Author: Liu Ming
Edit: David
Battery tycoon Ningde Times officially announced its power exchange plan on January 18, and the company announced three days ago that it would enter the field of power exchange and would release the power exchange brand. The catalpa era of power exchange brand is EVOGO, and the power exchange service it provides is a set of overall solutions called "combined power exchange". In the power exchange service sector, CATL has established a company called "Times Electric Service", which is wholly owned by CATL.
The power exchange characteristic of the Ningde era is - combined. According to reports, the overall solution of combined power exchange is composed of three major products: "power exchange block, quick change station, and APP". In terms of batteries, the Ningde era specially opened the battery replacement battery, named "chocolate", because the number of batteries for a car in the Ningde era was designed to be three, and the shape was similar to chocolate.
Chen Weifeng, general manager of Times Electric Service, said that the chocolate exchange block has three characteristics: small and high energy, free combination and minimalist design. It adopts the latest CTP technology of the Ningde era, the weight energy density of the "chocolate exchange block" exceeds 160Wh/kg, the volume energy density exceeds 325Wh/L, and a single battery can provide an endurance of about 200 kilometers, and can adapt to the pure electric platform developed by 80% of the world's 80% that have been listed and will be listed in the next 3 years.
"Most of the models developed by the electrification platform are adaptable, and there is no need to make too many changes, and car companies do not need to adjust the chassis, but only need to develop a power exchange bracket that adapts to our chocolate battery." Relevant people in the CATL era said that the "chocolate exchange block" can be applied to passenger cars and logistics vehicles from A00 class to B class and C class. The substation can be adapted to the use of "chocolate power exchange block" of various brand models, breaking through the adaptation barrier between the battery and the model, and realizing the freedom of choice of the power exchange model.
At present, the first customer of the NINGDE era is Besturn Automobile.
Chocolate batteries, what are the characteristics
For consumers, the benefits are also visible. Chen Weifeng said that consumers can choose one or more batteries at will when changing power, flexibly matching the needs of different mileages. In addition, the "chocolate changer block" adopts wireless BMS technology, and only has a high-voltage positive and negative interface on the outside, which greatly improves the reliability of the plugged and unplugged components. In the view of the Ningde era, most private car owners, in the daily use scenario, will only use 10-20% of their battery power, but in order to alleviate mileage anxiety and meet the occasional long-distance travel needs, they choose to buy a car with a larger battery.
"Consumers pay a lot of sunk costs for the electricity they use occasionally." Chen Weifeng said. Therefore, the ratio of the three power exchange blocks is the best solution calculated in the Ningde era. "It can be one, two, or three, depending on the choice, flexibly matching the needs of different mileages." Chen Weifeng said.
From the perspective of the industry, the current power exchange is basically only one battery, but some models provide different versions of the power exchange option. The direction of Weilai is also "rechargeable, replaceable and upgradable". In April 2021, the 100kWh long-endurance battery pack was launched on an annual basis. In July 2021, the monthly flexible upgrade service was successively opened in Urumqi, Shenyang, Xining, Lanzhou, Yinchuan, Hohhot and other cities. In December 2021, the NIO battery flexible upgrade plan was officially released, and NIO car can realize the battery pack monthly or annual upgrade, of course, the battery life can also be downgraded, to achieve free choice.
Relatively speaking, the three battery solutions of the Ningde era are relatively more liberal - basically the freedom to choose to change the power at any time. "The user can choose the number of blocks to rent. If you want to travel for a long time, you can choose two or three power blocks, and then change back to one power block after returning to the city, and truly increase or decrease, rent electricity on demand, and realize the freedom of electricity consumption. When you do not need to change the power, you can choose home charging, fast charging and other solutions. Chen Weifeng introduced.
In addition, in order to reduce costs, the Ningde era has compressed the traditional substation, which is characterized by a small footprint, fast circulation, large capacity and full climate. A standard station only needs three parking spaces, the replacement of a single block is about 1 minute, and 48 power exchange blocks can be stored in the station, ensuring that the user has a full power block to be replaced at all times, without waiting for a long time for the power block to charge. In addition, the Ningde era also opened different versions of the substation can adapt to the climatic environment of different regions. According to the official introduction, the Ningde era of substations will be the first batch of 10 cities to start the EVOGO power exchange service.
"Crowded" track
"The admission of the NINGD era helps to unify industry standards." One analyst pointed out. Power replacement is the outlet of the new energy automobile industry in recent years, the reason is that with the accelerated penetration of new energy vehicles, the gap in charging facilities is large, and the charging time is too long. The existing form of charging energy replenishment takes 1-2 hours for fast and 6-8 hours for slow, which takes a long time. The power exchange mode can solve the pain points of the current charging, in general, the power exchange mode only takes 3 minutes, and such as Aodong can already complete the power exchange in about one minute.
In the past two years, more and more participants have been involved in the circuit of power exchange, in addition to the veteran-level Olympic Movement, in addition to BAIC, Weilai, Geely, etc. have joined the power exchange army. In addition, in the energy industry, Sinopec and photovoltaic giant GCL have also launched their own power exchange plans. Taking GCL as an example, the company's GCL Energy Co. issued an announcement in March 2021 to enter the power exchange, and then it set an increase of 5 billion yuan for the "power exchange" business.
From the current point of view, Weilai has surpassed the Number of Substations in 2021 through a rapid layout. Up to now, WEI HAS BUILT A TOTAL OF 753 SUBSTATION STATIONS IN THE COUNTRY, WHILE AODONG CURRENTLY HAS 547 SUBSTATIONS. These two far outnumber the others in terms of the number of substations. The number of substations is subject to construction costs. GCL Energy previously said in response to investors' questions that the company estimated that the construction cost of a single passenger car replacement power station was about 4 million to 5 million yuan, while the operation of a single heavy truck was about 8-10 million yuan. Some business people said that the cost of the new generation of substations is about 2 million.
"It's not about the quantity, it's about efficiency, otherwise you can't make a profit, and the more you lose." A senior executive of a power exchange company told Der Spiegel pro.
CATL did not disclose the cost of its replacement power station, which the company said was a "trade secret." However, from the industry's estimation, if a substation generally needs 1.5-2 million yuan according to 20-40 battery packs. Like Weilai, GCL Energy, etc., CATL times will also set up a "battery bank" to divest the battery as a heavy asset. However, CATL did not disclose its battery bank partners.
Another interesting model is Botan Technology. It has developed community stations, which mainly allow car washes, repair shops, 4S stores and so on to join. Shopkeepers can choose their own investment, operation, or Botan Technology investment, shopkeeper operation and other different ways of cooperation.
The difficulties of the industry need to be broken
The power exchange mode is one of the more controversial roads in new energy vehicles. From the perspective of industry development, the substation is facing a number of problems such as ununified technical standards of the power exchange mode, limited scale, and difficulty in profitability, and the current layout of the power exchange enterprises are suffering from "strategic losses", and there is no enterprise that can achieve overall profitability. According to the results of Aodong's operation calculations, if the utilization rate of a 3.0 generation power station equipped with 28 batteries reaches 60%, the annual income can exceed 6 million yuan. Excluding the 2 million yuan electricity bill with the largest cost ratio, as well as labor costs, equipment and battery depreciation costs, land rent, etc., it can be profitable.
Whether the power exchange mode can be passed depends on whether the market size can be effectively supported. However, on the fast charging route, new technologies are also constantly appearing to have new doubts about the replacement belt - as a representative of 800V high-voltage technology and 900V high-voltage technology. Some insiders believe that with the completion of the layout of high-voltage charging, the future charging time is getting faster and faster, which can alleviate the current situation of charging difficulties. However, from a realistic point of view, the standard of power exchange cannot be solved in a short period of time, which also makes it difficult for the industry to have a breakthrough of real significance.
Some media pointed out that the unification of battery standards is not difficult at the technical level, but because it involves the interests of many parties, it is inevitable to encounter resistance. Car companies are accustomed to dominating the industrial chain, unwilling to give up the control of the battery system, and are more cautious about opening up technical data; at the same time, standardized batteries will compress the design space of vehicle companies to some extent, affecting the R & D production and brand operation of enterprises.
Not only that, different brands of vehicles are battery swapped, and the rules for defining responsibility for safety accidents are still in a blank state. Compared with the charging mode of battery-bound vehicles, power exchange has wrapped up many participants such as car companies, battery companies, users, power exchange operators, and battery asset management companies. From a foreign point of view, the bankruptcy of the US e-commerce exchange bet place a few years ago and the abandonment of Tesla CEO Musk have made the power exchange model a dead end.
Musk has published the following paragraph: "The reason why we launched the power exchange technology is to see if people will choose this (charging method). We thought people would prefer superchargers, but we couldn't be completely sure, so we built a battery replacement technology (referring to the replacement battery technology released by Tesla in June 2013) that can complete the recharge in 90 seconds. Based on the current situation, the future promotion value of (power exchange technology) is not very large, if there is no accident. ”
After the press conference, NINGDE times prepared a small easter egg - Zeng Yuqun, chairman of NINGDE times, drove out of the power station in a car, rolled down the car window, Zeng Yuqun took out a piece of chocolate, and said: Come to a piece? It's a witty and interesting metaphor. So with the addition of the Ningde era this time, can it promote the power exchange market to break the "dead end" question?