On the road to the replenishment of new energy vehicles, whether to "charge" or "change" has always been the two major aspects of the industry. In the past 2021, China's power exchange industry model has almost ushered in an unprecedented leap-forward development.
In 2021, the state implemented the power exchange pilot, 11 cities took the lead in starting the power exchange mode pilot, and the first basic general national standard "Electric Vehicle Power Exchange Safety Requirements" was officially implemented; at the same time, the power exchange ecosystem gradually expanded, the State Grid, state power investment, Sinopec and other industry giants have entered the game, and the early layout in the field of power exchange Aodong, Weilai, Geely and other enterprises continue to deepen cultivation. According to the latest data from the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance, as of November 2021, the number of substations in China was 1192, an increase of more than 100% year-on-year.
Under the power exchange model, car companies rely less on the national subsidy policy, which is conducive to the rapid rise of the electric vehicle industry.
Wang Zidong, deputy secretary-general of the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, pointed out that the power exchange has obvious advantages in terms of power replenishment time, battery utilization rate, vehicle procurement cost, etc., and can achieve vehicle-to-electricity separation. "The power exchange mode not only meets the requirements of promoting the innovation of electric vehicle models, but also solves the difficult problems of pure electric vehicles in the popularization process, and the power exchange is not perfect, but it can indeed solve some problems that the original charging cannot solve." Wang Zidong said.
From the perspective of the practical application scenarios of the power exchange mode, Wang Zidong said that the power exchange mode can start from the public domain vehicles, such as taxis, online car-hailing vehicles, logistics vehicles, buses, sweepers; after gaining experience, it is more appropriate to infiltrate private cars that cannot install charging piles at home.
A set of analysis data given by Kang Zejun of China Automobile Data Co., Ltd. shows that since the name of the replacement model appeared in the 333rd batch of new car announcements, to the 346th batch of new car announcements, there are 22 power-changing model brands of 16 passenger car companies. Among them, in addition to Weilai Automobile, other brands of power exchange products are mainly based on rental and leasing.
In addition to operating vehicles in the public sector, heavy trucks for commercial vehicles have become a new force in the power exchange model. Driven by the "double carbon" goal, heavy trucks that account for 2/3 of carbon emissions in the transportation field have become the object of national key adjustment, in addition to the development of hydrogen fuel cell paths, power replacement heavy trucks have also become a major direction of development.
Data show that compared with fuel vehicles, every 1,000 new energy heavy trucks can reduce carbon dioxide emissions and 12,500 tons of pollutant emissions per year, and reduce energy consumption costs by 5%-10%. "Heavy trucks are polluted, but electric heavy trucks are very heavy, and there are many goods, and it is difficult for traditional charging methods to meet their use requirements, so heavy trucks are advocated to replace electricity." Wang Zidong said that the replacement of heavy trucks can be quickly replenished, solve the problem of work section, arbitrarily allocate working hours, and can be applied to special line transportation, branch line short fall, port inverted, trunk line transportation and other scenarios.
It is precisely under the stimulation of the "double carbon" target that the new energy commercial vehicle market, including heavy trucks, has rebounded after four years of continuous decline in 2021. According to the data, from January to October 2021, the cumulative sales volume of new energy commercial vehicles was 126,600 units, an increase of 55.88% year-on-year. Specifically, the sales area of heavy trucks for electricity replacement is concentrated in key areas for air pollution prevention and control, of which the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas, the Fenwei Plain region, and the Yangtze River Delta region account for more than 90%. The analysis points out that in the whole year of 2021, the sales of new energy commercial vehicles will exceed 160,000 units.
After years of exploration by the industry, from the current practical application results, the power exchange mode is more suitable for commercial vehicles and operational passenger cars. For the private passenger car sector, the industry generally believes that battery standards are the biggest constraint.
As the pioneer and leader of the global power exchange model, Huang Chunhua, general manager of the brand and public affairs center of Aodong New Energy Automobile Technology Co., Ltd., said frankly: "The main challenge of the private passenger car market power exchange is that the standard of the battery pack is not uniform, and now each family is different, the length, width and height are different, and the BMS communication protocol is not the same. To this end, he called on automakers to focus on model development rather than battery packs. Correspondingly, the battery pack should become a standardized product, a mobile energy with social attributes, and operated and managed by a third-party company.
In the view of Ding Xiaohua, deputy director of the Shanghai New Energy Vehicle Public Data Acquisition and Monitoring Research Center, in addition to the difficulty of unifying battery standards, there is also a problem of the scarcity of space for the replacement power station. At present, about 55 vehicles per 100 new energy vehicles in Shanghai travel every month, and about 42% of the vehicles that travel have had charging experience. "Our continuous investigation of 600 public charging stations in Shanghai found that their charging rate is also around 10%, and the charging utilization rate of the current public charging station single gun is far from saturation." Ding Xiaohua pointed out.
As the vanguard of the promotion of new energy vehicle cities, the application of Shanghai's charging supporting infrastructure or a microcosm of the development of new energy vehicles, which shows that power exchange is not the only mode, and charging also has its own scenes and necessities.
Wang Zidong pointed out that power exchange and charging are not completely opposite, this is a new choice, and has considerable social benefits. "When the life of the battery pack increases and the safety is improved, the passenger car in the power exchange mode will be widely used in the market, and not only the B-end car, but also the C-end car (private car) will gradually catch up with this demand."
Huang Chunhua believes that in the future, new energy vehicle users have time to charge, no time to change the power, but also can upgrade the battery by changing the power station, so that users have a variety of choices, more convenient use is the focus of industrial development. In addition, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently announced that in 2022, the pilot project of fully electrified vehicles in the public domain will be launched. Behind this must be the combination of charging and power exchange, together to promote the full electrification of public domain vehicles. "In the next two to three years, in the field of public transportation, transportation and other segments, the popularization of the power exchange model will accelerate."
Source: Gestapo Cars
Editor: Zuo Zongxin