to Deliver Power in US
LS C&S will supply and install a new 345kV underground cable system between Bayway and Bayonne. This project is to deliver electricity to northeast New Jersey to address power shortage issues in the region. Some of the key challenges for this project are manufacturing, transporting and installing new underground cables across Newark Bay through conduits installed by the horizontal directional drilling. This entails manufacturing continuous cables longer than 7,000 ft (2.2km), well-planned logistics for transportation from the manufacturing facility to the work site, and special care and in the handling of large reels at the site.
Yoon Jae-in, President of the Business Unit in LS C&S, said, “Our successful experiences in the past and customers’ trust accumulated through previous projects played a decisive role in winning this contract. In November 2014, LS C&S successfully completed the Southern Maryland Reliability Project, a 230kV Patuxent River Crossing Project, with Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative.”
The BLC project is scheduled to be operational by June 2018.
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