In the past 2021, the mainland new energy market has ushered in a big outbreak. According to the data released by the Association of Passenger Vehicles, the wholesale sales of passenger cars in 2021 were 21.1 million units, an increase of 6.7% year-on-year, of which the total wholesale volume of new energy passenger cars reached 3.312 million units, an increase of 181.0% year-on-year. In terms of penetration rate, the domestic retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles in 2021 will reach 14.8%, which is significantly higher than the 5.8% penetration rate in 2020. Due to the good situation, the Association predicts that the sales of new energy passenger vehicles will reach more than 5.5 million units in 2022, and the penetration rate is expected to reach about 25%.
However, behind the booming new energy market, the problem of charging difficulties has plagued many new energy car owners, and this time the problem is Tesla, which has been insisting on building supercharger piles before. According to electrek, Tesla became the victim of a theft, a brand new supercharger station was stolen, and the cables of 8 charging piles were cut and stolen. The incident occurred in Oakhurst, California, WHEN the owner was ready to charge, he found that all the charging piles of the charging station were destroyed and the charging cable was stolen.
For the reason why the charging cables of Tesla charging piles were stolen, they have said that the main reason is that the copper wires in these cables can be sold for money. In fact, this is not the first time that Tesla superchargers have been damaged, as early as early 2019, a Tesla charging pile in Utah, USA, was damaged. Although the suspect was caught and even charged with a Level 2 felony for the amount involved exceeding $5,000, Tesla also had to pay 3 days for the repair of the charging pile and $8,000 for repair.
After the charging pile was stolen, Tesla reacted quickly to prevent similar things from happening. However, Tesla's methods are a bit ridiculous, and it has set up a solar version of the "security device" next to the supercharger. This "security device" is equipped with surveillance cameras, as well as a "shouting loudspeaker" and an alarm, which will warn the thief if he or she is found stealing the cable.
Given Tesla's current large number of superchargers around the world, it is a question mark that Tesla can play a role in relying solely on such security. However, the repeated destruction of Tesla charging piles also reflects a dilemma for most of the current charging piles, that is, just installing, the after-sales and other operational management is basically a mess.
Difficult development of charging piles
Before 2016, before the standard of public charging piles was unified, the mainland's public charging facilities were in an embarrassing situation of "who built who used, who used who built", and the charging pile interfaces of various car companies were independent, so at this stage, electric vehicles were more just "big toys" for some users.
Data show that as of the end of 2017, the number of charging piles in the mainland reached 450,000, of which 210,000 are public charging piles, but in terms of usage rate, most of the public charging piles are idle, the utilization rate is less than 15%, becoming a veritable "zombie pile", public charging piles In addition to the charging speed can not meet the needs of users charging for the time being, there are still problems such as charging pile damage, occupancy, charging time is not the same, of which the problem of charging piles being deliberately damaged is the most serious. It can be seen that Tesla's incident is not an isolated case.
Although with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the National Standards Commission and the National Energy Bureau, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology and other departments at the end of 2015 issued the newly revised electric vehicle charging interface and communication protocol and other 5 national standards, requiring the improvement of the safety and compatibility of charging interfaces, the number of charging piles not only grew rapidly, the corresponding operational problems began to decrease.
Although the problem of early "zombie piles" has been alleviated to a certain extent after the standard of charging piles has been unified, the problems of charging pile operation have not been completely solved, and problems such as damage to charging piles, occupancy, and charging time are still occurring from time to time. As for why this situation occurs, the fundamental reason is that charging pile companies cannot make a profit.
Take the head enterprise special call as an example, since July 2014 officially entered the electric vehicle charging business, special call has invested a lot of money in the establishment of electric piles in various places, as of November 2018, the cumulative construction of electric piles has reached 198,000, but the huge amount of charging piles has not brought profits to special calls. The data shows that there have been huge losses since 2016, of which 300 million yuan was lost in 2016 and 2017, and as of December 31, 2018, the operating income of Ettler was 389 million yuan and the net profit was negative 136 million yuan, that is to say, in the first 4 years, the cumulative loss of Ettlaine was at least 600 million yuan.
The reason why the special call has a long-term loss is mainly because the utilization rate of its electric pile is very low, and the average utilization rate of the special call is only about 9%. This is still true for the head player's special call, not to mention other small and medium-sized players. Although Tesla has not disclosed the construction and operating costs of its charging pile, but according to the characteristics of its charging pile only for Tesla owners before, if there is no accident, it should be in the same loss as other pile companies, so in such a state, it can only be a luxury to withdraw more resources to maintain the pile company, which is also Tesla's helplessness to use solar security devices to monitor the charging pile after this incident.
Although there is policy support, but can not make a profit, it means that the enthusiasm for the construction of pile enterprises is greatly reduced. The data shows that the number of charging piles in the mainland in 2015 was only 58,000, and as of November 2021, the member units of the alliance reported a total of 1.092 million public charging piles, an increase of nearly 20 times compared with 2015, but the current rapid growth of the number of public charging piles is far less than the previous government planning to build 5 million charging piles in 2020, the ratio of 1:1, it can be seen that the unprofitable charging pile has long become the burden of pile enterprises, let alone management?
Nowadays, the investment fever in the charging pile market seems to have receded. It is reported that from 2016 to 2018, there were more than 10 charging pile companies. However, since then, the market wind direction has reversed rapidly, half of the charging pile companies have withdrawn, and there are few small charging pile companies left. At present, Trident and Star Charging, as the top companies in the charging pile industry, are also adjusting their strategic layout.
The roof leak coincided with the overnight rain, and the charging pile that is still unprofitable today also encountered the challenge of replacing the power station. In 2020, as an important part of the new infrastructure, the substation was written for the first time in the "Government Work Report" of the two sessions, as well as the "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)" and the "Government Work Report" of the two sessions last year clearly stated that the power exchange mode will be an important part of the future energy replenishment, and the power exchange mode has embarked on the fast lane, not only Weilai Automobile, which has been promoting the power station change before, has accelerated the pace of construction, even Geely and Ningde times have joined this track. If the pile company continues to be like before, there is no sense of urgency, no less cost in operation, then the experience of a better replacement power station in the future really to replace the charging pile.
How to solve the stubborn problem of charging pile operation?
How to solve the stubborn problems in the operation of charging piles? At present, there are many people. It is undeniable that although the development of new energy vehicles is very fast, and even its birth time is very early, but the real development is only in recent years, it is still a new thing, so whether in the management and operation or related laws and regulations, there is no complete solution for charging piles.
In the past, due to the chaos of the new and old national standards in the charging pile industry, the technical level of each company was different, so the maintenance of charging piles was difficult to do and difficult to do, but this was not an excuse for the lack of operation of pile companies. Now that the challenge of replacing power stations is at hand, the Charging Pile Alliance must unite with various pile companies to develop a charging pile management system that meets the national conditions of the mainland.
This time, the management laws and regulations for the construction and operation of charging piles also need to be improved. For this problem, at the beginning of January this year, the 15th 168th executive meeting of the Municipal Government of Guangzhou deliberated and adopted the "Guangzhou Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Safety Management Measures" (hereinafter referred to as the "Measures"),citing reference. The measures not only stipulate the ownership of charging piles, but also clarify the safety supervision responsibilities and supervision means for some charging facilities and equipment aging, lack of maintenance, operation with diseases and other problems such as prominent safety hazards.
It is worth mentioning that the measures also propose a responsibility disposal mechanism, and for public and private charging facility operators (legal person units, groups) that fail to correctly perform the safety work duties of these Measures, the light is interviewed, and the heavy is to directly stop the power supply to the charging facility station involved. Such measures, I believe that the shortcomings of the previous charging pile will be effectively solved.
However, compared with the strong laws and regulations, the most urgent problem for pile companies is still to achieve profitability. After all, once profitable, the previous operational problems are expected to be solved. In the past, earning electricity price differences and service charges was the most basic way to make money in the charging pile industry, but the problems faced by this model are gradually being exposed.
In fact, the charging pile profit model has been changing, in the past because of the lack of users, so charging pile companies are also exploring new models. At present, the profit model of charging piles for the B-end is relatively stable, such as taxis, logistics vehicles, heavy trucks, buses, etc., but the profit model for the C-end, due to the scattered charging pile layout and other factors, the income is not certain. At present, in order to solve the single way of profit, many pile companies are seeking new business models, such as Tesla, Weilai and Xiaopeng have gradually opened their super-punched piles to all cars.
Although measures like Tesla's opening of super-piles have not yet achieved profitability, it is at least a positive phenomenon. Of course, while striving to explore new business models, pile companies must not forget the management of operations. After all, a good business model, without operation, will also fail.
Summary: Although the problem of charging pile profitability cannot be realized in a short period of time, this does not mean that pile companies can abandon operation. Once the pile enterprise abandons the operation and management of the charging pile, the number of charging piles cannot keep up with the speed of new energy development, and if it is destroyed again, then the charging pile camp will give the power exchange camp more opportunities.
In fact, with the introduction of the power exchange policy, the power exchange model has begun to be accepted by more and more car companies, and the number of power stations has also grown rapidly. Under this circumstance, if the pile company pays attention to operation management, then the good situation of the charging pile for many years may really be destroyed.