Text | Karakush
Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what the next piece will be.
For example, in 2022, what was picked up was a piece of the Ningde era.
Two days ago, CATL launched its own power exchange service brand EVOGO, from the power exchange block, to the power station, to the online APP, to provide private cars and logistics vehicles with a combination of power exchange solutions that break the brand dimensional wall.
One of the key products is called "chocolate power exchange block", is specially for the "shared power exchange" and the development of mass production of high-energy small battery block, a single piece of power exchange time only needs 60s, you can supplement 200km ~ 600km endurance (corresponding to 1 ~ 3 batteries), no sense to undertake refueling general energy experience, so that electric vehicles can also be like gasoline cars, buttress wall old man into it, quickly mental guys out, no mileage anxiety.
At present, the market and the industry can basically reach such a consensus: the convenience of energy replenishment is the key indicator of the "mileage anxiety" of electric vehicles. Due to the technical and operational bottlenecks in the mainstream charging mode, power exchange as a supplement is always repeatedly remembered.
It's nothing new, and the world's first dry-swap companies have been out of business for a decade. In recent years, it has been more like an empty wine bottle with a trademark, and people are enthusiastic about the robust curative effects on the packaging, but the industry has never been able to fill it.
Now the end of the Ningde era is to give us a sweet punch: changing electricity will eventually become a business.
The threshold of business
Previously, power exchange was a pseudo-track that could not calculate the economic account. The investment in the replacement power station is too high, the base of the replacement tram is too small, the profit is a problem, and the enterprise is not active.
The most fundamental thing is the lack of uniform standards. Power exchange also follows the basic law of economies of scale, and the premise of scale is standardization, including the standardization of vehicle requirements, the standardization of connecting components, especially the standardization of batteries.
Different car companies, and even different models of the same car company in the early days, the corresponding battery pack matrix is very complicated. According to the statistics of the battery China network, in 2020, there are nearly 280 single models of the continental electro-mechanical core, corresponding to more than 300 kinds of cell size specifications, of which the largest share of the size only accounts for 10.6% of the total installed capacity.
This diversity that is difficult to end can still rely on platforms to switch within car companies, and it is obviously more difficult for car companies to be compatible with each other.
Therefore, the current power exchange is based on a closed system, either a single car company, such as Weilai, or a single scene, such as a taxi. At present, there are 30 companies and 59 power exchange products on the market, almost independently.
The supporting substation can not become a general equipment. For capital, because it is not universal, it cannot be shared by the whole industry, it cannot form a scale, the number of cars that can be adapted is limited, and the operating efficiency is always low, which lacks the strategic significance of long-term investment.
For consumers, because it is not universal, the sites that can be used are few and limited, not convenient enough, and will not get a good experience, and the power exchange mode cannot establish trust and safety in use. If the market does not accept it, it is difficult to achieve real promotion.
For example, if the car brand is engaged in its own gas station, BMW's car can not go to the Mercedes-Benz station to refuel, refueling will not have today's convenience, it is better to manage two barrels of oil.
Therefore, the power exchange must break the agreement barrier between different brands, from operating cars to operating cars + private cars, so that consumers can use it first, and use a part of the market to force more players in the industry to join, further improve efficiency and input-output ratio, and make it a business.
From the endgame, of course, this is not a matter for one or two companies. It is only at this moment to unveil the grand prelude, how to unveil and who to reveal, all point to the Ningde era.
Only King Ning can shoot?
The chocolate exchange block of the Ningde era first provided a standardized product.
It can be adapted to passenger cars from A00 class, B class, C class to logistics vehicles, covering 80% of the world's pure electric platform models that have been launched and will be launched in the next 3 years;
And any model equipped with "chocolate for power block", no matter what brand, whether you are FAW or Dongfeng, Great Wall or Geely, can adapt to the EVOGO express change station, come here to change electricity.
Open up the brand, but also open up the demand. Support 1 to 3 pieces of free combination, you can choose one, two or three batteries, a single piece of life of 200km; filled with three pieces of maximum endurance up to 600km.
Other companies can of course also launch their own standardized power exchange blocks. Technically, chocolate blocks are based on the wireless BMS technology of the Ningde era, but there can also be other side solutions.
What is irreplaceable is that it was launched by the Ningde era, and it is expensive to play the role of the domestic battery giant itself.
First, it is its industrial concentration. Although the battery is extremely dispersed from the car side, it is highly concentrated from the battery side. At present, the domestic pattern is "one super and many strong", the super advantage of the Ningde era is overwhelming, according to last year's Q3 financial report, its domestic installed capacity market share reached 53%.
The head of the new energy vehicle companies are almost all purchased from the Ningde era, and many large customers have locked in the demand for 2022 or even further in advance, such as Tesla's supply agreement has been extended to 2025. In order to lock in production capacity, domestic local enterprises have also deepened their binding with the Ningde era through various means, such as SAIC, FAW, Geely, GAC and NINGDE times have established joint ventures.
Full production and full sales, highly sought after, are the embodiment of its right to speak as an upstream supplier. Through the breadth and depth of the downstream of the industry, ningde era is expected to rely on its own market position, starting from the development of models, and leveraging all car companies to form standardization together.
Except for the Ningde era, there are no other candidates. No car company has a position to open up the battery design of friendly businessmen; while other battery companies lack considerable appeal and game chips.
Car companies usually 3-5 years will be replaced, if the battery design is changed at will, it can not be matched with the power exchange equipment, battery block. Therefore, only a stable leader like the Ningde era can promote standardization.
Second, it is comprehensive technical capabilities.
In the power exchange system, the power battery is the core asset, and the longer the cycle life, the better the battery asset, which is also an important indicator of the running through business model.
The CATL era has greatly improved the service time of the battery and the performance parameters after 5 years, and even developed a 16-year, 2 million-kilometer solution for passenger car batteries. This results in a change in the depreciation formula and a better economic model.
At the same time, batteries are a liquid target, constantly being consumed in a shared battery banking network. Therefore, in addition to software and hardware technology, power exchange also involves the operation of the power exchange ecological platform, the regulation of urban distributed energy storage, the monitoring and management of the whole life cycle of the battery, and so on. Compared with the vast majority of car companies, the Ningde era has a basic know-how to optimize the battery allocation strategy and circulation efficiency, which actually directly determines the user experience.
Another technical advantage lies in the deep excavation of the whole life cycle of the battery. Depreciation is an unavoidable cost, and the aging batteries in the system need to be maintained and replaced, and the losses are large for a long time. Battery companies can improve the profitability of residual value through business models such as cascade utilization and recycling, make the best use of their materials, and systematically reduce the demand for mineral resources. For example, NINGDE times can rely on its subsidiary Guangdong Bangpu to create an ecological closed loop from battery production, to use, to cascade utilization, to recycling and resource regeneration.
Third, it is a strong banknote capacity. Large-scale investment and construction, operation and replacement of power stations are hard-core heavy assets, in addition to equipment, there are also electricity prices, land prices, depreciation, operation and maintenance costs and so on.
A mid-last year report by Everbright Securities pointed out that under the premise of vehicle matching, the utilization rate of a single substation can reach 60% to 70% to achieve breakeven. The average utilization rate of substations in first-tier cities such as Beijing is around 20% (by the end of 2020).
The core of profitability lies in high frequency, to standardize the acceptance of all models, to form an efficient station ratio - a large amount of capital is needed to cover the previous investment, in order to revitalize the sustainable development of the entire model.
As a trillion-dollar listed company, CATL is the ceiling of financing capacity in the new energy industry chain;
At the same time, as a high-quality industry, with solid fundamentals, last year's Q3 single quarter revenue of 29.29 billion yuan, gross profit margin of 27.9%, net profit attributable to the mother of 3.27 billion yuan, thanks to the rigorous financial style, its own cash flow is always very abundant, the balance of cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period exceeded 70 billion yuan, there is independent risk-bearing capital.
Of course, the capital capacity of enterprises lies more in the amount that can be leveraged, and it is necessary to leverage the forces of banks, government agencies, state-owned energy systems, etc., combine resources, and jointly undertake heavy investment.
For example, CATL and Guangdong, Sichuan, Jiangxi, Guizhou and other provincial governments have strategic cooperation agreements, and in-depth cooperation and exchanges with the governments of Jiangsu and Shanxi provinces. At the same time, it has strategic cooperative relations with huadian group, Yangtze River Three Gorges group, national energy investment group, China energy construction company, state power investment group and other old energy groups. The accumulation of these circles of friends is a passport to expansion.
Return to the value of existence
The Ningde era did not land on the head. Since 2019, they have been actively laying out. By the end of last year, they signed an agreement with the Guizhou Provincial Government to cooperate in the construction of a power exchange network, which became a sign of their official fate.
At present, the state has vigorously blown the wind, intensively introduced incentive policies, and also given actual subsidies, and for key standardization issues, it has also organized a series of groups to formulate standards, and ningde era is also one of the companies deeply involved in standard formulation.
However, healthy growth still needs to rely on the market first, and cannot solve everything by such policies. With a big background, the problem of low expectations in the past of the market is being solved as giants like the Ningde era have entered the game.
According to the Orient Securities Research Report, it is expected that the domestic sales of new energy vehicles will reach 7.8 million in 2025, of which the proportion of power replacement models is expected to reach 30%. Based on this calculation, it is expected that in 2025, the domestic substation will reach 22,000, the operating market is expected to reach 263.1 billion yuan, and the substation equipment market is expected to reach 69.3 billion yuan.
There are still friends who are worried that changing the electricity is just a temporary cool. Power replacement will lose its market foothold with the arrival of high-voltage overcharge. We must understand that the long-term coexistence of pluralism and complementarity are the solutions to almost all problems in the Chinese market.
More importantly, energy replenishment is only a small step in power replacement, and as a mechanism for optimizing the allocation of social resources, it is a big step and the ultimate meaning of its long-term development.
In terms of private cars, equipped with batteries with longer and longer batteries, but only 10-20% of the battery power will be used daily, forming a lot of waste of resources, but users will still pay a lot of sunk costs in order to alleviate mileage anxiety and energy replenishment anxiety and buy models with large power.
Even people who drive regularly can't avoid being idle for battery calendar life and the number of cycles. Private cars use a cycle of batteries, it is impossible to run to eight or nine hundred thousand kilometers, even if a car drives to 10 years, it only uses 1/10 of the battery, ninety percent of the life is wasted, redundant charge and release cycles are also thrown in vain.
From the perspective of optimal efficiency, it is more advantageous to treat the battery as a private property than as a social resource.
For consumers, the sunk cost and depreciation cost of purchasing batteries can be transferred out, only need to bear the service fee, more economical; especially with the brand opening up, scale upgrade, the relative advantages of power exchange will gradually be displayed, overshadowing the doubt about the separation of vehicle electricity, with efficient energy to eliminate endurance anxiety, electric vehicles can expand the use of boundaries and develop tension from a relatively tight scene. The development tension of an industry is ultimately the convenience and love of consumers.
From the social level, sharing through the power exchange network, compared to holding on a car, can greatly improve the utilization rate of a single battery; at the same time, charging and discharging can also alleviate the increasingly tense power grid security through distributed energy storage, with the growth of new energy vehicle ownership, it will make the power exchange reflect greater value.
The full link from the car end to the energy storage end will be the direction of power exchange, and it is also the real layout of the Future Growth of the Ningde Era. They want to go from an automotive power battery supplier to an energy storage unit, to energy grid integration, and become an energy giant that builds a new energy network system.
Looking back, both the market and the state are tolerantly allowing Chinese companies to make their own choices about their future. Once, the unhurriedness of moving forward has brought the Ningde era to today's position; I believe that with the heart of the user, it will continue to forge it into a country that is difficult to be crushed.