[Zhiche Pie] there are not too many fireworks, less of the New Year's atmosphere, 2022 quietly arrived. Looking back at the past few years, our society has experienced a difficult baptism, in the difficulties and even hardships, the change has also come, they grow in all corners, born out of various industries.
In the technology industry, the concept of meta-universe is expanding wildly, the plot continues to 2022 without stopping; in the Internet industry, live streaming with goods continues to upgrade and increase, with the fall of head anchors such as Via, the reshuffle trend is obvious; in the automotive industry, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles continues to climb, the global electric vehicle overlord Tesla officially launched a "luxury attack" to BBA, under the fierce battlefield, consumers are fishermen and profiteers, but the problem of charging difficulty and short endurance is also imminent... How to better grasp the new trend of the pan-tech circle in 2022? CNMO joined hands with the Zhiche Faction to launch the "Kanjian 2022" series of reports. In this article, we will focus on the topic of "electric vehicle charging difficulties".
If no duck can fly out of Beijing alive, then there should not be an electric car that can "live" through the northern winter. This is of course a joke, but it is also the heartache of electric car owners. In the author's "lurking" group of electric vehicle brand riders, the scale of 500 people makes the group lively every day like the New Year, but in the topics we talk about, nine times out of ten are related to battery life and charging. At a time when electric vehicles are accelerating in popularity and charging facilities and technologies are constantly improving, charging battery life is still a problem that car owners are extremely concerned about. In 2022, how will our electric vehicles survive the winter smoothly?
Have you ever seen a charging station at four in the morning?
You've heard of Bryant practicing in Los Angeles at four in the morning, but you probably haven't seen an electric car owner grabbing a public charging pile in Beijing at four a.m.
In 2021, the topic of electric vehicle charging difficulties has been repeatedly searched, before "grabbing the charging pile at four o'clock in the morning", the "charging for one hour, queuing for four hours" during the National Day also made the people of the whole country truly experience the "charging anxiety" of electric vehicle owners. Electric vehicles are being warmly welcomed by the market, but "endurance anxiety" and "charging anxiety" are in front of them, and it is difficult for potential car owners to have the courage to convince themselves.
At present, charging and power exchange are the two most important and mainstream ways of energy replenishment for electric vehicles. Relatively speaking, the power exchange mode has a higher energy replenishment efficiency, although the arrival of winter has increased the frequency of the owner's power exchange, and some power stations have rarely lined up, but the problem is not serious. Charging mode is mainly divided into public charging and household charging, in the proportion of most charging stations, the average charging speed of 1-2 hours of fast charging piles account for only a small part, and slow charging piles need to consume several hours of car owners, which undoubtedly reduces the energy efficiency of the charging station.
Public charging piles
What is the current situation of household charging piles? It is bigger than a public charging pile. At present, in many communities, especially in the old residential areas, for the sake of fire, safety and capacitance and other issues, household charging piles do not have the hard conditions for installation, at the same time, the property is often a roadblock on the installation road. In the purchase policy of most car companies, the service of home charging piles is gifted, which is a good thing for consumers, but under the influence of various factors, the "home charging piles" of car companies cannot be delivered to users normally. Not long ago, on December 20, Shen Hui, the founder of WM Motor, "complained" about this matter on Weibo, revealing, "Every time I hear the owner complain to me about the difficulty of installing the charging pile, the mood is very heavy." In 2021, WM delivered more than 40,000 vehicles, but nearly 20,000 charging piles distributed with the car could not be delivered. According to media reports, tens of thousands of car owners of brands such as Tesla, Weilai and BYD are also facing the dilemma of household charging piles that cannot be installed.
In addition to the low efficiency of energy replenishment and the obstruction of the installation of household charging piles, the construction of charging facilities cannot keep up with the rhythm is also a common problem. In first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, electric vehicles have a longer development time and a longer construction cycle for charging facilities. The data shows that the current vehicle-to-pile ratio in Shanghai is about 1.2:1, which almost meets the standard of "one car and one pile". However, with the rapid expansion of the entire new energy vehicle market, the charging contradiction has also begun to stand out. In some new first-tier and second-tier cities, the number of electric vehicles and the number of charging piles have not reached the ideal proportion, but the charging problem is not yet prominent. What can be managed is that in the group of car owners lurking in the author, the topic of not being charged is rarely mentioned. In the city at the end of the fourth line where the author's hometown is located, the construction speed of charging facilities has also exceeded expectations, and even large charging stations with more than 50 charging piles have appeared. At 6 p.m. on January 3, the author checked the charging software and found that the idle rate of these charging piles was very high, and the frequency of use was also low.
Household charging piles
On the whole, the national vehicle-to-pile ratio data is still not optimistic. According to the data given by the China Charging Technology Facilities Alliance, as of November 2021, the cumulative number of charging infrastructure in China is 2.385 million units, an increase of 55% year-on-year, and the vehicle-to-pile ratio is about 3:1. The bigger problem is that the development speed of new energy vehicles is faster than the construction speed of charging piles. Zhichepai learned that in the first 11 months of last year, China's charging infrastructure increased by 704,000 units, compared with the sales of new energy vehicles was 2.99 million units, and the increase ratio of vehicle piles was 4.2:1. In short, because the construction speed of domestic charging and replacing facilities cannot keep up with the development speed of electric vehicles, this amplifies the contradiction between charging and replacing, and also aggravates the charging anxiety of car owners.
One car and one pile is the ultimate recipe?
From this point of view, accelerating the construction of charging and replacing and other energy replenishment facilities, and achieving a vehicle-to-pile ratio of 1:1, can we eliminate the existing contradictions?
Let's not talk about how difficult the practical difficulties of household charging pile construction are, even if it is really "one car and one pile", it is difficult to directly solve the charging anxiety of electric vehicle owners, and even the possibility of waste of resources. In the previous article, we mentioned that the construction progress of charging and replacing facilities in different regions and cities in China is different, and the data of the vehicle-to-pile ratio is not the same, and in Shanghai, where the vehicle-to-pile ratio is close to 1:1, there will also be a difficulty in charging. In fourth-tier cities where charging and replacement facilities are not complete, the utilization rate of charging piles is lower than imagined.
Tong Zongqi, director of the Information Department of the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance, believes that solving the problem of consumer charging of new energy vehicles requires the introduction of corresponding specific guidance policies from many parties, fully mobilizing the relevant resources of the whole society, and focusing on promoting the construction of charging piles in the community and the improvement of energy replenishment facilities in order to facilitate and meet the user experience. Therefore, we should not only focus on the car companies, in the process of charging and replacing facilities construction, car companies and charging pile companies are indeed the main force and the main implementers, but there is no supporting policies to promote, I am afraid that the problem can only be a symptom rather than a cure.
Charging difficulties and charging and replacing facilities are few and can not be equated, at present, there is still a lot of room for development in the construction of charging facilities in the community. If the home charging pile can be installed normally, then the charging problem of electric vehicle owners will be greatly improved. Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Association, also believes that the ratio of new energy vehicle piles to vehicles is enough when it reaches about 5:1, and the overall structure of the future charging infrastructure should be mainly private charging piles and supplemented by public charging piles. Specifically, the proportion of household charging piles should be 90%, and the proportion of public charging piles should be 10%. To increase the proportion of household charging piles to 90%, car companies and charging pile companies can not seem to do much at present, and the government's policies are particularly critical at this time.
In May last year, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration drafted the Implementation Opinions on Further Improving the Service Guarantee Capacity of Charging and Replacing Infrastructure (Draft for Comments), which requires the improvement of the mechanism for promoting the construction of charging piles in residential communities and the overall promotion of the construction and transformation of charging piles in residential communities; if there are installation conditions, residential community management units and owners' committees shall not obstruct users from building piles. Promote the construction of charging piles in existing residential communities and strictly implement the requirements for the construction of new residential communities. Newly built residential communities should implement 100% fixed parking spaces reserved charging pile construction and installation conditions. At the same time, charging operation enterprises or residential community management units are encouraged to accept the entrustment of owners to carry out the "unified construction and unified operation" of charging piles in residential communities, uniformly provide paid services such as charging pile planning, construction, operation and maintenance, and encourage new models such as "sharing nearby parking spaces" and "multi-vehicle and one pile".
According to the wisdom car school, the United Kingdom recently issued new regulations for electric vehicle charging: from 2022, whether it is a new residence, a supermarket, a selling office building or a large-scale decoration update, as long as there are more than 10 parking spaces, it will be mandatory to configure charging equipment. Officials estimate that the specification will add 145,000 charging piles per year in the UK. For us, this regulation has certain reference significance.
High-voltage fast charging may be able to "curve to save the country"
Looking back at the development process of smart phones, we can find that the problem of "charging difficulty" has not appeared, thanks to the portable design of smart phones and the mature charging environment. However, as users spend more and more time on smart phones, weak battery life, slow charging and other issues have begun to emerge, in the context of mobile phone battery technology can not be innovated for a long time, fast charging, super fast charging and other technologies have come out, this curve to save the country in the heart of the way won applause in the hearts of users. If electric vehicles are compared to smartphones, faster charging speeds may also become a new way to solve charging problems.
There is a test worth thinking about abroad: in the 525-mile (1 mile = 1.6 km) journey, ordinary fuel vehicles only need to refuel once, a total time of 8 hours and 23 minutes; a direct-charged electric vehicle with a range of 200 miles and 50kW needs to be charged four times, each charge takes 40 minutes, and the cumulative time is 10 hours and 48 minutes; the direct charging electric vehicle with a range of 300 miles and 120kW needs to be charged once, each charge takes 68 minutes, and the cumulative time is 9 hours and 16 minutes The 300-mile, 400kW direct-charged electric vehicle only takes 23 minutes on a single charge, for a total of 8 hours and 31 minutes. It can be seen that with the increase of charging power (which means the acceleration of charging speed), the charging time of car owners is shortening, and the final time is also tending to the level of fuel vehicles.
In 2021, we see many car companies in the charging speed of hard exploration, on the whole, high-voltage fast charging has become the same research and development direction. The reason is that there are two main ways to increase the charging power, one is to increase the voltage, the other is to increase the current, but the latter will produce a larger heating problem, so the voltage increase is a more appropriate choice. In fact, on smart phones, high-voltage fast charging solutions are also more mainstream.
Pushing forward, Porsche launched the world's first 800V high-voltage electrical architecture on the Taycan released in 2019, equipped with an 800V DC fast charging system and supporting 350kW high-power fast charging. Time to 2021, high-voltage fast charging technology in the market began to appear more voices, international car companies, Hyundai, Kia and other release of 800V platform, domestic car companies, BYD, Great Wall, GAC, Xiaopeng and other brands have also launched or plan to launch 800V platform.
For example, Xiaopeng's flagship SUV released in November last year, the Xiaopeng G9, is equipped with XPower 3.0 power system, claiming to be the first mass production car based on the 800V high-voltage SiC platform in China, and is expected to be listed this year. Its charging efficiency is very exciting, it can be overcharged for 5 minutes to replenish energy for more than 200km, and at the same time, the maximum efficiency of the electric drive system can reach more than 95%. It is reported that in order to give full play to the advantages of the 800V platform's supercharge technology, Xiaopeng will also lay the first batch of 480kW high-voltage supercharged piles produced in China to fully release the energy replenishment efficiency.
Xiaopeng 800V high voltage SiC platform + 480kW high voltage overcharge
The 800V super fast charging battery system released by Beehive Energy, a subsidiary of Great Wall Motors, has a maximum charging power of up to 480kW and a 15-minute endurance of 100 kilometers, which is expected to be launched on the Mecha Dragon in 2022; BYD's new generation of 800V flash charging technology based on the e-platform 3.0 can be charged for 5 minutes to drive 150km, and the winter mileage is at least 10%; the latest 800V high-voltage super fast charging technology released by Lantu Automobile is also extremely advanced. With the support of 360kW superchargers, the charging rate can be increased by 125%, achieving a 10-minute charging range of up to 400 kilometers, but the relevant models may not be mass-produced until 2023. Huawei has also established a new technical route in 2021: by 2025, it will launch a fast charging solution with a voltage platform of more than 1000V and a power of 600kW, which can achieve 30%-80% SoC charging performance in 5 minutes.
Even if car companies that do not consider releasing high-voltage fast charging technology in 2022, models that support high-voltage fast charging technology such as Xiaopeng G9 and Mech Dragon will also disturb the city in 2022. However, the commercial use of high-voltage fast charging is undoubtedly of great significance to the automotive industry, especially the new energy vehicle market, which will greatly alleviate the charging anxiety of car owners and indirectly improve the problem of charging difficulties.
summary
The vigorous development of the electric vehicle industry has made people see a bright light, but on the way to the light, there are many difficulties that we need to overcome. Moreover, special problems will arise at different stages of development, which used to be too expensive and short-lived electric vehicles, and now these problems are being resolved one by one. The problem of charging difficulties affects the whole society, there are many ways to solve it, but there is no once and for all plan, how to promote the introduction and implementation of policies, how to accelerate the construction of charging and replacement facilities, how to release the resources of charging piles in the community, how to improve charging efficiency, etc. When these problems are broken, our electric vehicles can safely drive in winter. The good news is that in 2022 we'll see a shift in the story...