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It's getting harder, but it's not quite the same.
Written by: CH_ Chen Han
The Spring Festival holiday chua has passed...
During this year's Spring Festival, the topic of electric vehicle charging difficulties has dropped significantly compared with eleven, on the one hand, because although the Spring Festival passenger flow is larger, but the duration is longer, the traffic flow in most areas is not as good as eleven concentrations; on the other hand, the hot spot of "charging 1 hour queuing for 4 hours" last year is really difficult to surpass, and everyone's freshness threshold for news such as charging difficulties has been greatly improved.
In fact, whether it is the melon eating masses or electric vehicle users, everyone has long had psychological expectations for the difficulty of making up electric vehicles in this year's Spring Festival, it is really difficult, everyone is used to it, it is not so difficult, and it will not be a news.
However, as far as my personal experience of using a car is concerned, it is more convenient to travel with an electric car during the Spring Festival this year than last year.
Therefore, in this article, I will talk about the difficulty of charging from three aspects: personal car experience, objective data and actual charging environment, and future trends.
01
10 minutes, the maximum endurance increased by 180km
The reason for the convenience of travel is very simple, only because before the Spring Festival, I flexibly upgraded the battery of the NIO ES6 from 70kWh to 100kWh, and the NEDC battery life increased from 430km to 610km. My hometown Jieyang is only less than 400km away from Guangzhou, and the endurance of the ES6 after the flexible upgrade is enough for me to drive back from Guangzhou in one go.
Thanks to the power exchange mode, after placing an order in advance, the ES6 is driven to the replacement station, and the battery upgrade can be completed in less than 10 minutes. The upgrade cost of 100kWh battery is 880 yuan / month or 7980 yuan / year, compared with the cost of a one-time upgrade of 58000 yuan, on-demand rental is obviously more suitable for users who occasionally run long distances like me.
In the past two years, driving the ES6 back to my hometown, the high-speed endurance of the 70kWh battery is basically stable at about 300km, and the distance from home is always tens of kilometers, so I need to change the battery in the middle of the substation, or find a high-speed service area in the second half to charge for twenty or thirty minutes. Usually go back, the power station and charging pile are basically idle, basically only the eleventh and spring festival two long holidays will appear queue situation.
Checked last year's power exchange records, 2021 Spring Festival I was On February 10, the 29th night of the New Year, I left home, that is, the last working day to leave after work, just in time to get off the highway after 0 o'clock the next day to get off the highway free of high-speed fees, at that time in the Lotus Mountain service area to change the power station waited for 30 minutes. On the way back, just in time for the meal, I put the car in line at the change station, handed the key to the electricity changer, and then took my wife and children to eat a real kung fu, and the meal was changed before the electricity was finished.
From the experience point of view, the ES6 with a 70kWh battery and NEDC life of 430km in the past two years has not caused me too much trouble on the way home, but it does require 10 minutes to 1 hour of waiting time.
This year, I still left on the evening of January 30 after the end of the last working day, and before I set off, I changed a 92% battery at the substation of Huachenghui Square in Zhujiang New Town, Guangzhou, with a watch endurance of 566km. In the weather of about 10 ° C, with my wife and children and a full of luggage, I drove the NOP all the way according to the speed limit, the air conditioner was maintained at 22-25 ° C and the seat was heated, after driving for 4 and a half hours, 367.5km, there was still 11% of the electricity left when I arrived home, and the endurance of the watch was 61km.
On the way home, I deliberately went to see several high-speed service area charging stations and Weilai replacement power stations in the middle, and the queue was definitely queued, but the queue was not as serious as expected.
The charging station in the first half of the course is basically in the state of 1 pile such as 2 cars, and the charging station in the second half is basically in the state of 1 pile such as 1 car. When passing through the Waxi substation in the middle, there are 1 car changing and 2 cars waiting, according to experience, because I only need a 60% battery to get home smoothly, if I did not upgrade the 100kWh battery, I should need to wait 40 minutes.
Running down the whole trip, I think that the 100kWh battery to save waiting time is actually secondary, and more importantly, it increases the confidence. Especially for areas with uncertain energy conditions and longer-distance journeys, the fully charged ES6 can cross about 400km of areas without charging piles, and the choice of charging and replacing is relatively free, and the number of charging queues can be reduced.
After reaching Jieyang, the charging conditions have hardly changed compared with the previous two years, the public charging pile has not changed significantly, and the visibility of local new energy vehicles has improved to a certain extent, but even during the Spring Festival, most of the charging stations are still very idle.
If like me, there is a charging pile near the hometown of 1 km, even if the maximum power can only reach 50kW, charging is still very convenient, but if not, in this kind of three- and four-line small city charging, charging pile is enough but not convenient enough.
02
Is charging really getting harder?
Seeing this, don't worry about refuting my personal car experience is not representative. Let's start with an interesting set of data.
After the Spring Festival holiday, the three new forces of "Wei Xiaoli" have released the Spring Festival travel report, the reports of the three companies have announced the total mileage from January 31 to February 6, combined with their deliveries up to January, we can get such a set of data:
The cumulative mileage of NIO Spring Festival is 57,366,215km, the cumulative delivery volume is 176,722 units, and the average mileage of the calculated bicycle is about 325km;
The cumulative mileage of Xiaopeng Spring Festival is 54,474,118km, the cumulative delivery volume is about 150,000 units, and the average mileage of bicycles can be calculated is about 363km;
The cumulative mileage of the ideal Spring Festival is 55,270,962 km, the cumulative delivery volume is 1,363.56 million units, and the average mileage of the calculated bicycle is about 405 km.
Considering that many people return to their hometowns before or after the statutory holiday, and some of them do not return home by car during the Spring Festival, we temporarily consider the driving mileage announced by the three to be one-way driving miles, then we can also see that even if the ideal ONE can refuel, the average travel radius during the Spring Festival should not exceed 405km.
Although we can't get the median data, we can't judge whether this data can represent most people, but at least it can be considered that a large number of new energy vehicle users have a one-way distance of driving within 400km during the Spring Festival, that is, they only need to charge once at most.
Another set of data is a comparison between the number of charging piles released by the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance and the trend of new energy vehicle ownership released by the Ministry of Public Security:
In 2019, the number of new energy vehicles in China was 3.81 million, the number of charging piles (including private charging piles) was 1.219 million, and the vehicle-to-pile ratio was 3.13:1;
In 2020, the number of new energy vehicles in China was 4.92 million, the number of charging piles (including private charging piles) was 1.681 million, and the vehicle-to-pile ratio was 2.93:1;
In 2021, the number of new energy vehicles in China is 7.84 million, the number of charging piles (including private charging piles) is 2.617 million units, and the vehicle-to-pile ratio is 3.00:1.
It can be seen that although domestic new energy vehicles have shown explosive growth in the past two years, the vehicle-to-pile ratio has always maintained a dynamic balance. From the perspective of actual use, with the steady improvement of the endurance of electric vehicles, the improvement of the maintenance status of charging facilities and the significant increase of high-quality charging piles, the overall charging environment is improving.
And if you only look at the eleventh and Spring Festival two long holidays, in the local areas where traffic is very dense, such as Guangzhou to and from Hunan, Guangzhou to and from Chaoshan to and from The surrounding provinces, Shanghai to and from the surrounding provinces, charging and replacing during the peak period has indeed become more difficult, but this year in these areas, we have also seen a series of measures to deal with the shortage of charging resources during the peak period, such as the State Grid mobile charging chamber, Weilai mobile charging vehicle, Xiaopeng high-speed entrance and exit overcharge station, etc., and we have also seen that the availability of charging piles on the peak travel route has been greatly improved. At the popular high-speed service area charging station, there are also staff to guide the queue to pick up the number and charge for a limited time.
It is not impossible to improve the charging difficulty, and all aspects are also in action.
And jumping out of the popular route to see the overall situation, the charging pile in the high-speed service area is more and more. Towards Hunan, there is a service area charging station in Guangdong Province almost every 30 kilometers. During the Spring Festival, there were also good people who turned over the Weibo of "Xuguang Expressway Qingyuan Section of Xuguang Expressway due to insufficient power shortage of new energy vehicles, resulting in road congestion" released by the Qingyuan traffic police two years ago, pretending that it was something that happened this year, but it was quickly punctured. In Guangdong Province, similar incidents should be difficult to occur.
03
The more electric cars are charged, the harder it is?
Out of the coverage area of first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, charging resources are indeed relatively scarce, for example, we just drove the Xiaopeng P5 from Guangzhou to Wuhan on January 21, and the charging pile in the high-speed service area in Hubei is indeed small, and slow, and the charging experience is not good. However, correspondingly, there are very few new energy vehicles in this area, and the phenomenon of charging queues during peak periods is not easy to occur.
So, as many people worry, there are more and more electric vehicles, and charging will become more and more difficult?
In fact, it should be looked at in two aspects:
On the one hand, in the short term, the explosive growth of electric vehicles and the small number of electric vehicles will exist at the same time in the next few years, if there is no special response, local charging difficulties will continue to intensify.
In 2021, the number of domestic cars is close to 400 million, while the new energy vehicles are only 7.84 million, which leads to the high-speed service area charging pile in addition to the two long holiday peak periods, the rest of the time is basically idle, high-speed charging pile is difficult to profit. Under such circumstances, charging pile operating companies lack the motivation to significantly add charging piles in high-speed service areas or upgrade old charging piles.
In the short term, to solve the local charging difficulties, mainly rely on the aforementioned increase in temporary mobile charging stations and standardize the charging order, or rely on self-built energy replenishment system of car companies to provide more exclusive energy replenishment services. For example, Weilai lays more high-speed service area replacement power stations, Xiaopeng builds more high-speed overcharging routes, and so on.
However, on the other hand, with the continuous increase of new energy vehicles and the continuous support of policies, when new energy vehicles in local areas reach a certain number of ownership, large-scale high-speed service areas will inevitably appear.
In the long run, the problem of charging difficulties during peak periods will be alleviated with the continuous increase in the number of new energy vehicles. In other words, it is difficult to charge new energy vehicles in the Spring Festival, not because there are too many cars, but because there are not enough cars.
This is the same as the large number of gas stations on the highway with large traffic, the service area is a reason, the larger the demand gap, the greater the economic benefits that can be generated, and the more no one has to worry about doing it. In this process, except for most of the time except for the peak period of the long holiday, the convenience of new energy vehicle users driving will inevitably be gradually improved.
Today's topic
What suggestions do you have to improve the difficulty of charging during long holidays?
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