At the beginning, mainland consumers did not buy new energy vehicles, more because of the short endurance and slow charging, but in 2022, the super 500km endurance grabbed a large handful, and with the popularization of super charging piles and the large-scale development of the power exchange mode, this series of new actions are said to be able to "completely solve the endurance / charging anxiety", which has instantly become a hot topic of discussion for potential consumers.
Think about it, is the new energy car owner most worried about not being long enough? Now the endurance is nominally 500km, counting environmental factors, full of 350km is also enough for daily travel needs; and the charging time is also greatly shortened due to technologies such as fast charging/overcharging. Finally, there is also a power exchange model led by Weilai, and this year, as a battery leader, Ningde Times also announced that it has entered the power exchange. So the question is, long endurance / supercharge pile / power exchange mode, these seem to be able to solve the "tram anxiety" method, who in the end they go further?
At first, most of the pure trams in the mainland had a cruising range of less than 300km, and the actual cruising range was also in the early 200km, coupled with the imperfect charging facilities, resulting in consumers hearing pure trams are scornful. In order to solve this problem, many car companies are starting from the battery, that is, increasing the battery capacity, which is indeed a more direct and crude method.
In the past two years, with the general range of pure trams increasing to more than 500km, coupled with the increasing choice of choices, the sales of pure trams have hit a new high. But then there was another problem, the number of pure trams came up, but the charging pile did not keep up, which led to the problem of poor charging experience after continuing to sail anxiety.
At first, most of the mainland charging piles were mainly slow charging, after all, there were not many models that could achieve fast charging at that time, but later due to the surge in the number of new energy vehicles and the addition of fast charging models, slow charging obviously could not swallow such a huge market share, after all, slow charging was full, and the fastest time was 6-7 hours. In order to solve this problem, a follow-up fast/super charging pile appeared. If the fast/super charging pile is on par with the refueling time of traditional cars, it is a bit of an exaggeration, but it is indeed twice as fast as the charging time compared to slow charging.
But on the other hand, the power exchange model launched by Weilai has also been supported by many car owners and fans. Compared with fast/overcharging, the biggest advantage of power exchange is the efficiency of energy replenishment. Now, many car companies are looking for multi-track development, so the power exchange mode has become the third track. To summarize the above simply, the initial increase in vehicle endurance reduces the frequency of refueling, the medium-term development of fast/overcharging technology shortens the charging time, and the later development of the power exchange mode to improve the efficiency of refueling, which is the development of new energy vehicles in the mainland step by step to solve the endurance anxiety, charging anxiety of the three methods.
Although battery capacity increase is the most immediate solution, but want to increase the endurance is not simply added to two more batteries can be solved. Relying on the number of stacked batteries to improve the endurance will lead to negative effects such as increased vehicle weight, sharp increase in battery costs, occupied space layout in the car, easy to lose control of thermal management, and low efficiency of the whole vehicle. Therefore, the increase in the battery life of electric vehicles is fundamentally an increase in the energy density of the battery, so that the same weight and volume of battery packs can store more electrical energy.
For example, silicon anode material is currently a major outlet for lithium batteries to improve energy density, and now GAC AION LX PLUS Thousand Mile Edition and NIO ET7 use large-capacity battery packs of silicon anode materials on the battery. But everything has two sides, silicon anode material after repeated charging and discharging, the material structure will become loose, resulting in capacity attenuation and cycle life reduction problems. At the same time, compared with the cheap graphite electrode (graphite price is about 3-70,000 yuan / ton, while the silicon anode price ranges from 100,000-300,000 yuan / ton), the use of silicon anode will also bring significant cost increase.
Compared with the battery capacity increase, the landing of the fast/ultra charging pile technology requires the environment to be coordinated to complete, improve the charging power, and make the charging process of the electric vehicle further align with the refueling time of the traditional car, which is the current hot spot in the development of electric vehicles. However, there are also disadvantages, taking the supercharge pile as an example, the development of the 800V voltage platform not only requires the technical progress of the car itself such as battery charging rate, vehicle high-voltage appliances, etc., but also needs the landing support of the charging pile, and even the power grid to adapt the charging facilities.
In addition to fast/overcharging, power exchange is also one of the fast energy replenishment methods for electric vehicles. Compared with the energy replenishment method of 800V high-voltage charging, the power exchange can achieve energy replenishment in 10 minutes, which is more efficient. But to realize the unification of lithium battery packs, as well as the days when power stations are everywhere, there is obviously a long way to go, even more difficult than the endurance of more than 1000km, supercharge technology popularization. Behind the unification of power exchange standards is the unification of chassis, power exchange technology, battery communication protocol, and battery pack standards, which is obviously a complex project. In the short term, power swapping will still be a service that only a few electric vehicle owners can enjoy.
If you say that the current three methods who can go further, Xiaobian believes that it can be said that each has its own advantages, because each energy replenishment method is launched according to the development of new energy vehicles at present. Some people believe that although the battery life has increased significantly, it still does not have the comfort zone of commuting out of the city due to charging problems. Thinking about it later, the battery stored in the replacement power station is limited, and it is too late to replace the car, and even the supercharge pile will also have the problem of too late to charge. Perhaps at present, we are not sure who can go further, but under the premise that there is no breakthrough in battery technology, these three lines are not inevitable. (Image source network, invasion and deletion)