A few days ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially responded to NetEase CEO Ding Lei's proposal on "Unified Smart Electronic Device Charger Standard Port", saying that it will continue to promote the formulation of relevant standards and promote the integration and unification of power battery charging interfaces and technologies, which has caused a lot of discussion in the industry.
This is not the first time that Ding Lei has put forward suggestions on promoting the standardization of power batteries, in fact, in recent years, he has repeatedly made similar suggestions on important occasions such as the "two sessions", and each time has received a large number of consumers' support.
It is reasonable to say that it is a good thing to benefit the country and the people, but to be honest, Ding Lei's suggestions have been very little response in the new energy vehicle and power battery industries. What's the problem? Let the kung fu car take everyone to see it together.
(1) The "battle of fangyuan" has not landed, and the battery research and development is still a huge challenge?
In Ding Lei's vision, power batteries should have a unified standard. Just like ordinary dry batteries, whether it is "Nanfu" or "555", as long as it is the same size as the No. 5 battery, it can also be used in various remote controls or toys.
But the actual situation may be far from what everyone thinks, that is, the "square circle dispute" of the power battery alone has not yet landed.
For example, Tesla uses a cylindrical battery, the reason is that its energy density is high enough. The shell-to-shell ratio of cylindrical batteries can reach more than 98%, because it can evenly divide the force across the entire housing surface. The square shell battery can not do this, because its force is dispersed, must leave enough space for the chemicals inside to expand, so the expansion ratio of the square shell battery is generally only about 90%.
But the problem of cylindrical batteries is also obvious, that is, the impedance is relatively high, and the larger the volume, the more obvious. Square shell batteries can be very large, still can have good stability. And Tesla spent so many years, the cylindrical battery evolved from 18650 to 21700, the diameter of the battery only increased from 18mm to 21mm, the upcoming 46800, but only increased to 46mm, but it is almost the current limit, and it is still difficult. Think about the thousands of "AAA batteries" on your car, do you feel numbness in your scalp in an instant? The difficulty of control for car companies is also geometrically increasing.
Compared with the "battle of square circles", what may be more fatal is that everyone has not even figured out what materials should be used for power batteries. In the early years, the power batteries were almost all lithium iron phosphate batteries, and the advantages were low cost, long life and good safety. Then in the past few years, with the battery life as the focus of subsidies, ternary lithium batteries with higher energy density began to take advantage and seized the initiative. By 2020, BYD launched the "blade battery", which is based on lithium iron phosphate batteries, through its own innovative structural design, greatly improving the volume utilization rate of the battery. It has the energy density of the ternary lithium battery, and at the same time it is safer, and promotes the lithium iron phosphate battery to regain the initiative.
At the end of last year, GAC Aeon launched the latest nano sponge silicon anode battery. It uses silicon raw materials to replace graphite, as the negative electrode raw material of the battery, so that the energy storage capacity of the battery has been greatly improved, and the ultra-long endurance of 1000km+ has been achieved for the first time, and the industry has been vibrated again.
In short, what materials to use, what shape to make, how much voltage to pass, how much current to put, everyone has not yet unified the conclusion, want to unify the size, performance and interface, it is naturally more difficult.
(2) Fight separately and have many barriers
More critically, the domestic power battery industry is still in a period of extensive development. Taking the past 2021 as an example, three of the top ten companies in the domestic power battery installed capacity are newly promoted to the list, they are Hive Energy, Tafir New Energy and Sunwoda.
Although the situation of "one super and many strong" is very obvious, whether it is the second BYD or the third China Innovation Airline, their growth rate is faster than that of the Ningde era, and the enterprises behind them also maintain good competitiveness. This means that there are still opportunities for new entrants. And once standardized, it will be a devastating blow to small enterprises, which they cannot accept under any circumstances.
In order to form technical barriers, most companies have not published their own power battery parameters. That is to say, in this area, there is no unified standard, and the company itself does not want to be unified.
Another obstacle is the supercharge technology, whether it is Tesla or Xiaopeng, or Weilai, they like to use their own supercharging technology as a selling point. For example, Musk has hyped up before that Tesla's V3 supercharger charging power can be increased to 300kW, which can make the vehicle fully charged within 15 minutes. But the greater charging power means that different interfaces are needed, including patented technology, which is also difficult to agree on.
For car companies, these are the selling points of their own products, which will not be easily disclosed to competitors, and even set up obstacles.
More fatally, there may be a company's view of a unified power battery interface. For example, Weilai and Ningde era are supportive of unification, they are all supporters of "power exchange", and feel that this method can reduce the cost of car purchase by separating vehicles and electricity, and at the same time increase the convenience of consumer travel.
But some other companies do not agree, such as Tesla and BYD are not interested in changing electricity, they feel that power replacement is a waste of resources. Even Tesla's new Model Y, BYD's e-platform 3.0, that is, dolphins and meta PLUS, these new generation cars, have chosen to integrate the battery directly into the chassis and make it non-removable. This further saves space and is more reliable.
Think about the time When Apple did the same, in the end the mobile phone battery was almost all made non-removable. From the current market situation, it is difficult to determine whether the power battery will go in this direction.
(3) The opinion is good, but not now
In fact, Ding Lei's opinion is quite good, if the power battery interface, materials, size, performance, safety requirements, etc. are standardized, it is absolutely very good for consumers, at least more bottom-up. Just like everyone buys Nanfu and "555", we know roughly how much power and reliability it is.
But the greater significance lies in the echelon utilization and recycling of power batteries. Once the interface, material, and size are standardized, the company's production equipment and processes will also converge significantly, and the production cost will be further reduced.
After the electric vehicle is used up, the battery pack can be uniformly recycled and enter the cascade utilization market. For example, the battery attenuation to 70%, the vehicle has not been used, may be to the energy storage industry can continue to play waste heat, energy storage industry can not be used, but also continue to do backup power. Finally, the scrap and material recycling are unified, and then the materials are retained by the battery company.
In this way, the utilization rate of the entire industrial chain will be greatly improved, reducing waste, and truly achieving energy conservation and emission reduction.
However, until the technical barriers between enterprises are removed, such an idea is still quite difficult to implement. Because it's hard to have a force to bring them together, for the giants, standardization will eat away at their profits, offset their technological advantages, and for small businesses, it is more likely to be a disaster.
(4) Kung Fu shooting
However, Ding Lei is not only a mouth cannon, in fact, NetEase Hangzhou Research Institute has developed a set of "double carbon" intelligent control system, which has been open sourced to small and medium-sized enterprises with carbon neutrality goals, and has a good power saving effect. This shows that NetEase has indeed done a lot of work in energy conservation and emission reduction, and it is a responsible enterprise.
It's just Ding Lei's idea of the power battery, I'm afraid it will be difficult to realize in a short period of time.