LS Cable & System supplies electric vehicle parts to China’s Beijing Automotive Industry

■ Accelerating advance into the electric vehicle parts market as a tier-1 vendor for a major Chinese electric vehicle maker
■ Planning to foster it as a future growth engine and expecting to grow quickly in line with China’s electric vehicle promotion policy

LS Cable & System announced on February 3 that it entered into a contract with Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. Ltd. (BAIC) for the supply of a harness for electric vehicles. As the company is supplying parts to BAIC, a state-owned enterprise, following BYD, the No.1 Chinese electric vehicle maker, and Dongfeng Motor Group, the 2^nd largest automaker in China, LS Cable & System is accelerating its advance into the Chinese electric vehicle parts market.

LS Cable & System’s products will be installed in the new EV200 model that Beijing Automotive Industry is scheduled to release this coming August. As the world’s 10^th largest electric vehicle maker, BAIC is planning to develop 14 environment-friendly cars by 2017 and establish a new plant in a bid to reinforce related businesses. LS Cable & System is planning to capitalize on this contract to expand its contracts to models other than the EV200, and reinforce marketing with a focus on other state-owned automakers.

“We were able to beat major Chinese electric component makers and be selected as a vendor by promptly providing products that meet customer needs in the process of developing new cars and thus winning the customer’s trust,” said Jae-in Yoon, CEO of LS Cable & System. “The high-voltage harness is one of the future growth engines of LS Cable & System. We are planning to secure quality and price competitiveness and take the initiative in the Chinese electric vehicle parts market that is growing quickly.”

The size of the Chinese electric vehicle market is expected to grow rapidly from about 220,000 vehicles in 2015 to 2 million by 2020 due to the Chinese government’s electric vehicle promotion policy. LS Cable & System is planning to raise its share of the Chinese harness market from the 6% it currently has to 10% or so by 2020.

The harness connects the electronic controllers of a vehicle to the communication modules, supplies power to them, and operates and controls various sensors. Electric vehicles typically handle voltages of 600V or higher so the harnesses are necessarily more robust than the 12V harnesses used in ordinary cars. LS Cable & System successfully applied its extra-voltage power technology to its existing cables for conventional automobiles in 2009 and has since been expanding sales with a focus on China.