Author | Caijing New Media Ming Hao Editor | Jiang Shizhou
Nowadays, whether it is the automotive circle or the technology circle, the press conference that starts in one hour and almost the whole PPT abounds. Because of this, the Press Conference of the Ningde Era, which was only about ten minutes away, but released a large amount of information, was slightly rare.
On January 18, Times Electric Service, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CATL, released the overall solution of EVOGO "Lexing Battery Swap" and combined power exchange service brand, and announced its official entry into the field of power exchange. In the video of the press conference, Zeng Yuqun, chairman of the Ningde era, sat on the car and held up a piece of chocolate, which showed the "chocolate for electricity block" of the Ningde era.
More flexible and simpler power exchange solutions
The power exchange scheme of the Ningde era is mainly composed of three products of "power exchange block, quick change station and APP", and it claims that the EVOGO integrated power exchange solution can solve user pain points from three aspects: standardization, covering many models, and open services.
The first is the unified specification of the "chocolate exchange block" - the biggest feature of this power exchange block is that after a standardized design, there is only a high-voltage positive and negative interface on the outside, which to some extent realizes a plug-and-play function similar to a U disk, which means that it can be quickly replaced in the replacement station. In order to facilitate/safe power exchange, it uses wireless BMS technology, and only high-voltage positive and negative interfaces are available externally, which greatly improves the reliability of plugged and unplugged components.
At the same time, due to the use of CTP technology in the Ningde era, the energy density of a single battery exceeds 160GWh, which can provide an endurance of about 200km and can be freely combined to flexibly meet different endurance needs. According to official information, this "chocolate exchange block" can be applied to passenger cars and logistics vehicles from A00 class, B class to C class, and can also be adapted to the models developed by the pure electric platform that are 80% of the world's 80% already listed and will be listed in the next three years.
The second product is the quick change station, according to the data of the Ningde era, its fast change station only occupies the space of three parking spaces, which is smaller. The station can store up to 48 power exchange blocks, not only can different versions of the power station be adapted according to the climate environment in different regions, but more importantly, the minimum power exchange time of a single power exchange block is only about 1 minute.
The last era of electric service APP, is a specially designed supporting program for the replacement of electricity in the Ningde era, providing interconnection and service of people, vehicles, stations and blocks.
Chen Weifeng, general manager of Times Electric Service Technology Co., Ltd., said: "The power exchange mode of the Ningde era has a great feature, it is very flexible, users can rent electricity on demand, and consumers only need to rent an electric block for commuting in the daily city. If you want to travel long distances, you can choose two or three electric blocks, which can really increase or decrease, and realize the freedom of electricity. ”
Supporting this set of "flexible power exchange" logic in the Ningde era is that it believes that most private car owners will only use 10-20% of the battery power in daily use scenarios, but in order to alleviate mileage anxiety and energy replenishment anxiety, they have to buy large-power models and pay a lot of sunk costs. Through this way of separating vehicle and electricity, users can achieve the freedom of choice, combined with battery rental and other models, which can further reduce consumers' car purchase and use costs.
At the press conference, the official released the 001 member of EVOGO - FAW Besturn NAT combination power exchange version, so we can also get a glimpse of the Ningde era hopes to achieve the ambition of unified battery design, manufacturing, interface and other standards through power exchange.
The wild hope of the "King of Ning"
Although the news that the NINGDE era announced the entry of the power exchange was somewhat surprising, combined with a series of actions of the previous Ningde era, such a choice was the result of careful consideration.
As early as 2019, CATL jointly launched the two-wheel electric vehicle replacement brand "Xiaoha Electric Exchange" with Hello Travel and Ant Financial, taking electric two-wheelers as the service object and exploring and trying to replace electricity for the first time.
In 2020, as the third largest shareholder, CATL and weilai automobile, the head of electric vehicles, jointly established the Weineng battery asset company, in fact, the role of this company is similar to the "battery bank" mentioned when the NINGDE era launched the EVOGO power exchange brand. Through this cooperation, CATL began to accumulate useful experience in operating battery banks and power exchange models.
Entering 2021, the power exchange strategy of the Ningde era began to accelerate. The first is to establish the business operation body of the EVOGO power exchange brand - "Times Electric Service", and reach business cooperation related to power exchange with the Guizhou Provincial Government, Sichuan Development and other partners.
At the same time, in terms of commercial vehicle replacement, CATL has reached cooperation with Beiqi Foton, Shaanxi Automobile, FAW, Dongfeng, Yutong and other commercial vehicle head enterprises, and its market share in the field of commercial vehicle replacement is as high as 85%.
However, compared with commercial vehicles, China's new energy passenger car market is obviously more attractive in terms of scale and potential. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, China's passenger car sales reached 26.275 million units in 2021, an increase of 3.8% year-on-year, of which the sales of new energy vehicles reached 3.521 million units, an increase of 157.5% year-on-year, and the market share also reached 13.4%, 8 percentage points higher than the previous year.
Considering the huge development potential of new energy vehicles in the passenger car market and the accumulation of early experience, there is no reason why the Ningde era should not continue to expand the application scenarios of the power exchange mode in the field of passenger cars. After all, the purpose of changing the power in the Ningde era is simply to sell batteries and sell more batteries.
However, as the largest power battery supplier in China, the ambition of the CATL era to cut into the power exchange market is obviously more than "selling batteries". From a larger perspective, unified standards are the "wild hopes" that the Ningde era wants to achieve.
At present, the car companies have not implemented a unified standard in terms of the specifications, models, interfaces, parameters and other aspects of the power battery pack, and it is precisely because of the non-uniformity of the standard that the existing substation is difficult to serve different brands. The launch of the "chocolate power exchange block" in the Ningde era is obviously trying to break the barriers of battery and model adaptation, and through the promotion and landing of unified standards, reduce the impact of customized research and development of vehicle companies on costs, and can save a lot of costs for car companies to develop new cars.
At the same time, because the power exchange involves the entire industrial chain layout such as decommissioned battery processing, it belongs to the typical "large investment, long cycle, slow return" heavy asset model, and the vast majority of car companies often do not have the financial strength to build their own power stations, nor can they promote the power exchange model.
In terms of scale, as the well-deserved "King of Ning" in this era, the Ningde era has obviously more advantages in entering the game and changing electricity. In 2021, the cumulative output of China's power batteries was 219.7GWh, an increase of 163.4% year-on-year; the loading volume was 154.5GWh, an increase of 142.8% year-on-year. Among them, CATL ranked first in the loading volume of domestic power battery companies with an installed volume of 80.51 GWh, accounting for 52.1%.
Moreover, at the moment when it is difficult for the power battery to achieve a technical breakthrough, the seat of "Ning Wang" is not as stable as it seems. Due to the absence of technical irreplaceability at present, in the case of many car companies looking for new purchased battery suppliers, and even self-built battery factories, it is still unknown how long the advantages of scale in the Ningde era can be maintained.
Therefore, the expansion of the power exchange business is also to a large extent the advance layout of the Ningde era to gradually transform from a battery supplier to an energy service provider and cope with the bottleneck of future business development. In the future, with the promotion of the power exchange model, the Ningde era is expected to complete the closed loop of the whole life cycle value chain of batteries from research and development, manufacturing, use to recycling, which is also more conducive to enhancing added value.
Where is the shackles of the swap mode?
Everything has two sides, although the road to power exchange in the Ningde era seems to have a good prospect, but whether it is for the Ningde era or the entire power exchange mode, there are several unavoidable problems and shackles.
First of all, the unified standard expected to be achieved in the Ningde era, how many enterprises are willing to try and adopt is still unknown. From the Ningde era EVOGO's first cooperation object is FAW Besturn, it is not difficult to see that the current willing to adopt this standard is often a relatively weak car company in battery technology. Generally speaking, because power battery-related technology is still the core selling point of many electric vehicles, relatively strong car companies will not hand over or give up their core technologies.
In addition, the current technology, including battery performance, is still the core competitiveness of a new energy vehicle, if the battery technology and standards are unified, how to achieve product differentiation will also become a huge problem. These reasons alone are enough to frustrate the efforts of the Ningde era to implement a unified power exchange standard.
Assuming that the standard is implemented, how to ensure the power exchange experience is also one of the problems. Different from Weilai's choice of only facing its own models and other power exchange platforms for the public travel market, NINGDE era EVOGO wants to face a wider range of C-end individual users who pay more attention to experience, considering that the "chocolate power exchange block" of the Ningde era can adapt to passenger cars from A00 level, B class to C class, the tolerance of different models of users to the convenience of power exchange is naturally very different, how to ensure that the power exchange experience is not separated, will be a big problem in front of EVOGO.
And if we look at the entire power exchange market from a distance, it is not difficult to find that although there are constantly new players who want to enter the game, how to achieve profitability, there is no effective precedent in the industry.
By the end of 2021, the number of new energy vehicle replacement stations in China will be close to 1,200. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, there are currently nearly 200 power exchange models in China, with a cumulative promotion of more than 150,000 vehicles, but these vehicles are mainly taxis and heavy trucks, and only a few private cars.
It is understood that the load rate of a single substation reaches 50% to achieve breakeven. That is to say, a power station that can change power more than 400 times a day must complete at least 200 or so power exchanges every day to avoid loss. From the current point of view, the biggest problem with power exchange is high frequency to alleviate cost pressure, but if the power station is to be as popular as gas stations, it is bound to cover some more remote areas, which is a balance that is difficult to achieve for enterprises with profit as the main purpose.
Not to mention, with the development of fast charging technology, the time gap between charging and power exchange is also shortening.
Taking Tesla's latest generation of V3 supercharge pile as an example, the mid-range charging (from 20% to 80%) takes only 20 minutes, and a series of domestic and foreign car companies, including Porsche, Hyundai, Kia, BYD, Geely, Great Wall, GAC, Xiaopeng and Weilai, are successively launching or planning to launch 800V high-voltage platform technology, the promotion of high-power overcharge technology, and the popularization of 4C magnification battery technology, and the idea of 5 minutes full of 200 km of endurance is expected to be realized. And when the speed of the charging gun can catch up with a refueling gun, the power replacement business will be re-examined.
As for the present, although it is still unknown whether the Ningde era can achieve another breakthrough in corporate performance by entering the field of power exchange, it is obvious that behind the power exchange model, or a new blue ocean market waiting to be tapped.