The Baoding Service Area of Hebei Province of Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway ushered in the last busy moment of the Lunar Year of the Ox.
At 10:00 a.m., in the gray sky, new energy vehicles roared down from the highway and stopped steadily in front of the charging pile in the service area. The early owner skillfully took the charging gun with his left hand and scanned the code with the mobile phone in his right hand, the process was less than 1 minute, and then quickly took his family into the service area hall to rest, unwilling to stay in the sub-zero outdoors for a long time.
Of course, the car can not stay long, they all know that when charging, the car is not turned off and it is easy to lose power, which may bring consequences of not being able to start the vehicle.
This is a service area about 190km away from Beijing, and it is also the first stop for most new energy vehicles driven from Beijing to replenish electricity during the Spring Festival. The Spring Festival has given special significance to electric vehicles, most of the trunks of cars are stuffed with luggage, each car is also full, and the owners are accompanied by their parents, wives and children.
From Beijing to here, less than 200km away, many new energy vehicles have a battery life of at least 380km. For the vast majority of new energy car owners with a range of 500km, if they want to drive a long distance, it is almost time to replenish the power.
The cold winter, coupled with the congestion of highways during the Spring Festival, has always been the "life gate" of new energy vehicles. Insufficient electricity, scrambling for power piles, long queues and other phenomena are endless. In the Spring Festival of 2021, there were car owners who were "trapped" in the high-speed tunnel due to traffic jams and ran out of power, and waited for rescue after several hours.
Now, the Spring Festival of 2022 is approaching, and everything is still continuing.
"Official endurance is a joke"?
From Beijing to Yuncheng, Shanxi, Zhang Ning's journey home is full of twists and turns.
"900km away, the navigation prompted me to recharge the battery 2 times on the road to get home, but I didn't expect the battery to be too useless, and I charged 5 times to get home." The more Zhang Ning thought about it, the more angry he became, so he and his wife decided to leave the car in Beijing for the Spring Festival next year, and return home to continue the previous habit of returning home by plane or train.
At the end of 2021, according to the test results of 41 mainstream new energy vehicles in a temperature of minus 20 degrees Celsius, more than 74% of the actual endurance of new energy vehicles failed to meet the official standard of half of the endurance, which is not much different from the results of previous years.
Zhang Ning had long expected this problem, in the summer, his Xiaopeng P7 can run more than 500km, but in the winter, the actual endurance of the car does not exceed 400km.
If it is not winter, Zhang Ning is very satisfied with his P7. In mid-2021, Zhang Ning finally had the first Beijing new energy license in his life. At this time, he has made great changes to new energy vehicles and no longer insists on believing that fuel vehicles are "YYDS". After a careful selection with their wives, they chose the Xiaopeng P7, which is officially labeled as 670km.
Shortly after picking up the car, Zhang Ning actually drove back to his hometown once. On the homecoming highway in August, he calmly charged twice and arrived home, which took no more than 3 hours. But this Spring Festival is very different from the summer journey.
Affected by the cold weather and high-speed congestion, to Baoding, less than 200KM of roads have consumed more than half of the P7's electricity. For the sake of insurance, Zhang Ning decisively chose to charge in the Baoding service area.
Baoding service area charging began to queue
As a result, Zhang Ning could only rush to Taiyuan that night. Considering the child's physical health, the family of three had to stay in Taiyuan for one night and rush home the next day.
P7 winter endurance performance has become a "heart disease" for many car owners. In the past 30 days, the car quality network showed a total of 10 complaints about the Xiaopeng P7, of which 3 involved the problem of "serious false mileage", and even some car owners said that the 670km endurance could not run 300 kilometers. On major automotive forums, the endurance of the P7 has been jokingly called the "endurance happy table" by netizens many times.
Just when Zhang Ning was still charging in the Baoding service area, the Dingzhou service area, which was about 70km away, Fang Na also encountered the problem of large endurance shrinkage.
Fang Na mentioned an Euler good cat in November 2021 for work transportation, and the official claim that the endurance can reach 500km, she does not know whether the good cat can really do it, after all, its "place of use" is limited to the urban area of Cangzhou in Hebei Province.
Unlike Zhang Ning, her family lives in Xinle, Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, and the journey home is less than 250km, "even if the vehicle's endurance in winter is 50% off, it is enough to drive home." ”
Reality is always more difficult than imagined, the good cat sailed out of Cangzhou 200km, the endurance began to be urgent, showing the remaining 60km. Helpless, she can only choose the nearest charging station to replenish energy.
Her luck was not so good that there were 3 cars lined up at her nearest high-speed charging station. To make matters worse, the charging station has a total of 4 DC charging piles (fast charging piles), of which 1 pile shows equipment failure. In the end, Fang Na had planned to go home in 2 and a half hours, but she actually spent 4 and a half hours.
According to the observation of "Phoenix WEEKLY Finance", during the queuing of Fang Na to charge, a total of 6 electric vehicles drove into the service area where it was located, but in the end, they all drove to the next service area due to the queue "lineup".
"When the battery actually lasts up to 700km, I will choose to drive the tram home during the Spring Festival." A fuel vehicle owner who drove home said so.
"Charge for 1 hour, queue for 4 hours"
Compared with the "small fights" around Beijing and Tianjin, the south is the "hardest hit area" for the Spring Festival queuing of electric vehicles, and the phenomenon of "queuing for 4 hours" is still serious.
Li Ming, a real estate agent in Huizhou, Guangdong Province, was affected by the epidemic and decided to drive an electric car back to his hometown in Jiangxi this year. His car is the AION Y, which officially says it can reach 600km.
In order to get home early, he began to rush home at 6:30 a.m. on January 25. According to his vision, this time period has been staggered during the peak period of the Spring Festival homecoming, the congestion on the highway will not be obvious, and charging will be easier. But what he did not expect was that many car owners who drove back to their hometowns also had the same expectations.
As early as January 19, the Guangdong Provincial Department of Transport issued an early warning: during the Spring Festival, the overall traffic flow of highways will rise by about 6%, especially on the 23rd (January 25th) and 24th (January 26th) months. During peak travel hours, some sections of the road with relatively busy traffic may have traffic congestion and tight charging piles.
The above predictions, without exception, happened to Li Ming.
700km away, navigation is expected to take 9 hours, counting charging, rest time, Li Ming plans to arrive home at 8 pm, 2 years have not seen the mother has prepared a table of dishes in advance for him to pick up the wind and dust, but the plan can not catch up with the change, his "pick up the wind and dust" feast waited until the next day to eat.
"The traffic jam on the road caused the battery life to plummet, causing me to charge 4 times along the way: there was a service area where the number of queues exceeded the parking area of the charging station, and most of them were drivers driving home, which made me wait for 4 hours to charge." Li Ming sighed, "In the end, I am still too optimistic about the number of charging piles and trams. ”
Charging queue in a high-speed service area in Ganzhou, Jiangxi
Li Ming's experience is not unique. According to the observation of Phoenix WEEKLY Finance, many electric vehicle owners who have returned from Guangdong and Shanghai have encountered the above situation.
According to CCTV Financial Report, the State Grid Smart Vehicle Networking Platform analysis, from the highway daily charging trend, it is expected that the maximum daily charging capacity during the Spring Festival this year will reach about 1.4 million kWh, an increase of nearly double last year. The doubling of charging capacity means a significant increase in new energy vehicles on high speeds.
For example, in the Hunan Hengyang Leiyang Service Area, which is known as the "Net Red High-speed Service Area", the charging station in the service area is not short of passenger flow during holidays. During this year's Spring Festival, the charging station has repeatedly experienced queuing for more than 2 hours. In a group of 150 returning car owners, no less than 5 people in the group called on owners of the same route to choose the site carefully.
Because of the long queue, it has also led to the charging station in recent days has had many acts of preempting the charging pile.
On January 26, some netizens uploaded a video of "an electric car publicly grabbing charging piles". The video footage shows a GAC Toyota electric vehicle taking advantage of the gap in one of the charging piles to change the charging gap and drive directly from the end of the queue to the first place.
"Phoenix WEEKLY Finance" learned that the video shooter is a member of the queue, which has been queuing for 2 hours, and the owner of the charging pile claims to be in a hurry and drives forward to charge without queuing, which arouses the anger of the queuers at the scene. It was late at night and there was no staff to help. However, according to the videographer, in the end, under the unity of the owners in the queue, they successfully "chased away" the charging pile preemptors.
It is worth mentioning that on January 23, a similar incident also occurred in the service area. In response to the above incident, the reporter called the service area of Leiyang for verification, and as of press time, the official did not give a response.
In response to the above situation, there are "experienced" car owners to support: "Each pile queue more than 2 people, you should get off the highway to find the nearest supercharged pile, definitely faster than queuing." ”
The speed of repair cannot keep up with the speed of damage
In recent years, the improvement of new energy vehicle technology and the construction of infrastructure have greatly reduced the cost of short-distance travel for new energy vehicle users, and the reputation of new energy vehicles has gradually developed.
However, it is worth noting that long-distance travel during the holidays is still a short board for new energy vehicles (electric vehicles). Looking back at 2021, whether it is the "tram without electricity on the wokou expressway" encountered during the Spring Festival in 2021 or the "8-hour drive took 16 hours" during the National Day in 2021, the problems behind these events have not been solved so far.
In the eyes of car owners, this year's Spring Festival "old scene reappears", in addition to the many electric vehicles, less winter endurance and other reasons, the main reason is that there are few charging piles in the station, slow charging of equipment, and the damage speed of charging piles is too fast.
According to the "Phoenix WEEKLY Finance" offline visit, there are a total of 9 high-speed service areas on the road from Beijing to Shijiazhuang (Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway), and the e-charging APP shows that each service area is equipped with 4 charging piles. During the visit, the reporter found that there were queues in 4 service areas, and the charging piles in these 4 charging stations were faulty.
The fault is displayed under the charging pile line, but the display on the APP is normal
Among them, after arriving at the Baoding Wangdu service area, the reporter found that there was still 1 idle pile, of which 1 showed that the equipment was faulty, and the other 1 showed normal, but the charging gun was discarded on the ground. When Phoenix WEEKLY Finance picked up the discarded charging gun to charge, it found that the charging pile showed that it could not be connected to the electric car. After several attempts by reporters, the charging pile showed that the service was suspended.
A long-term long-distance passenger car owner said that he often saw the phenomenon of charging guns being littered, which he believed was one of the reasons why charging piles in high-speed service areas were prone to failure.
Previously, the Phoenix WEEKLY Finance reporter had reported that the high-speed charging station has problems such as slow charging speed, inconsistent output power of each charging pile, and asymmetric online and offline information (for details, click "Public Charging Pile, "Installed" Cannot Go On"), and now, after several months, the above problems still exist.
"Less than 40% of the charge in 1 hour, it takes 3 hours to wait until the vehicle is fully charged, this charging speed is too disgusting for me." A Lantu car owner who was anxious to return to his hometown in Henan Province paced back and forth in the high-speed service area while expressing his anxiety to reporters.
At present, "increasing the number of charging piles" and "replacing old charging piles" are the unanimous calls of returning car owners.
"The cost of building and maintaining charging piles in high-speed service areas is very high, and it is unrealistic for enterprises to solve problems overnight." The problems brought about by the Spring Festival require the implementation of policies in various regions, while charging companies should achieve staggered peak guidance, and car companies should also continuously improve the technology of new energy vehicles. Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the Passenger Car Market Information Joint Association, said that at present, some private charging companies have joined this track, and the problem of charging anxiety during holidays will gradually be alleviated in the future.
It is understood that in order to alleviate the anxiety of high-speed charging in 2022, Guangdong Guangzhou, Inner Mongolia, Hubei Huangshi, Fujian Quanzhou and other regions have concentrated on charging piles, emergency charging warehouses, emergency charging vehicles and other facilities during the Spring Festival, and some areas have carried out mapping and repair of high-speed charging piles in the jurisdiction in advance.
At present, some private enterprises want to contribute to the Spring Festival through their own strength. For example, in order to alleviate the pressure of the Spring Festival, Xiaopeng Automobile has set up charging service stations near the six high-speed exits in the southern section of the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao line; in addition, WEI HAS also set up a replacement power station in some high-speed service areas.
With the efforts of the new year, will there still be a phenomenon of "grabbing piles" and "charging for 4 hours" during the Spring Festival next year?
The author | Gong Chenqian
Editor| Zhang Yixiao
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