The new economic record | the debate of the "supplementary energy model" of the "core"

New energy vehicles have been a topic of conversation in recent years, and this year is no exception.

Zeng Yuqun, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of NINGDE Times, Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motor, Zhu Huarong, chairman of Changan Automobile, Zeng Qinghong, chairman of GUANGZHOU AUTOMOBILE Group, Wang Fengying, president of Great Wall Motor, Fang Yunzhou, chairman of Nezha Automobile, Zhang Xinghai, chairman of Xiaokang Group, Yin Tongyue, chairman of Chery Holding Group, Li Shufu, chairman of Geely, and Lei Jun, chairman of Xiaomi Group, all put forward proposals and proposals related to the automobile industry this year.

01 "Core" thing is a bit difficult

"At present, China is the world's largest new car market, and its products are in the process of upgrading and transforming to intelligence, networking, and electrification, and the market for automotive chips with large computing power, high performance, and vehicle regulations is huge." Chen Hong threw the common problem of Chinese car companies' lack of cores to the surface.

On the one hand, due to the long research and development cycle and large capital investment, Chinese chip companies have a low willingness to build car-grade chips and fail to achieve autonomy and controllability in this field; on the other hand, since 2021, due to many factors, there has been a serious shortage of chip supply, resulting in the development of China's auto industry.

In this regard, Chen Hong, Zeng Qinghong, Wang Fengying, and Zhang Xinghai coincided, and at the same time put forward their own suggestions.

Chen Hong said that since the outbreak of the epidemic, the automotive industry has continued to be affected by the "lack of cores", with the accelerated development of intelligent networked vehicles in the future, the demand for automotive chips, especially large computing chips, will continue to grow rapidly.

Chen Hong suggested that through policy guidance and multi-party coordination, a unified technical specification and standard for vehicle-grade chips should be established, and a third-party testing and certification platform should be established; it is suggested that the state take the lead in setting up special funds to encourage chip companies and automobile companies to participate together and accelerate the formation of domestic large-scale chip research and development, manufacturing and application capabilities.

Zeng Qinghong believes that insufficient independent research and development, high dependence on foreign supply, and lagging development of the industrial chain are the prominent problems in the development of mainland chips.

In this regard, he himself has several suggestions:

First, it is necessary to ensure stable supply, sort out the supply and demand of chips in key areas, guide foreign automotive chip companies to invest in China, and establish an emergency reserve mechanism for chips and important raw materials;

The second is to stabilize the market, strengthen law enforcement supervision, regulate the disorderly rise in raw material prices, and alleviate the pressure on enterprises;

The third is to strengthen policy guidance and accelerate the overall industrial chain layout of automotive chips;

The fourth is to strengthen node research and orderly breakthroughs in key areas of R&D, manufacturing, packaging and other card necks;

The fifth is to strengthen the application traction, increase support and talent introduction, and accelerate the pace of promoting the localization of chips. Only the government and R & D institutions and enterprises can work together to truly solve the chip bottleneck and promote industrial development.

Wang Fengying put forward a proposal - "Proposal on Promoting the Rapid Development of China's Automotive Grade Chip Industry".

Wang Fengying suggested:

First, short-term priority to solve the problem of "lack of core";

Second, improve the industrial layout in the medium term and achieve independent control;

Third, build a long-term mechanism for the introduction and training of industrial talents to achieve long-term sustainable development.

Zhang Xinghai put forward a proposal - "Proposal on Using National Forces to Promote the Solution of the Tight Supply of Vehicle Specification Chips"

Zhang Xinghai said in the above-mentioned bill, "At present, it is imminent to improve the localization rate of vehicle regulation chips and achieve import substitution, which has become an important strategic direction of the national industry, and it is not time to accelerate the realization of independent control of vehicle regulation chips." However, the chip industry cannot be achieved overnight in the short term, and the problem of 'cutting off supply' of automobile chips is difficult to effectively regulate simply by using market means, and it is necessary to give more play to the institutional and mechanism advantages of mainland socialism concentrating forces to do big things. ”

According to the above situation, Zhang Xinghai further gave suggestions from three aspects:

First, from the national ministry level under the automotive chip department, the formulation of top-level design and supporting measures for the development of the automotive chip industry;

Second, actively introduce international leading automobile chip manufacturing enterprises to invest and build factories in China, and promote the rapid landing of localization projects of foreign-funded chip production lines from many aspects such as policies, funds, and supporting facilities;

Third, encourage vehicle companies and chip companies to work together across borders and jointly innovate.

02 Debate on the energy replenishment model

Since the popularization of new energy vehicles, the debate between the advantages and disadvantages of the two ways of replacing electricity and charging has not subsided.

At the two sessions of the National People's Congress in 2020, charging piles were written into the "Government Work Report" and began to rank among the new infrastructure fields, and local representatives and members decided to expand the "construction of charging piles" to "increase charging piles, power stations and other facilities" after discussion and deliberation.

In the 2021 government work report, the replacement power station and the charging pile are on an equal footing. The 2022 government work report charging and replacing the electricity has not been mentioned, and the support for the policy needs to be further revealed.

As a pioneer in fast charging, Tesla demonstrated the power exchange technology as early as 2013, and after trying to change the power model, it tasted and stopped, and finally turned to the supercharge route.

Tesla told the official: "Power replacement in some specific areas such as taxis is a good energy replenishment mode, but we firmly believe that charging is the best way to supplement large-scale civilian electric vehicles, and civilian high-power fast charging is more convenient and stable."

By the end of 2021, Tesla has 3,476 supercharging stations and 31,498 superchargers worldwide. While the scale of the supercharger station continues to expand, Tesla's charging power is also rapidly upgrading and iteration.

Perhaps Tesla played a leading role in the industry, after that, BYD, Xiaopeng, Geely Krypton, BAIC Jihu, GAC Ean, Dongfeng Lantu, Hyundai, GM, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and so on have followed up, have entered the fast charging track.

At present, fast charging technology has become a big bottom card for car companies when they release new products. The improvement of electric vehicle charging power is inseparable from the study of battery fast charging technology by power battery companies, such as Ningde Era, Fu Neng Technology, Hive Energy, Sunwoda, etc. Have laid out overcharge technology batteries.

In terms of industry, in the past two years, charging infrastructure has rapidly landed in various places. The data shows that in February 2020, the cumulative number of charging infrastructure in the country was 1.245 million units, and by January 2022, this number reached 2.731 million units, an increase of 119.2%.

At the same time as the rapid development, the problems plaguing the industry are also closely followed. Among them, there are two most difficult problems: one is that the user charging experience is not good, such as the use of new energy vehicles in the terminal use of slow charging, charging difficulties, the number of replacement power stations and other issues; second, the charging industry profit prospects are slim.

Lei Jun, deputy to the National People's Congress and chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Group, mentioned in the proposal that during the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, the mainland charging infrastructure has achieved leapfrog development in terms of technology, standards and ecology, but the current proportion of fast charging in the mainland public charging pile is only 40%, and the fast charging power is generally low, it is difficult to meet the charging needs of the majority of users, and it is difficult to adapt to the rapid development of the current new energy automobile industry.

In view of high-power fast charging facilities, Lei Jun suggested that a new generation of high-power fast charging network planning schemes should be formulated, and key objectives such as construction scale, land use planning, and charging capacity should be clarified; at the same time, the formulation, unification and application of technical standards and communication protocols should be promoted, and a 3-year special action timetable should be formulated to give priority to promoting the interconnection of high-power fast charging piles in scarce resource areas such as new investment and construction, core business districts and highways.

In addition, Yin Tongyue, a deputy to the National People's Congress and chairman of Chery Automobile, suggested that standards be introduced to optimize the development and construction of new energy vehicle charging infrastructure; Ding Zuohong, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of the board of directors of Yuexing Group, proposed that new energy vehicle charging stations be included in urban planning as public infrastructure construction.

Compared with Lei Jun's enthusiasm for fast charging, Li Shufu of Geely Automobile has a special love for the power exchange mode.

In September 2020, Geely Technology Group's first substation was unveiled; in November 2021, Geely's new energy commercial vehicle brand remote vehicle released the concept of power-changing heavy-duty truck remote Xinghan H; in January 2022, Geely launched the power-changing travel brand Ruilan Automobile, positioning itself as a new potential energy for a new generation of power-changing travel.

Based on the power exchange model, Geely's internal long-term strategy is to become the first domestic power exchange ecological service provider that integrates the research and development of power exchange models, power station research and development, power exchange operation and travel services.

The suggestion put forward by Li Shufu at the two sessions is exactly the current pain point of the power exchange mode, "In the vehicle-electricity separation mode, a power exchange model will match multiple batteries, and a battery will also match multiple models." If the three cars can correspond to three batteries (the interface is unified and interchangeable), then these three cars need to be announced nine times, and new batteries are developed and need to be re-announced. ”

Li Shufu called for speeding up the clarification of relevant provisions on the construction of substation replacement power stations, high and low transformer boxes, land and construction approvals, and incorporated them into the national market management standard system.

In order to further improve the relevant policies and regulations of the power exchange model, he also suggested that the announcement regulations of the power exchange model should be optimized, and an exclusive announcement and certification system for the power exchange model should be established to form a separate certification of the car and the battery under the separation of vehicle electricity.

In order to accelerate the standardization and generalization of the power exchange mode and promote the standardization of the software and hardware protocol of the power exchange interface, Li Shufu proposed to preset 2 to 3 technologically advanced interface forms and formulate recommended standards.

In fact, in addition to Geely, the loyal fans of the power exchange model in new energy vehicle companies include Weilai, BAIC New Energy, Changan, Wuling and so on.

Surprisingly, in January 2022, CATL announced the entry of the power exchange, and its subsidiary Times Electric Service released the overall solution of EVOGO power exchange and combination power exchange, including chocolate power exchange block developed for shared power exchange.

The entry of the Ningde era will solve the problem of non-uniformity of battery replacement standards and open another situation of power exchange mode, which is worth looking forward to.

Hui Ze Lee