99% conversion efficiency, "easy energy era" to alleviate the anxiety of new energy vehicle owners

Recall that during the eleventh period last year, during the great holidays, due to the lack of charging piles on the highway and the slow charging, the new energy car owners were trapped on the highway, watching the oil truck owners fill up the oil in a few minutes and go home on the road.

Anxiety is still spreading. Gas stations can be seen everywhere, but the charging pile is a car, parking spaces are difficult to find, charging piles are difficult to find. In addition to Weilai car owners can enjoy battery replacement and "power delivery to the door", other new energy car owners have to become "pile chasing teenagers". Refuel for a few minutes and charge for a few hours. Even if you are lucky enough to find an idle charging pile, fast charging is one of the few.

As the price of oil rose to 8.5 yuan / liter, the oil truck could not afford to drive, and the tram was tied up by charging.

Driving a car, why is it so difficult?

Fight for the charging pile industry that does not make money

New energy vehicles or the main tools for future travel.

Under the trend of "double carbon", in 2021, the sales volume of new energy vehicles in mainland China will be 3.521 million units, an increase of 158% year-on-year. It is estimated that the sales volume of new energy vehicles in mainland China is expected to exceed 5 million units in 2022, with a total capacity of 12.21 million units; it is expected that by 2025, sales volume is expected to be nearly 10 million units, with a total capacity of 32.24 million units.

Not only traditional car companies see the business of new energy travel, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, DJI and other Internet technology companies have squeezed into the car industry.

Let's look back at the charging supply side of new energy vehicles. In 2021, there are 7.84 million new energy vehicles on the road, but there are only 2.61 million charging piles, and the vehicle-to-pile ratio is only 3:1, of which the ratio of fast charging piles and slow charging piles is half. However, according to the "New Energy Automobile Industry Development Plan 2021-2035", the domestic vehicle-to-pile ratio should reach the target of 1:1.

If in 2025, there will be tens of millions of new energy vehicles, tens of millions of charging pile gaps in the business waiting for the layout of enterprises. This track has been squeezed into listed companies such as State Grid and Trident.

The track is also known as a unicorn with a valuation of 10 billion yuan: Telai (a subsidiary of Trident) received a strategic financing of about 300 million yuan in early 2021, a pre-investment valuation of about 13 billion yuan, and a series A financing of about 13.5 billion yuan in early 2020. Star Charging (Wanbang Energy) received Series B financing in May 2021, Hillhouse, IDG, etc. entered the game, with a post-investment valuation of 15.5 billion yuan, and in September 2020, Star Charging received a Series A financing of 855 million yuan.

Capital has bet on the "double carbon" track and bet on the terminal interface of new energy - charging piles. But back to the most essential question, does the charging business make money?

In the charging pile industry chain, the upstream is the charging pile manufacturer (component and equipment production), the middle stream is the charging operator, and the downstream is the electric vehicle user. The entire industrial chain is stagnant - charging pile manufacturers do not make money, operators fight price wars, and car owners have difficulty charging.

In other words, a whole industrial chain is not doing well.

At present, the industry is still in a state of continuous loss. According to the analysis of charging utilization rate, the corresponding time utilization rate of the break-even point of charging operation is about 8%-9%, but the current average utilization rate of the industry is only about 6%. Just like gas stations charge car owners for refueling, the operator's revenue structure is mainly "electricity + service fee". In order to obtain customers, operators continue to encircle and occupy market share. This is related to the low electricity prices of midstream operators. According to the analysis of industry insiders, the field station did not make money as imagined, the inner volume is very powerful, and the facility operation end of the charging pile market is not hot first.

Taking the head operating company of the charging pile as an example, from 2020 to 2021, the average price of service fees will be reduced from 0.47 yuan / Wh to 0.42 yuan / Wh. From the perspective of market share, according to the 2021 Trident annual report, The Caller operates 252,000 charging piles, with a market share of more than 32%, and the annual charging vehicle exceeds 4.2 billion kWh, with a market share of 38%. Third-party professional operating enterprises account for more than 75% of the public charging pile operation market share, such as special calls, star charging, cloud fast charging, etc.

The head manufacturer is so, which is enough to see the fierce price war. In addition, the new people have also made the industry price war increasingly fierce. This is reminiscent of the shop model of the era of shared bicycles. In 2021, of the 1.147 million charging piles, 13 companies operated more than 10,000 units, an increase of 4 from 2020. (Source: Southwest Securities)

The life of these operation service providers is not good, and it is directly transmitted to the upstream charging pile equipment manufacturers. It is reported that because of the slow payment or no money to return the payment, several charging pile equipment manufacturers have become shareholders of the station. Not to mention the growing charging demand for new energy vehicles, the self-iteration of charging pile technology.

As the intersection of car owners, new energy vehicles and power grids, new energy vehicle charging piles are included in the "new infrastructure", and go hand in hand with 5G base station construction, intercity and urban rail transportation, and big data centers. As a part of urban infrastructure, charging piles have not yet established a foundation, and midstream operators have begun to use the means of Internet operation to start a price war. The soil in the charging industry is not thick enough, and it is beginning to blow strong winds.

In the future, the demand for new energy vehicles off the line is a massive market, and the new energy infrastructure track is still an incremental market, and there is a strong demand for technology iteration.

The core of charging pile technology - charging module

The charging industry has the most technical content, which will determine the direction of some energy replenishment enterprises in the future.

Just like even if mobile phone products are constantly updated and iterated, mobile phone manufacturers are endlessly competing for incremental market share, but chip manufacturers are still the head players with the most core chip technology. The same is true of the charging pile industry, the profit distribution is transmitted from the upstream to the downstream, and the continuous iteration of the upstream core technology is the core.

Analyzing the profit cost of the charging pile, it can be seen that the core of the device lies in the charging module.

The average cost of AC charging piles, commonly known as "slow charging piles", is between 5,000 and 20,000 yuan, while the cost of "fast charging piles" DC charging piles is about 100,000-150,000 yuan. Charging pile manufacturers assemble each device, and the charging module has the most technical content, accounting for 45%-55% of the total cost. The role of the charging module is to convert the alternating current in the grid into direct current that can charge the battery.

Replenishment is a business that seeks long-term returns, and it is charged on time and electricity. To achieve long-term returns, you need to ensure that fixed assets (charging modules) do not break down too quickly. Generally speaking, an AC fast charging pile 120KW, a charging module 20KW, you have to put 6 charging modules, in order to ensure power transmission. There are more than 30 switches in the charging module using the series mode, and once damaged, the charging module is scrapped.

Therefore, the breakthrough of the core technology of the charging module needs to consider the key issues of large electrical loss and high maintenance cost.

Shenzhen Yineng Times Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yineng Times") also believes that if it breaks through the charging pile battery module technology, it is a way to improve the status quo of the industry. 36Kr learned that "Yineng Times" released the "Qiming" charging pile module yesterday (March 13). This charging pile module product is the debut of "Easy Energy Times" as a newcomer to the new energy industry. It is reported that the team closed for 3 years to develop original technical routes.

The head players of the charging module are Infineon, Youyou Green Energy, and Yonglian Technology, among which in addition to Yonglian Technology, most of the founding R&D teams are from "Huawei Electric - Emerson Series". It is reported that "Qineng" has taken a different technical route from the above three.

Su Xin, CEO of "Yineng Times", explained that when developing "Qiming", the team first considered the ultra-fast charging market, and secondly, how to achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement in charging efficiency, heat dissipation, protection, compatibility and other factors.

In terms of charging efficiency, a large reason for the damage of the charging module comes from the switching tube (IGBT power switch), "Qiming" adopts nanosecond switch control, follows the power factor, reduces the peak loss and minimizes the switching loss. In contrast, the common 94% power conversion efficiency on the market is achieved to 99%, in other words, charging 100 kWh of electricity and consuming only 1 kWh of electricity.

In terms of heat dissipation, intelligent temperature control technology is used to control the temperature of different parts of the circuit, which further reduces fan noise and reduces environmental interference. In terms of protection, the isolation control of active rectification is adopted to reduce the risk of high current impact caused by interference signals and reduce the quality and safety of charging piles.

In addition, the construction of charging piles is limited by the site and regional power grid, and miniaturization and compatibility of power grids are the future trends. By adopting a rational design of structure, "Qiming" makes the component design more precise and easy to install, so as to improve the utilization of space.

In terms of return on investment, the "Qiming" R & D team made a calculation: a 480kw supercharged pile, working 10 hours a day, means that the energy saved is 280 kWh of electricity, which is equivalent to a single pile earning 200 yuan more per day, 60,000-70,000 yuan more profits for the whole year, and the money saved within 2-3 years can earn back the hardware investment of the supercharged pile.

An enterprise's business model needs to live in the ecosystem and industrial chain. Building an "energy cloud" ecosystem will be a long-term barrier to the "energy era". Just like Android and Apple develop open source systems, the "Easy Energy Era" can provide manufacturers with a complete set of technical routes that integrate hardware, software, and services, and the "Easy Energy Era" to do the lowest level of things that require continuous technical iteration, while being compatible with the entire ecosystem. ”

It is reported that "Yineng Times" completed a Series B financing of 250 million yuan in early 2022, led by Zhengdong Investment Group and supported by old shareholders. As early as a few years ago, when doing "Easy Refueling", the team noticed the trend of all the taxis and buses in Shenzhen turning electricity, "which may be what other cities will look like in the future".

Looking ahead, as an entrant in the new energy industry, the "Yineng Era" considers more than just a core module of a charging pile. Combined with the existing data operation and energy resource advantages, the iterative products of the future "Easy Energy Era" may be driven around the dual drive of "technology + digital", with electric energy converted into the core to help "carbon neutrality".