With the rapid arrival of the era of electric vehicles, so are the concerns of automakers. The problem is with the battery. Batteries account for about 40% of the cost of electric vehicles. It is expensive, heavy in weight, and takes a long time to recharge. Although car companies can produce battery charging piles without restrictions, we are also constantly developing new battery technologies. But so far, the contradiction between the increase in battery capacity and the long charging time still exists.
The charging pain points of consumers in the daily use of pure electric vehicles are also very obvious, an internal combustion engine car does not refuel at the gas station for more than 5 minutes, but an electric car needs about 30 minutes to reach 80% anyway, let alone 100% charging. There are not many electric vehicles now, and some places do not have to queue up for charging. However, with the popularity of electric vehicles, if the number of charging piles is not enough, then the problem of charging queues can be difficult to solve.
Ideally, park your car at the rear of your car in front of your home and let it charge slowly overnight. This is because charging at night saves on charging costs and better manages battery condition with slow charging. But this is practically impossible. That's because the reality is that there's not even a parking space, let alone charging in front of my house.
For this reason, changing the battery has become the focus of many people's attention, just like when the mobile phone was just started, it is possible to change the battery.
In fact, power replacement is not a high-tech, as early as 10 years ago, there were car companies to try. The SM3 Z.E. launched by Renault in 2013 can replace the battery, and the charging time that usually takes more than 4 hours can be completed in 3 minutes by replacing the battery.
But it was quickly proven to be a failure because the operating costs of the swapping facility exceeded revenue, and the batteries could only be used by Renault cars and were not compatible with other brands of cars. So it slowly declined.
Nowadays, power exchange is mainly popular in Southeast Asian markets such as China and Taiwan. Initially, it was centered on the development of electric bicycles rather than electric vehicles. This is because it does not require specialized facilities and can be easily lifted.
E-bike battery replacement, reminiscent of vending machines, is a method of putting the used battery into the charger after paying a certain fee, removing the fully charged battery and installing it on the bicycle. In southeast Asian markets, including China, many of them use bicycles as the main means of transportation. For this reason, e-bikes began to spread faster than electric vehicles, and battery replacement infrastructure was established accordingly.
Following the electric bicycle, the battery replacement of electric vehicles has once again attracted attention. Now China is taking action to take the lead in the battery replacement market.
More representative is NIO Nio Automobile, which was the first company to introduce this technology. Nio has 750 battery replacement stations in China, and the scale continues to expand, and it is said that the batteries have been replaced more than 4 million times. Nio is a technology leader in battery replacement. It has focused on protecting technology and already has more than 1,200 patents related to battery replacement.
NIO has also launched a new car sales service by replacing batteries. This is BaaS (Battery Rental). Users can remove the price of the battery when buying a car, and use the battery rental method to pay in installments every month. Therefore, the price of electric vehicles is also relatively cheap.
China's largest battery manufacturer, CATL, has also entered the industry. Activate the battery replacement station named EVOGO. CATL will first establish a network of switching stations in 10 cities in China.
CATL's battery replacement is very unique, a large battery is divided into three, if the car is small only need 1 piece, if the car is large, you can change 2 or 3 pieces. As a result, prices are also subdivided to ease the burden of spending on consumers. The battery replacement time is less than a minute, which is much faster than the battery replacement of Weilai.
However, to use this service, you need to buy an electric vehicle that meets the CATL era power exchange standard, but at present only FAW Automobile supports this standard.
Geely is also active. It invested 600 million yuan in Lifan Technology, a Chinese battery technology developer, to establish a replaceable battery developer. The technology developed here is expected to be installed on Geely's electric vehicles in the future, thus greatly expanding the battery replacement market. Geely said it plans to have more than 5,000 battery replacement stations in China by 2025.
By the end of 2021, Aodong New Energy, a professional power exchange service provider, also operated 547 substations in 26 cities in China. The company is characterized by targeting public electric vehicles such as taxis, rather than electric vehicles in general. As far as taxis are concerned, they say that they consume a lot of batteries due to the large daily mileage.
In addition, large car companies such as Changan Automobile and Dongfeng Motor are also preparing to enter the power exchange market.
In May 2020, the Chinese government defined the substation as "new infrastructure" and identified 11 cities, including Beijing, as pilot areas for power swapping projects. It is not simply forming a market out of necessity, but rather pushing it as a state-led project. Then, in August of last year, the establishment of technical standards and standard standards for replacing batteries began.