Author| Pan Tao Editor| Luo Lijuan
The increasingly lively power exchange track has ushered in a heavy player.
On January 18, CATL officially cut into the electric vehicle replacement track, and its wholly-owned subsidiary Times Electric Service released the replacement service brand EVOGO (Lexing Power Exchange), as well as the overall solution of combined power exchange.
The scheme is composed of three major products of "power exchange block, quick change station and APP", and will start the EVOGO power exchange service in the first batch of 10 cities. The first "family member" to change the power is the FAW Besturn NAT combination power exchanger.
The entry of the Ningde era marks the previously unsightly power exchange model and has obtained the platform of the industry leader. How the power swap mode will develop in the future has become more exciting.
Before the Ningde era cut in, there were already many giants in the power exchange track.
According to Soochow Securities, as of November 2021, the construction scale of Weilai and Aodong New Energy Swap Power Stations was 701 and 384 respectively, and Botan Technology ranked third with 107 seats.
Source: Soochow Securities
From 2021 onwards, the heat of the power exchange track has increased sharply, and relevant incentive policies have been intensively introduced. In this context, more and more players have entered the market, including Dongfeng, SAIC, Geely, BAIC, Changan and other enterprises have also joined.
Industry racing also unfolded.
Aodong plans to invest in the construction of 10,000 substations nationwide within 5 years; WEILAI said that in 2021, the company will have 605 new substations, and by the end of 2025, the global total number of NIO substations will exceed 4,000, of which about 1,000 will be laid out in overseas markets. In addition, the State Power Investment, state grid, Sinopec, etc., during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the construction plan of substations is also more than 4,000.
The electricity exchange market, which was unattended a few years ago, is becoming more and more crowded.
King Ning entered
"A standard station only needs three parking spaces, the replacement of a single block takes about 1 minute, and 48 power exchange blocks can be stored in the station."
According to the overall solution of the combination of power exchange of the era of electric clothing, only the three major products of "power exchange block, quick change station and APP" can complete the service.
Source: Ningde Times
In the vehicle-to-electricity separation mode, the battery is separated as a shared asset.
"Chocolate power exchange block" is a battery specially developed and mass-produced by times electric clothing for the realization of shared power exchange, using the latest CTP technology of Ningde era, its weight energy density exceeds 160Wh/kg, volume energy density exceeds 325Wh/L, and a single battery can provide about 200 kilometers of endurance.
Chen Weifeng, director of the marketing department of CATL Times and general manager of Times Electric Service, mentioned, "(Chocolate Exchange Block) can adapt to the pure electric platform developed by 80% of the world's pure electric platforms that have been listed and will be listed in the next 3 years." It is also suitable for passenger cars and logistics vehicles from A00 class to B class and C class. Consumers can choose one or more batteries at will when changing the power, flexibly matching the needs of different mileages. ”
Some People in the Ningde era have calculated that if they buy a model that uses "chocolate power block" in the future, it will not only save the cost of purchasing batteries, but also "only need to spend half of the rent".
"Because of the combination of power exchange, choosing one battery is definitely cheaper than choosing two batteries." For example, the original rent of 50 kWh of electricity, but through the on-demand rent of electricity, only need to rent more than 20 kWh of electricity, it will save half. ”
The 2,000 power-swapping mode Pentium NAT (the first batch of 500 units), which took the lead in cooperating with Times Electric Service, was officially delivered to Liaoyuan City in September last year, helping the latter to build "The first fully swapped mode taxi demonstration city in China".
The entry of the Ningde era is menacing.
In fact, as the bearer of the ningde era power exchange business, the establishment time of times electric service is less than half a year. In August 2021, CATL established a subsidiary, Times Electric Service, in Xiamen, Fujian Province, followed by the establishment of a regional power exchange business company in Jilin Province, and signed an agreement with the Guizhou Provincial Government to cooperate in the construction of a power exchange network.
The research report of CICC Securities predicts that after the two provinces of Jilin and Guizhou, the power exchange business of the Ningde era will accelerate regional expansion, and is expected to take the lead in Fujian, Jiangsu and other advantageous regions, and quickly penetrate synchronously nationwide.
"We will select 10 cities as the first small green ring cities to launch EVOGO services." Chen Weifeng said at the press conference.
With its leading position in the battery industry, the fate of the Ningde era is not unexpected.
According to data from SNE Research, a South Korean market research institute, since 2017, CATL has topped the global power battery for 4 consecutive years, with a global market share of 18%, 23%, 28% and 25% respectively. This advantage is still expanding, with its market share reaching 31.8% from January to November 2021, surpassing the second-place LG Chem by more than 10 percentage points.
And in the battery expansion plan, the goal of the Ningde era exceeds other players in the market, according to shanxi securities statistics, the capacity planning target of the Ningde era in 2025 is about 600GWh.
The huge circle of customer circles and sufficient production capacity will not only affect the cost of the replacement power station, but also determine the width that can be covered in the future and determine the right to speak in the industry.
Obviously, this is the confidence of the Ningde era, and it is also the most important "energy" for the future of the times.
Power exchange "rebirth"
In fact, power swapping is not an emerging pattern that has emerged recently. As early as 2008, the domestic power exchange model began to be promoted on pure electric buses, but because the market is not yet mature, the model has not been rolled out.
In 2006, the State Grid began to lay out the research and development of power exchange facilities, and then proposed the operation mode of "power exchange as the mainstay, plug-in as a supplement, centralized charging, and unified distribution", but at this time, the policy recognition has not kept up, and the market environment is not friendly. A few years later, the operating model was adjusted from "mainly power exchange" to "guided power exchange", and the main direction of attack was still charging.
The replacement power station on the market, one is to use the centralized charging station as the carrier, the battery is centrally stored, charged, unified distribution, and the battery is replaced by the electric vehicle in the battery station; one is that all functions are directly completed in the replacement power station, which usually concentrates battery charging, logistics, deployment and power exchange and other services in one.
Electric vehicle power exchange, similar to the former functional machine era, all mobile phone batteries are removable, mobile phone power only need to replace a battery. For the use of electric vehicles, the power replacement speed has obvious advantages over charging.
Not only that, through the centralized operation of all batteries, the substation can reduce the pressure of the power grid at the peak of the wave to a certain extent by adjusting the charge and discharge time, and reduce the cost of electricity in the trough charging; through slow charging and more timely detection, maintenance and other means, the power exchange mode can also improve the service life of the battery.
Seeing development is imperative, but this is not the case.
Israeli company Better Place is the earliest pathfinder of the power exchange model, the company began to explore the power exchange in 2007, the early limelight is the same, behind the investors including Morgan Stanley, HSBC, Israel Group, etc., the A round of financing reached $111 million, has accumulated financing of $850 million, the valuation was as high as $2.25 billion.
However, after 6 years, the funds were exhausted, and Better place could not find a way to successfully operate its power exchange model. In May 2013, Better Place filed for bankruptcy liquidation and was eventually sold to an Israeli startup for $450,000.
At the same time as the Better place folded, Tesla also began to try the power exchange mode, in June 2013, Tesla released a new power exchange technology in the United States, which can complete the power exchange in only 93 seconds. However, the model was halted after only two years of implementation, and instead turned to the construction of charging facilities.
In the domestic market, the rise of the power exchange model began in 2021, and the change in the policy side opened the prelude for players to enter the power exchange market.
These changes include that among the new energy vehicles of more than 300,000 yuan, only the power replacement models can continue to enjoy state subsidies; 13 cities have been included in the pilot application of the new energy vehicle power exchange mode, 8 comprehensive application cities, and 3 cities with heavy truck characteristics.
Relevant industry standards are also quickly following suit. On November 1 last year, the "Safety Requirements for Electric Vehicle Replacement" was officially implemented. The document is the first national standard for the power exchange industry, which has the significance of filling the gap in the industry and indicating the direction of development.
The industry is gradually maturing, attracting more players to appear one after another. At present, in addition to professional operators such as Aodong New Energy and Hangzhou Botan, the more active players in the market also include automakers such as Weilai, BAIC and Geely. Weilai's power exchange focuses on its private cars, BAIC mainly relies on its large-scale operating vehicles, and Geely's layout focuses on the construction of the power exchange ecology.
Among them, in the power exchange mode, WEILAI launched the BaaS model that separates the property rights of the battery and the car, that is, after the sale of the car, the car belongs to the user, but the power battery property rights still belong to THE company.
Taking NIO's latest release of ET5 as an example, its starting price before subsidy is 328,000 yuan, but with the BaaS scheme, the starting price before subsidy is reduced to 258,000 yuan. Users who choose the latter will use NIO's battery rental service.
Power station change Source: Weilai official website
In contrast, on the issue of "who is the holder of the battery asset (power exchange mode)", catheart era will introduce a battery bank to manage the battery asset, and the user's battery rent will also flow to the battery bank.
At present, CATL has not yet disclosed the partners of the battery bank. It said that "there are definitely times electrical services", but as for who else participates, CATL issued an invitation to "welcome all parties to come together".
It can be seen that Ning Wang plans to cooperate with more players. After all, behind this is a market of hundreds of billions.
According to Founder Securities, in 2025, the sales of electric passenger cars and commercial vehicles will exceed 2.8 million decibels and 500,000 vehicles, the demand for supporting substations will be about 28,000 seats, the demand for supporting batteries will be about 55GWh, and the market size of the entire industrial chain will exceed 300 billion yuan.
All-weather technology learned that in order to completely open up the business model of separation of vehicle and electricity, in terms of business model innovation, CATL has also cooperated with Baicheng New Energy, Nebulas Shares, Yongfu Shares, GLP, etc. around the operation and maintenance services of the power battery aftermarket such as new energy vehicles, storage and charging inspection.
More importantly, the power exchange mode, CATL will form a closed loop of business, which includes research and development, production, use, recycling, and finally realize the whole life cycle management.
Prior to this, CATL had invested in Xiaokang Life Insurance and cooperated with Chinese Insurance to lay out the new energy auto insurance market.
Therefore, by creating a commercial system network of "wind/light-storage/charging/replacing-inspection" and opening up the comprehensive utilization of batteries from the car end to the energy storage end, the Ningde era is building a larger battery industry empire.
A protracted battle of heavy assets
On the one hand, there are many advantages, and on the other hand, there are many problems.
The biggest difficulty in popularizing the power exchange mode is its high upfront input cost. The construction of a replacement power station not only requires investment in land, equipment and manpower, but also needs to bear the cost of dozens of batteries stored in the power station and subsequent charging.
According to GCL Energy, the cost of building a passenger car replacement power station is about 5 million yuan, of which the cost of investing in batteries has reached 1.4 million yuan.
For example, Weilai will build a total of 605 substations in 2021, which roughly estimates its construction costs to exceed 3 billion yuan. This is only a year's input cost of Weilai, according to its plan of 4,000 substations in 2025, the corresponding investment will reach 20 billion yuan.
And that's just the upfront investment. Different from the charging station where the owner can charge himself, after the replacement power station is built, the operation, maintenance and management of the power battery in the daily operation are inseparable from the support of the operator.
Therefore, compared with the charging station, the asset attributes of the substation are heavier. But at the same time, the development of the power exchange mode is still in the early stages, and the scale of electric vehicles that support power exchange is not large. In an immature market, companies need to be prepared to continue to burn money.
However, for giants such as Ningde Times and Weilai, funds may not be the most important problem.
The current dilemma of the industry is that it is impossible to unify the power exchange standards for a long time, and the replacement power station of a certain brand cannot adapt to all power exchange models, resulting in idle resources and low operational efficiency. After the implementation of the "Electric Vehicle Replacement Safety Requirements", the industry will accelerate towards standardization, but behind this will be a long game between enterprises.
In order to dispel the user's history anxiety, in recent years, car companies have intensively released battery-related technologies, such as Weilai's 150-degree solid-state battery pack and Tesla's 4680 battery. At a time when the range of electric vehicles is still constantly improving, battery technology has become an important weight for a car company to win users.
When multiple manufacturers occupy a certain right to speak and want to implement the power exchange model, which company's parameters will be the main parameter of the industry standard? This may be a new problem.
Before that, whether industry players are willing to cooperate with other power exchange companies to enter the game; after the separation of vehicles and electricity, once an accident occurs, how to define responsibility, etc., these are also urgent problems to be solved by the industry.
In order to improve the "universality", relevant people in the Ningde era said that using the "chocolate power exchange block", car companies do not need to adjust the chassis, only need to develop a power exchange bracket suitable for chocolate batteries.
From this point of view, the threshold for car companies to join is not particularly high. But the problem is that in order to control the cost of batteries and ensure supply, the development of two supplies and three supplies is the trend of new energy vehicle companies now, and if they join the power exchange camp of the Ningde era, it is bound to cause more dependence. For car companies, this may bring certain doubts.
On the other hand, industry profitability is still far away. Even Aodong New Energy, which has the second largest market share, is also in a state of continuous loss.
Changlian intends to invest in Aodong New Energy, and at the end of last year, it released an announcement as a result of which disclosed the financial data of Aodong New Energy for 2018-2020. According to the data, the operating income of Aodong New Energy in 2018-2020 was 0.82 billion yuan, 212 million yuan and 190 million yuan respectively, and the net profit during the period was -186 million yuan, -162 million yuan and -249 million yuan, respectively. Losses are widening.
From this point of view, cutting into the power exchange track, players with sufficient "ammunition" have a more obvious advantage and have the possibility of continuous "fighting". After all, for the unification of industry standards and the breaking of the profit model, it still needs to stand the test of time.
As more and more giants enter the market, it remains to be seen whether this process can be accelerated.