A few years ago, CATL released the power exchange brand EVOGO, and released the battery replacement battery "Chocolate Battery", officially entering the power exchange market.
A few days ago, CATL said in the investor relations activity record table that in the market with low penetration rate of 80,000-120,000 yuan of electric vehicles, chocolate batteries will be the ultimate solution.
At this stage, the power exchange models are mainly concentrated with high-end electric vehicles and online car-hailing vehicles, and whether there is no need to replace the power of low-end electric vehicles of 80,000-120,000? Let's do some discussion.
The emergence of the power exchange form, the main reason is that the charging efficiency is too low. With the current conventional fast charging power, the mainstream electric vehicle from 30%-80% of the SOC charging time takes more than 30 minutes, and it takes 1-2 hours to fill.
At this stage, the price of electric vehicles at 80,000-120,000 is basically concentrated between 300-400 kilometers, and the battery capacity is basically about 40kWh. It takes about 1 hour to complete the fast charge.
The current time of weilai power exchange station is about 5 minutes, while the power exchange efficiency of the Ningde era is higher, and the power exchange time can be controlled at about 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
In terms of energy replenishment efficiency, power exchange and refueling are not much different, and the experience has been completely better than charging.
Also taking Weilai power exchange as an example, the price of a single power exchange is 180 yuan, and the battery capacity is 70KWh, which is equivalent to 2.57 yuan per kilowatt hour.
In terms of charging, taking small orange charging as an example, although the charging cost will change according to the location, it is basically between 1.1-2 yuan, which is lower than the price of power replacement.
Although the cost of a single power exchange is not much higher than that of charging, we must take into account the consumer group of electric vehicles in the price range of 80,000-120,000 yuan.
For consumers with higher revenues from high-end electric vehicles, the price gap between power exchange and charging is insignificant. However, 80,000-12 million yuan of electric vehicles are basically family scooters, and consumers are still more sensitive to price.
Although there is a business model of "renting instead of buying", in the end, the C-end is not highly acceptable for power exchange.
In particular, the current power station replacement and charging pile are not popular, and the cost of replacing the power is not much lower than refueling, and consumers have every reason to choose fuel vehicles.
On the other hand, the standard requirements for power exchange are also high.
Power replacement requires a unified standard, and car companies should produce new power replacement models according to standards, which has a direct impact on consumers' car purchases. There are fewer replacement models, and consumers lack more flexible options.
Most of the low-end power-changing models are exclusively supplied for online ride-hailing vehicles, and no consumer wants to see that their models are the same as online ride-hailing vehicles.
Relatively speaking, users such as heavy trucks and logistics of online ride-hailing vehicles have a higher acceptance of power exchange than C-end users, and they do not have too many requirements for the choice of models, and it is easier to unify standards.
But the staff of State Grid Distributed New Energy said that only 30% of electric taxi drivers in Shanghai and Beijing said they were willing to change their batteries. For taxi drivers who make a living from operations, charging and replacing electricity is naturally the lower the cost, the better.
And the popularity of the replacement power station is much slower than the charging pile, and the fast charging technology is also rapidly iterating, and the experience of 800V high-voltage fast charging (which is likely not to be popularized on low-end electric vehicles) will not be much worse. Low-end electric vehicle charging is still the mainstream, and power replacement can only be supplemented.