Author 丨Cha You Yin
Responsible editor 丨 Cui Liwen
Edit 丨 Chic
"Is it possible to invent an 'energy liquid' that can be filled up in five minutes and then run for seven hundred kilometers?"
At 20:00 on the evening of January 30, Beijing time, Lao Shao, who had been waiting for more than 1 hour in the cold wind outside the State Grid Charging Station in the Ancient Yellow River Service Area of the Huaixu Expressway, looked at the two cars in front of him and told a cold joke in pain.
Although it is an old passage, it immediately breaks the atmosphere of the scene that is almost rigid. Several new energy car owners who were also waiting for charging laughed out loud in unison. Originally, they were staring at each other, afraid of being plugged.
Negative emotions are temporarily swept away. Soon, the owners of the same disease started cigarettes with each other and began to make small talk. With the gradual heating up, the gang even added WeChat to each other and built a group of electric vehicle owners called "Twenty-eight years of queuing together to wait for charging".
01
Stumbling "Green Journey"
Since last year's May Day holiday, driving pure electric cars for long distances has become more and more common.
In addition to the public's change in the concept of new energy, more and more restriction measures introduced by various places have also become a major pusher.
All in all, a variety of factors have combined to drive the market penetration of new energy vehicles rapidly in the past year.
Since you bought a tram, why don't you drive it back to your hometown for the New Year? What's more, in addition to the original green, environmental protection and other aura, the new generation of electric vehicles are more intelligent, networked as a selling point, full of scientific and technological sense is many old oil vehicles can not be compared, driving experience is also better.
Lao Shao, who was born in Xuzhou, just turned 40 at the beginning of the year. After graduating from university in 2005, he stayed in Shanghai to work. After 17 years of hard work, he was promoted from an ordinary worker to a middle-level manager of a joint venture. The house was bought, the household registration was transferred, the card was also photographed, and it became a home locally.
▲ The gull wing door is very good for people who have the need to "go back to their hometown to show off"
Lao Shao originally had an old Passat. After the promotion at the beginning of last year, a 2020 Tesla Model X long-endurance version was added to the home. On weekdays, it is mainly driven by the wife.
There was a discussion at home about which car to drive home. In the end, the couple decided to drive the more magnificent tram back. As the saying goes, "The rich do not return to their hometowns, such as the night of clothing."
The journey back to his hometown began in Beixinjing, Shanghai, and ended in Gulou District, Xuzhou, with a total distance of about 650 kilometers. But for the old Shao family's tram, it is not a big problem, and the official NEDC data is as high as 605 kilometers. Through more than a year of use, Lao Shao has summed up its endurance in the high-speed state, with a range of 470 kilometers and 410 kilometers in summer and winter, respectively. In short, a journey of 650 kilometers is more than enough to recharge the electricity once along the way.
But Lao Shao's embarrassment also stems from this.
Because the endurance index of the car is very good, it is inevitable that it is a bit difficult to plan the driving route. On the morning of the 30th, after Lao Shao and his wife and children set off from Shanghai Beixinjing, they only carried out a fast recharge at noon when they were in the territory of Changzhou.
▲Congestion is a problem that must be considered when driving a tram during a long holiday
In the afternoon, after continuously breaking through a number of congestion nodes such as Dantu Hub, Shugang Hub, Suqian South Hub, etc., the Lao Shao family entered the Xuhuai Expressway. At this time, only the last hundred kilometers from the end point remained, but the vehicle's electricity was also pointed to less than a quarter.
Although the Suining Gaozuo service area is close at hand, the on-site State Grid charging station is also lining up in a long line. Old Shao, who wanted to get home as soon as possible, held a bit of luck and decided to "drive a little further to try his luck." However, when I arrived at the Guhuanghe Service Area, I found that there were half more cars waiting here to be charged than the previous stop.
However, at this time, the vehicle's power has dropped to less than 10%, and there is almost no room for turning.
▲The charging station is usually quite empty, but during the long holiday...
Considering the congestion that may be faced after entering Xuzhou city, Lao Shao decided to wait in this service area until it was charged and then left.
Lao Shao's situation is not an isolated case. For example, Xiao Song, the owner of the ADI car who took the lead in giving everyone smoke on the evening of the 30th.
Xiao Song, who usually works and lives in Nanjing, the destination of this trip is also Xuzhou. He is driving a long-endurance version of the Han EV that was only mentioned at the end of November last year.
However, unlike Lao Shao, Xiao Song, who is not yet old enough to be established, is a new electric vehicle owner and does not have much experience in driving new energy vehicles. In addition, he is so busy with work that he did not have the opportunity to try to drive an electric car to the high speed even before driving home.
"Since picking up the car, I have basically run around in Nanjing... Feel the endurance of this car, let alone a 450+. In the car gossip that night, Xiao Song complained like this. In other words, he has basically no concept of the energy consumption of pure electric vehicles at high speed.
Based on this idea, looking at the whole 360-kilometer journey, he only casually packed a few pieces of luggage, did not fully charge the car, and then brought new year goods before noon on the 30th, and embarked on the road back to his hometown with a Han EV of "more than 90% of the electricity".
The result of such an operation is that under the "unwilling to queue up for charging" and "one more boil can be reached", and finally with 5% of the residual power and Lao Shao and other electric vehicle owners, in a service area silly waiting.
In fact, most of the car owners who stayed up in the GuheHe River service area to replenish the electricity that night were in Xuzhou, and there was no room for turning back. Because the power has bottomed out, in order to ensure that the vehicle can start normally, it can only stop and turn off, and even an air conditioner does not dare to turn on.
Fortunately, at 21:00 that night, it was finally Lao Shao's turn to charge his car. An hour and a half later, the family of three finally arrived at the old mansion in Xuzhou's Gulou District.
The chicken in the pot made by my parents has been heated twice, but it is still delicious. As for the queues in the service area of the Ancient Yellow River, they did not disappear until the next night.
02
The urgent issue of system construction
The promotion and popularization of electric vehicles depends on the construction of infrastructure. In short, the coverage of public charging facilities.
But today, the country can only be said to have solved the problem of yes and no. If we examine this whole system from a national perspective, it can be said that it is basically in the early stage of construction.
Let's take a look at the data.
According to the China Charging Alliance, by the beginning of December 2021, the total number of domestic public charging piles has reached 1.092 million units. Among them, there are 450,000 DC charging piles and 646,000 AC charging piles. Among them, from December 2020 to November 2021, in 12 months, the average number of new public charging piles in China reached 33,000 units per month.
▲Compared with the development of independent brand new energy vehicles, the construction of the domestic energy replenishment system is indeed a bit lagging behind
The above set of numbers looks quite large and glamorous. However, if you compare it with the increase in the number of new pure electric vehicles, it is really a bit insufficient. Because only in January this year, the total number of domestic new energy vehicle brands, Xiaopeng, Ideal, Nezha, Weilai, Zero Run, Extreme Kr, Weima, Lantu, etc., has exceeded 60,000 units. That's not counting Tesla's domestic delivery figures.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Public Security at the end of January, the number of pure electric models in China has exceeded 6.4 million in 2021. More professional institutions believe that by 2025, the number of domestic new energy vehicles will reach 25 million, of which pure electric vehicles will exceed 20 million.
Whether it is the addition of 60,000 units per month, the existing 6.4 million units, or the expected 20 million units in three years, it is not the existing monthly increase of 33,000 units, a total of 1.092 million public charging piles (of which about 450,000 DC fast charging) can match.
According to the more ideal pile car ratio of 1.5:1 (requiring at least 1/3 of the DC fast charging) to calculate, when the domestic pure electric vehicle ownership reaches 20 million scale, the number of supporting charging piles must reach 30 million units, of which DC fast charging is at least 10 million units. Excluding the existing stock, the gap was 19.358 million and 9.55 million, respectively.
To complete the construction of 28.908 million piles in three years, the difficulty can be imagined. First of all, there is a huge short-term investment.
According to the precise information I learned from the industry, the construction cost of each watt-hour of fast-charging piles needs at least 0.435 yuan.
That is to say, a 120kW double gun pile, the equipment investment is at least 52,200 yuan. The construction cost should account for at least 1/3 of the equipment cost, that is, the construction cost of each fast-charging pile is about 70,000 yuan.
In contrast, the cost of AC charging piles is much lower. Based on the construction cost of 0.29 yuan per watt-hour, an 8kW slow-charging pile is counted as the construction cost, which is about 3,000 yuan.
Regardless of the procurement differences and material transportation costs in different regions, the construction costs of 58.074 billion and 668.55 billion are 58.074 billion and 668.5 million, respectively, with the current gap of 19.358 million AC piles and 9.55 million DC piles. This is still under the premise of not considering the replacement and upgrading of equipment, the expansion and transformation of the power supply system, and the corresponding land use cost.
Even if this construction can keep up, it will only support 20 million pure electric vehicles. Its proportion is less than 7% of the existing motor vehicle ownership in the country. What's more, according to the long-term plan, the penetration rate of domestic new energy vehicles will reach about 50% in 2035.
▲AC piles can meet the charging needs of car owners who are inconvenient to install home charging, but it is of little significance to support the long-distance driving of electric vehicles
It is no wonder that the construction of the charging pile system has been included in one of the main directions of the energy network of new infrastructure projects. In fact, the "tsunami" of construction has long been not a "hot spot about to erupt", but has become an urgent problem due to the increasing penetration rate of pure electric vehicles year by year and the increasing number of ownership.
Of course, back to our original question - how can we make new energy vehicles travel far and worry-free? In fact, the construction of charging piles should not only consider the number of problems, but also consider the rationality of its layout.
According to the latest statistics, the provinces with the largest number of public charging piles in China are Guangdong, Shanghai and Beijing, with 169,300, 100,400 and 95,300 units respectively. Jiangsu (93,800), Zhejiang (about 80,000), Shandong (56,700), Hubei (56,000), Anhui (5.24), Henan (4.12) and Fujian (36,000) ranked fourth and tenth respectively.
From the perspective of geographical distribution, there is already a clear regional imbalance in its construction at this stage - in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions, the eastern coast, and the provinces of the Yangtze River Basin, it shows a high degree of concentration. Henan is the only exception. Returning to the problem originally addressed in this article, that is, to ensure the long-distance driving of pure electric vehicles, it requires the deployment of more fast-charging equipment in the high-speed road network throughout the country.
At this stage, what is the total number of charging piles currently distributed in the service areas of various highway networks in China?
At the end of September last year, sun Wenjian and Fan Zhenyu, spokesmen of the Ministry of Transport, gave such a set of data when answering reporters' questions: the existing domestic highway network is equipped with a service area of charging piles, a total of 2318, and the total number of charging piles (all DC fast charging) is 10836.
▲ The construction of the highway energy replenishment system must be "national team"
In short, whether it is last October or this Spring Festival holiday just past, the news of the difficulty of charging various pure electric vehicles reflects in essence that the domestic energy replenishment system lacks the essence of cross-regional construction. The existing charging pile system is too centered on the core city and is not prepared for the large-scale cross-regional flow of pure electric vehicles.
Moreover, even if there are more than 10,000 piles in existence, what is the intact rate when it comes to the end? Chinese New Year's Eve eve, in the service area of the Ancient Yellow River where Lao Shao and Xiao Song were waiting for the wind, there was a double gun that could not be activated due to a malfunction.
Electric car owners are shifting their mindset and are starting to experiment with long-distance driving.
Since last year's 11th long holiday, many media have expressed this view. But the truth is that only a very small number of people are "transforming" at present. But even so, the news of charging during the long holiday has frequently appeared in the media narrative, and it is almost reduced to a "dog bites" phenomenon.
It is hoped that the "tsunami" of construction will come as soon as possible, and will not become a major obstacle to the development of new energy vehicles and even towards the "double carbon" strategy.
On the morning of the fourth day of the New Year, the old Shao family embarked on the return journey early.
Learning the lesson of being trapped the night before Chinese New Year's Eve, he and his wife unanimously decided to use the last 3 days of the holiday to take their young son along Huai'an and Yangzhou to return by car. It wasn't until the afternoon of the sixth day of the Chinese New Year (February 6) that the family returned to their home in Shanghai.
As for Xiao Song, the experience of that night seems to have caused him to develop a certain degree of PTSD.
Not only did the vehicle fully charged before the return trip, but also waited for several hours in the service area for a quick charge halfway through the return journey.
"I saw the mobile charging car of the State Grid in the service area, and I felt that this thing was good." Which charging station is queued, send a few cars to which side. In the WeChat group built by car owners the night before Chinese New Year's Eve, Xiao Song said: "But I have always been thinking these days, it is better to listen to the sales advice and buy a DM-i." ”
Since 2016, after more than 5 years of construction, China has largely filled the gap in the problem of long-distance energy replenishment of pure electric vehicles. But the distance of the entire system can be called "perfect", and it is still a long time in ten years. For now, driving an electric car out of the country must plan the route in advance and consider the problem of replenishment along the way.
In a way and mindset that doesn't require a rush at all, we can offset the energy problems that pure electric vehicles may encounter when traveling long distances. Or change your mindset and don't be too stubborn about the idea of arriving as soon as possible when driving an electric car. If necessary, drive out of the highway to find the pile.
A trip that comes and goes? Sorry, unless you want to look at the efficiency of the dispatch of traction services around the world.