Author / MAX
Since April 2020, the five departments stipulated that the replacement model is not subject to the "300,000 yuan new energy subsidy ceiling", the power exchange model began to become a hot topic again, and the policy of encouraging power exchange was also continuously introduced: in May of the same year, it was written into the government work report of the two sessions, and then the relevant standards were successively established, and at the end of October this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology decided to start the pilot work of the application of the new energy vehicle power exchange mode in 11 cities, with the goal of promoting more than 100,000 trams and more than 1,000 power stations.
Recently, it has been reported that the National Energy Administration and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will study the "Implementation Opinions on Further Improving the Service Guarantee Capacity of Charging and Replacing Infrastructure", which will be introduced soon. Referring to the previously drafted draft for comments, the opinions refine the development requirements of charging infrastructure for different scenarios, encourage the transformation to V2G, intelligent and orderly charging, and high-power fast charging, and accelerate the promotion and application of the power exchange mode.
Power exchange mode accelerates the landing
At present, the implementation of the power exchange mode has been accelerated. In the "Notice on Launching the Pilot Application of The New Energy Vehicle Power Exchange Mode", the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology decided to start the pilot work on the application of the new energy vehicle power exchange mode, and the 11 cities included in its scope include: 8 cities with comprehensive applications and 3 cities with heavy truck characteristics.
According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, comprehensive application cities will focus on passenger cars, commercial vehicles and other fields, heavy truck characteristic cities will focus on the field of heavy commercial vehicles, the pilot goal is to strengthen technology research and development, accelerate the construction of power exchange infrastructure, promote the application of power exchange mode vehicles, and form a benign development ecology of charging and replacing electricity.
Judging from the overall promotion goal of 100,000+ vehicles and 1,000+ substations planned, the pilot work will be enough to build a multi-dimensional power exchange system covering technology, operation, supervision, ecology and so on. In particular, the pilot work includes almost all kinds of civil and commercial models, which means that there is an opportunity to accumulate experience in the promotion of various types of power exchange systems in advance and quickly replicate them according to demand in the future.
As one of the three characteristic cities of heavy trucks, Tangshan has designed a "three vertical and one horizontal" trunk line replacement network for the transportation needs of its main steel enterprises, and has built 7 substations, 5 of which are located in the factory area of steel enterprises, 2 of which are trunk line substations on the highway, and the total number of substations put into operation is not less than 60.
According to the original plan, Tangshan City plans to operate 2,600 heavy-duty trucks during the pilot period, complete and put into operation no less than 60 substations, establish 2 battery asset management companies, and 5 demonstration enterprises for power exchange operations, which will save 1.8 billion liters of diesel consumption and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 4.73 million tons.
In Nanjing, another comprehensive application city, nearly 100 substations mainly serving municipal engineering muck trucks are also planned, and the battery pack specifications, power exchange connectors, communication protocols and other standards were clarified at the beginning of the project, which solved the problem of the universality of the battery packs of the city's muck trucks.
However, in terms of passenger cars and travel vehicles, Sanya and Nanjing are mainly cooperating with third-party companies to provide more development space for the latter. At this stage, the local government is more considering operational and regulatory issues, but if it wants to achieve breakeven through commercial operation, the load rate of a single-seat substation should reach more than 50%, which requires that there are enough same battery pack models on the market, and there is no corresponding policy to promote it.
The standardization of battery packs has become a key challenge
As an asset-heavy model, the construction of substations requires a lot of investment in land, infrastructure construction, battery reserves, operation and maintenance, etc. The B-end market can still alleviate the financial pressure through the unified battery pack and the high utilization rate of operating vehicles, but the C-end market with different battery pack specifications will bring great operational challenges, and it is difficult for car companies to build their own replacement power stations to make profits, and third-party replacement power stations do not know what proportion to use to put various types of battery packs, and the pace of progress is relatively conservative.
Taking the weilai second-generation replacement power station, which has greatly reduced the cost, as an example, the construction cost of a single seat is about 1.5 million yuan, there are 13 batteries, and the maximum number of power changes can be completed every day. The Aodong New Energy 4.0 flagship station serving the B-end market has a basic investment of 10 million yuan, 60 batteries, and the limit of a single-day power exchange is 1,000 times.
Calculated by the 50% break-even line, single-brand models are not enough to achieve this, and it is necessary to promote unified specification batteries among car companies to solve the problem of insufficient scale of power exchange models. At the same time, the battery pack can also be simplified into several standard specifications according to size and capacity to meet the needs of different models.
However, for car companies, the use of a unified specification of the battery pack means that it will no longer be different from the competitors through battery technology, affecting the premium and competitiveness of high-end models. At present, batteries are still the main selling points of electric vehicles, including battery material formulations, energy density, BMS systems, packaging modes, etc.
In addition, the universal battery pack across multiple brands also represents that it will face the common problems such as chassis structure, installation position, interface, and matching degree, and it is difficult to standardize and need to make compromises between various models.
At present, the most mainstream model is the chassis loading and unloading integral battery pack used by Aodong New Energy, Weilai, Hengxin Chufeng, etc., which has excellent reliability, safety and packaging process, but standardization is relatively difficult, and it may be necessary to compromise between the range of applicable models and capacity.
Botan Technology, Kandi, Lifan and other enterprises have also proposed another module sub-box power exchange mode, installing multiple small battery packs in the chassis to achieve the endurance of large battery packs. This mode is more versatile, easy to standardize, flexible in layout, and can also be targeted to eliminate only a single small battery pack with insufficient performance. However, each of these battery packs requires a separate housing, and because it is scattered under the car, there are higher requirements for the bottom design, the structure is complex, and the safety risk may also be higher.
The long-term outlook remains promising
In any case, the power exchange model has ushered in the best development opportunities in recent years. The financial subsidy policy for the promotion and application of new energy vehicles stipulates that in principle, the subsidy standards for 2020-2022 will be reduced by 10%, 20% and 30% respectively on the basis of the previous year, and the price of non-replacement new energy vehicles before subsidies must be 300,000 yuan and below, which will further highlight the advantages of the price, convenience, reliability and retention rate of the replacement model and promote its development.
At the same time, related enterprises are also accelerating the construction of substations, and the State Grid plans to build 100 passenger car substations in Beijing, Wuhan and other places within the year, and build 10 heavy-duty truck substations in mining areas such as Inner Mongolia and Qinghai. Aodong New Energy and Weilai have also reached strategic cooperation with third-party enterprises such as gas stations to solve the approval problems of land use and power installation, and accelerate the roll-out of the power exchange network. Aodong New Energy plans to complete the construction of 10,000 substations by 2025, and WEILAI will raise the construction target of substations in 2021 from 500 to 700, and complete it ahead of Schedule on December 10.
According to founder securities forecast, the power exchange model will usher in a broader market: in 2025, the sales volume of passenger cars will exceed 2.8 million, the sales of replacement vehicles will exceed 500,000, and the demand for supporting replacement power stations will be about 28,000 seats, corresponding to the market size of 76.5 billion yuan; the demand for supporting batteries will be about 55GWh, corresponding to the market size of 38.8 billion yuan, corresponding to the electricity revenue of 216.8 billion yuan, and the total scale of the industrial chain will be about 332.1 billion yuan.
Ten years apart, the power exchange model that has been vigorously promoted again will no longer be the task pressure of the national team, but the introduction of social capital, with commercialization as the development and operation route. The power exchange model in the new context is expected to build a new power system with power exchange as the core, but the premise is to allow various car companies, battery companies and other parties to achieve a balance of interests.
About Auto Byte
Auto Byte launches the Automotive Technology Vertical Media for The Heart of Machines, focusing on cutting-edge research and technology applications in the fields of autonomous driving, new energy, chips, software, automobile manufacturing and intelligent transportation, and helping professional practitioners and relevant users in the automotive field understand technology development and industry trends through technology to gain insight into products, companies and industries.
Welcome to follow the stars and click Likes and Likes and Are Watching in the bottom right corner.