Image source @ Visual China
Text | VCPE Reference, author | Li Zixuan, Editor | Mario
At the beginning of the month, a number of new car manufacturers posted january sales report cards. Xiaopeng Automobile, Ideal Automobile and Nezha Automobile ranked in the top three, with monthly sales exceeding 10,000 units.
In the past five years, the number of new energy vehicles in the mainland has soared, and data from the Ministry of Public Security shows that the number of newly registered new energy vehicles has increased from 650,000 in 2017 to 2.95 million in 2021, more than quadrupled. Along with this, the demand for replenishment is further stimulated, and there are many entrants.
There are two ways to recharge the business, charging and replacing. In the past, because the technical threshold of battery manufacturing was too high, the cost of power replacement technology was also higher than that of charging, and many companies chose the latter at the beginning of the entry.
After years of development, the industrial chain of the charging industry has gradually developed more roles from simple manufacturers and construction and operators.
At present, the upstream of the industrial chain is a provider of equipment and materials, the technical threshold is not high, and the degree of differentiation is small, such as NARI and Kelu Electronics; the midstream is a vehicle manufacturer and operator, responsible for the construction and operation of charging equipment and charging stations, such as special calls and star charging; the downstream is a platform solution provider, integrating upstream and downstream resources, providing car owners with services such as finding piles and recharge, or providing charging pile operation and management solutions for upstream B-end customers, such as cloud fast charging and fast power.
Midstream is a key link in the charging industry chain, and has high requirements on the capital volume, channel resources and business scale of enterprises.
The early construction of charging piles was mainly undertaken by the State Grid, and after the market was liberalized in 2014, private capital became active, and special calls and star charging were successively entered during this period. According to the data of the China Charging Alliance, as of July 2021, the number of public charging piles of special calls and star charging has ranked among the top two in the country, accounting for 26.6% and 21.9% of the market share respectively.
What did Caller and Star Charging rely on to achieve rapid expansion? What are the similarities and differences between the operating model and technical route of the two? Is the end point of the charging pile operator just the "pile king"?
01 B-end market supports the "pile king"
Compared with small and medium-sized operators, special calls and star charging have some "winning at the starting line" meaning. The parent company of Tladian is a listed company of power enterprises, Trident, which has the advantages of funds, talents and technology, while the parent company of Star Charging, Wanbang Digital New Energy Co., Ltd., belongs to the Wanbang Group, has the upstream charging equipment manufacturing business, the downstream has automobile sales business, and has the advantages of the industrial chain and financial support.
At that time, the domestic new energy vehicle ownership was quite limited, and in order to reduce capital investment, starting from the B-end market and asset-light operation, it became a common choice for both, and both were paved in terms of cities.
The way to charge the stars is to attract businessmen and find decentralized potential partners. The partners with more than five own parking spaces and rich capacitors can apply on their own, and the star charging will be screened and reported to the government planning department, which will screen out some remote places again in the reported locations. After being checked by government departments familiar with the local situation, the utilization rate of charging piles can be guaranteed to a certain extent.
At the same time, this mechanism also efficiently connects charging pile operators and demanders. In 2015, Star Charging received more than 3,000 applications for the construction of electric piles in a month's time, and screened out more than 1,000 eligible applications based on the number of parking spaces, site legality, lease term, capacitance capacity and other conditions. Since then, Star Charging has copied this model to other cities.
Compared with the investment model of Star Charging's wide net, Telai tends to establish joint ventures with local governments and enterprises to cooperate in building piles. Because the team may lack the understanding of the local situation when opening up new cities, this style of play is conducive to improving the efficiency of the layout. Combined with the market situation at that time, this way can also more flexibly match the strategic layout of the team.
In July 2015, BAIC New Energy Co., Ltd. was jointly established with BAIC BJEV and Jidong Material and Trade Group Co., Ltd. BAIC BJEV is the first car company to establish a joint venture with Telai.
There are two important data behind this collaboration:
In 2014, Beijing ranked first in the country with 8,050 electric vehicles;
In the first half of 2015, BAIC BJEV ranked third in the country in the field of new energy passenger vehicles with sales of 5892 units.
With strong partners, occupy the most powerful market.
Since then, Telai has successively cooperated with large car companies such as Changan Automobile, Dongfeng Electric Vehicle, Jinlong Bus, Yutong Bus and other large car companies and well-known local enterprises to expand its territory to hundreds of cities across the country.
In the process of expansion, the two businesses continue to expand and gradually converge, the partners not only have public transportation companies, logistics companies, online ride-hailing platforms, car companies, etc., but also factories, residential properties and individuals, the scale gradually catching up with or even surpassing the layout of the State Grid company for many years.
By January 2019, according to the statistics of the China Commercial Industry Research Institute, the top three charging equipment rankings of domestic charging facility operators are Special Call, State Grid Corporation and Star Charging, and the number of charging piles is 122266, 87846, and 63100 respectively.
However, in the eyes of investors at that time, charging piles were not a good business. Until 2020, the only external force supporting both businesses is government funding.
CDH Capital invested in Telai in 2020, and its executive director Zhu Weixing began to study investment in the new energy sector around 2015, but did not make charging piles a key focus because the time had not yet come.
Zhu Weixing said, "At that time, the ownership of electric vehicles was not high, and the whole field was more driven by B-end customers and the government, and did not see the outbreak of market-oriented C-end demand", and in his view, everyone was a staking-around deployment point in the early days, and the operational efficiency was not high.
The C-end market means more room for imagination, and this part of the demand exploded around 2019, before which the two companies were ready to meet it. Improving operational efficiency and optimizing user experience is an important task at this stage, which is extremely important for winning C-end users.
02 From grabbing the turf to grabbing the user
The charging pile market has experienced a period of staking and barbaric growth, leaving many hidden dangers for later operations.
Zhu Jianzhong, general manager of the Xingxing Charging Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region, recalled, "During that time, everyone had land and bumped, first build it and then say." Rents are also rising, an ordinary parking space, from 400 to 500 yuan has been speculated to 800-1200 yuan.
Therefore, the location of many charging piles is not reasonable, the location is remote, no one cares for a long time, and even some charging piles are built in the depths of the underground garage without mobile phone signals, or where there are disputes over land property rights, resulting in the charging piles cannot be used normally. At the same time, the phenomenon of heavy construction and light operation has also led to the long-term existence of a large number of "zombie piles" in the market.
In addition, the configuration of fast and slow piles is unreasonable, which also causes poor charging experience. The charging time of the slow charging pile is 5 to 8 hours, which is suitable for the vehicle charging of the owner of the community, while the fast charging pile only needs 0.3 to 2.5 hours, which can meet the needs of public areas and operating vehicles such as taxis and transport vehicles.
However, the construction cost of slow charging piles is low, only about a few thousand yuan, so in the early expansion, enterprises often ignore the charging scene and give priority to the construction of slow charging piles. According to data from the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance (EVCIPA), until 2019, China's AC charging pile (slow charging) accounted for nearly 60%.
After the scale, special calls and star charging began to solve these problems one by one. Since the second half of 2016, the industry has begun to consider precise investment and construction. Special call conducted in-depth research on user behavior, combined with data such as average daily mileage and charging frequency, made a simulated heat map of utilization rate, and arranged piles according to the utilization situation.
Star Charging site selection has been screened by the government planning department before, but after the process is long, the efficiency is low, and after accumulating enough user data, Star Charging has also begun to use the pile group site selection model to optimize the location point and accurately put the charging equipment on the market.
In addition, the industry is also constantly stepping up the research and development and construction of high-power fast charging equipment.
In May 2018, Star Charging developed a 500kW liquid-cooled high-power charger, claiming that it can be charged for 8 minutes and have an endurance of 400 kilometers. In 2019, it cooperated with China FAW Group Co., Ltd. to complete the charging commissioning of the first high-power fast charging vehicle at the Xingxing Charging Station in Changzhou City, with a charging power of 200KW, achieving the goal of only 13 minutes to fill 80% of the power, and continued to cooperate with FAW and other car companies to carry out high-power charging demonstration projects.
The pre-research director of Star Charging Technology said that star charging's high-power equipment is mainly aimed at commercial operating vehicles, including taxis, logistics vehicles, large public transportation vehicles, including electric buses and electric buses, as well as long-distance travel needs on highways and public charging needs in large cities. Shao Danwei, founder of Star Charging, said, "Now a parking space outputs 8 to 10 times more electricity than the original, which can help operators share a lot of rent."
With the advantages of technical experience, the special call initially took DC fast charging as the main route, and adopted the charging management mode of group management of group management: the charging module is concentrated in a box, connected to multiple charging terminals, which can be flexibly charged, "when there are fewer cars, two charging modules supply power to a plug, so that the charging speed is fast." As the advantages of fast charging piles continue to appear, special calls continue to increase the proportion of fast charging equipment in the total number of piles.
By 2020, according to the statistics of the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance, in public field stations, AC and DC charging piles account for about 1.4:1. Among them, the charging stations of special vehicles such as buses are almost all DC fast charging piles, and the charging stations on the highway are also DC fast charging piles of more than 60KW, while in the residential community, they are mainly private charging piles, most of which are AC slow charging piles.
Around 2018 and 2019, the sales of new energy vehicles exceeded 1 million for two consecutive years, which was regarded by the industry as a signal of C-end demand outbreak. In addition to optimizing the user experience, charging pile operators continue to introduce more partners to expand their footprint.
On the one hand, it is to attract more individual customers to join, such as the launch of the "Co-Partner" program in 2018, and then open cooperation to the public, trying to tap individual customers with resources. "Their network is much larger than any of our [operator's] networks." The relevant person in charge of the Beijing area said.
On the other hand, Telai also aims at the sinking market, including local governments in third- and fourth-tier cities such as Changchun, Hohhot, Zibo, Hainan, and Jiangxi, and has successively become a partner of Telai.
Star Charging cooperates with car manufacturers to sell charging cards to car manufacturers, and when consumers buy new energy vehicles, the car factory gives away 1,000 yuan charging coupons, which can be used after installing the Star Charging App. In 2019, Wanbang Group ranked tenth among automobile dealers in China with a turnover of 40.079 billion yuan, which undoubtedly provided a strong impetus for the promotion of the App.
Star Charging also takes the first step in joint venture. In September last year, Star Charging launched the Bright Top plan, planning to invest 3 billion yuan in 3 years to absorb small and medium-sized operators to join the company's platform.
In order to settle in more terminals, Special Call and Star Charging have joined forces and cooperated with other platforms. In July 2020, Telai announced full access to the State Grid, Star Charging, and China Southern Power Grid, which will enable the Telai App to cover more than 70% of the national charging pile market. Four days later, Star Charging also announced that it would interconnect with the State Grid, the Southern Grid, The Special Caller and other operators to form a national network.
The two also access new energy vehicle charging Apps such as pile finder, fast power, and cloud fast charging, navigation applications such as Baidu Map and AutoNavi Map, and commonly used platforms such as Alipay to divert the flow of charging piles.
This seems to be the continuation and upgrade of the staking, but behind this, after the outbreak of the C-end market, the charging pile operators have changed from grabbing the land to grabbing the user's thinking. In Zhu Jianxing's view, "In the future, everyone will fight for the number of users and daily life."
03 More than just a "gas station"
At present, the business model of charging pile operators has just run through, but the scale is large, it is difficult to manage, and it is still difficult to achieve overall profitability.
Although Tlaidian claimed that 2018 had crossed the profit balance point, according to its 2020 annual report, only Chengdu Tlailai achieved profitability during the reporting period, with a net profit of 38.0039 million yuan. The special call and qingdao special call are in a state of loss. Among them, the net loss of Special Call in 2020 was 77.6962 million yuan, and the net loss of Qingdao Special Call in 2020 was 30.7975 million yuan.
But now the contradiction between the pile still exists, the ownership of new energy vehicles continues to increase, and the head operator still cannot stop the pace of investment. The number of users and the degree of activity will be the long-term pursuit of charging pile operators, because the end point of charging pile operators is not "pile king".
The value of users to charging pile operators is not only the contribution of revenue, but also the big data of energy, payment, automobiles, users and other aspects. On top of massive amounts of data, enterprises can realize monetization through value-added services or data value mining, and create a new ecosystem. This is also what investors value.
Zhu Weixing began to contact special calls in March 2019, and when reporting internally, some people questioned "Is this a gas station business?" "Definitely not," Zhu said, "because the gas station is a mechanical component, the electricity carries information, in addition to the current, there is also information flow, capital flow, three streams in one."
He pulled the members of the investment committee to the exhibition hall built by TLAE, which intuitively presented the history, present, future, and product system of T&L. Later, when I went back to discuss the feasibility of the project, the attitude of the investment committee changed.
In March 2020, Telai received a Series A financing of about RMB1.35 billion, which was jointly led by the National Adjustment Fund, Guoxin Capital and CDH Investment.
Today's star charging, special callers, is moving towards the saaS platform, smart energy management direction, relying on big data and operational experience, to small and medium-sized operators, city operators, real estate and property companies, government and enterprises and institutions and other customers to provide charging scenarios and smart energy solutions, the future development of enterprises There are still more possibilities.
In the view of Yu Dexiang, chairman of Telai, charging equipment can weave people, vehicles and energy into a charging network, which is the really valuable part, "In the charging network, the data network, energy network, Internet of Things and equipment network four-layer network are integrated together, and a high-strength and high-viscosity link is formed between people, vehicles and energy, forming energy big data, financial big data, payment big data, behavioral big data, etc., which can provide higher value services for the charging pile industry."
In addition to data, Yu Dexiang believes that after electric vehicles are connected to the power grid through charging equipment, they are energy storage devices, and through the intelligent cloud platform, they can coordinate the charging of electric vehicles in ordinary hours and discharge during peak hours of electricity consumption, and users may not only not have to spend money, but also make money. Through this interactive collaboration with electric vehicles, intelligent dispatch of the power grid and other means, Yu Dexiang believes that the overall cost of electricity can be greatly reduced.
In May last year, Schneider Electric, NINGDE Times and Star Charging jointly launched the "Create a New Ecology of Value and Win-win Energy New World - Green Energy Management Win-win Plan" to explore energy management solutions under the trend of clean, intelligent and low-carbon.
During this period, Star Charging proposed topics such as "Charging Station EMS Power Management and Control System" and "Mobility Solutions", and said that if it finds a high-quality partner in the Chuangying plan, it will consider participating in, controlling or acquiring shares.
In the second half of last year, the government issued a subsidy policy for the charging pile industry, proposing to subsidize the charging facility operating units according to the charging power of the charging pile. This will alleviate the construction and operation pressure of operators, especially in the environment of slowing down the construction speed of charging piles in the past two years, which is a shot in the arm for large operators.
The charging pile business has taken the opportunity of new energy vehicles and is now extending more tentacles to a more important position in the banner of new energy.
Resources:
- The Wanbang model was born
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With an investment of 5 billion yuan and a loss of more than 800 million yuan, can this "frightened" company seize the outlet of new infrastructure
Charging pile breaks_it's too early!
- Star Charging Cracks the "Curse" of Profit
- 2021 Charging Pile Analysis Short Report: Multi-dimensional discussion of how to do a good job in the charging pile business
- The era of traffic competition has arrived, and the charging pile has opened a new war!