Wang Xing once said after investing in the ideal car: "Buying fuel vehicles in 2020 is almost the same as buying Nokia in 2011." This sentence shows the irreconcilable market contradiction between fuel vehicles and new energy vehicles.
Many automakers have said that fuel vehicles are about to withdraw from the market, just like the functional machine market that was snatched away by Apple's mobile phone, and new energy vehicles represent the future development trend.
There are 119,000 gas stations all over the country, providing endurance for fuel vehicles. But in contrast, the number of supply stations for new energy vehicles is even greater.
According to data from the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance, as of September 2021, there are 2.223 million charging infrastructures in the country, with a vehicle-to-pile ratio of 3.05:1.
In Guangdong Province, for example, there are about 10,000 fuel guns and about 3 million fuel vehicles in Guangzhou. There are about 300,000 new energy vehicles, but there are 50,000 DC fast charging piles. There are a total of 700 gas stations in Guangzhou; 2300 fast charging stations.
However, the obvious advantage of the number of charging piles cannot become the absolute advantage of new energy vehicles over fuel vehicles, with an average cruising range of less than 445 kilometers per electric vehicle, and the average charging time of up to 3 hours is the biggest pain point of new energy vehicles.
Technical barriers to batteries
Although the iteration of electronic product updates is quite rapid, battery technology does not seem to have an epoch-making technological breakthrough.
Although car companies and battery manufacturers continue to claim to reach a cruising range of 1,000 kilometers, they have been slapped hard by experts in the industry. Endurance, like a big mountain, stands in front of everyone.
To measure the effectiveness of a battery, the first is its energy density, that is, the amount of electricity released per unit of capacity or weight. The higher the energy density, the greater the battery capacity and the longer the battery life. The energy density of batteries is closely related to the positive and negative electrode materials, and both automakers and battery manufacturers are striving to achieve optimal performance.
At present, the main battery used in electric vehicles is a ternary lithium battery, its cathode material is nickel, cobalt, manganese, nickel elements can increase the energy density of the battery, thereby ensuring the endurance of electric vehicles. At present, the main view of the academic community is "nickel extraction and cobalt reduction" as the main development trend. The ratio of nickel, cobalt and manganese to the cathode material of the ternary battery was changed from 5:2:3 to 6:2:2, and the ratio of the three materials can reach 8:1:1. Battery manufacturers versus material manufacturers are exploring the ratio of three products and converting it to 9:0.5:0.5, including the study of "all-nickel" batteries.
However, the pace of scientific and technological development is far from keeping up with the needs of the automotive industry. In addition to sustainability, cost is a bigger issue.
New energy vehicles have an irreversible law: endurance, safety, and low cost cannot be satisfied at the same time. This makes battery technology the biggest obstacle restricting the replacement of fuel vehicles by new energy vehicles.
The battery cost structure of electric vehicles is special, the cost of raw materials is greater than the cost of production, the reduction of quantitative production cost is very small, and the marginal cost will not be significantly reduced because of efficient output.
Compared with the current two mainstream batteries, namely lithium iron phosphate and ternary batteries, lithium iron phosphate has better safety, longer life and lower cost, but the energy density and high and low temperature performance are slightly worse. Ternary battery cathode materials use high-priced metals such as cobalt and nickel, which are more expensive.
With the continuous rise in the price of upstream battery raw materials and the fading of the national subsidy policy, in the short term, car companies in the cost control demand, battery anxiety solutions, but also from outside the battery to find solutions.
Is the power exchange a transition or a future?
Power exchange is only a temporary solution to battery anxiety, and overcharging and long endurance are recognized as the best solution.
At present, there has been a debate on the charging method of pure electric vehicles in the mainland - the power exchange mode and the charging mode have their own advantages and disadvantages, the replacement battery is faster but the cost of establishing a site is higher, the charging cost is small but takes longer, and the power exchange mode also has special requirements for the design of the battery and the vehicle. Therefore, the charging mode has always occupied the mainstream position.
Charging piles are divided into three types according to the different users: public piles, private piles and special piles. In terms of private charging piles, as of July 2021, the Charging Alliance has collected a total of 1.445 million vehicles of vehicle pile companion information, of which 1.064 million charging piles are equipped with vehicles.
At present, the new domestic automobile forces - Ideal Automobile, Xiaopeng, etc. all believe that ultra-fast charging piles are one of the prerequisites for realizing pure electric vehicles to replace fuel vehicles, and Weilai has made a bet on the "power exchange" model.
These are two very different paths, the former is to increase the speed of battery charging, and the latter is to directly replace empty batteries with pre-charged batteries.
Taking mobile phones as an example, in today's smartphone era, people have become completely accustomed to charging mobile phones instead of opening the back cover to replace the battery, and the same is true for electric vehicles.
Is the power exchange mode to solve the real pain points of electric vehicles, or to cater to the inertial thinking of fuel vehicle users? Which of power exchanges and charging will determine the future of electric vehicles? Let's wait and see.