People's congress deputies take the pulse and change the power of heavy trucks or will drive into the fast lane of development

Innovation, Excellence, Transcendence

The annual "two sessions" are being held in Beijing. Representatives of the automotive industry have made suggestions and suggestions for how to develop the mainland automobile industry, and new energy vehicles are still "hot words".

As a newly emerging industry in new energy vehicles, the replacement car has also received the attention of the deputies in the proposal of this year's "two sessions". For example, Li Shufu, a deputy to the National People's Congress and chairman of Geely Holding Group, brought the proposal of "Suggestions on Increasing the Construction of electric Vehicle Replacement System" in view of the current development of the mainland's power exchange vehicle industry.

Li Shufu believes that charging and replacing electricity has become the main way of replenishing the energy of electric vehicles, but compared with the construction speed of charging piles, the layout of the replacement power station is lagging behind. The sustainable development of the power exchange model in the future will require the cooperation of government departments, industry associations and enterprises.

This is indeed the case. According to the latest data, in January 2022, the sales volume of new energy vehicles was 431,000 units, the increase in charging infrastructure was 114,000 units, and the incremental ratio of pile vehicles was 1:3.8. In 2021, the number of charging piles in the country has reached 2.617 million units, an increase of 55.7% year-on-year.

At the same time, by the end of 2021, the number of substations in the country is only 1192, which restricts the rapid development of the current replacement vehicles.

Li Shufu also believes that compared with the traditional charging pile energy replenishment method, the vehicle-electricity separation and replacement mode has two major advantages: high efficiency and low cost. Battery materials can also be incorporated into the circular economy to further improve environmental efficiency.

However, at present, the development of the power exchange mode is facing many difficulties, and there is still a breakthrough in supporting facilities. At the same time, the energy density, battery structure and size specifications of power battery products by battery manufacturers cannot be unified, which also causes certain obstacles to the development of power exchange mode.

To this end, Deputy Li Shufu put forward three suggestions in the proposal:

First, it is necessary to speed up the clarification of the relevant provisions on the construction of substations, high and low pressure box changes, land and construction approvals, and incorporate them into the national market management standard system;

The second is to further improve the relevant policies and regulations of the power exchange model, optimize the announcement regulations of the power exchange model, establish an exclusive announcement certification system for the power exchange model, and form a separate certification of the car and the battery under the separation of vehicle electricity;

The third is to accelerate the standardization and generalization of power exchange modes.

The main station network electric card observation believes that Deputy Li Shufu has analyzed the problems encountered in the development of the mainland power exchange automobile industry more thoroughly, and the suggestions put forward are very targeted, which is an accurate "pulse" for the current mainland power exchange automobile industry, and also has good constructive significance for solving the bottleneck problems that currently restrict the development of power exchange heavy trucks.

Why?

01

First of all, the power exchange mode is an effective shortcut to accelerate the realization of the electrification process of heavy trucks in the future.

Heavy-duty trucks are the most serious models of pollution emissions in the automotive industry, and the electrification of heavy-duty trucks is the "highlight" of the future development of new energy vehicles in the mainland, which has great potential in the field of energy conservation and emission reduction, and is an important breakthrough for the mainland to achieve the "3060 carbon emission target".

Although ordinary charging pure electric heavy trucks are also an important way to realize the electrification of heavy trucks, their prices are expensive, which affects the operating income of vehicles. In addition, the vehicle occupies a large volume, the required charging power is large, the charging station construction cost is high, and the pure electric heavy truck of the charging class alone to achieve the electrification of the heavy truck is obviously very defective. Because of this, the heavy truck replacement scheme has great possibilities.

Judging from the development of the new energy heavy truck market in 2021, replacing the heavy truck has become a good breaking point. Terminal data shows that from 2021 to January 2022, the cumulative sales of heavy-duty trucks for replacement are 4250 vehicles, a year-on-year increase, and sales account for more than 40% of the entire electric heavy-duty truck market, which is the core force to promote the rapid growth of new energy heavy-duty trucks.

This is mainly because the power exchange mode can complete the energy replenishment in 3-5 minutes, and can also rely on the business model of "separation of vehicle and electricity" to combine with the power exchange technology, set up a company through financial means, and the battery bank will buy the heavy-duty truck battery, rent it to the user, and collect the battery rent from the user.

Power exchange operators provide charging and power exchange services, and the automaker directly sells the car, which can not only reduce the cost pressure of promoting the application of electric heavy trucks, but also save a lot of trouble for the vehicle manufacturer, so that the car company can invest more energy to develop technology.

It is foreseeable that the power exchange mode is likely to be an effective shortcut to accelerate the realization of the electrification of heavy trucks in the mainland in the future.

02

Secondly, at present, the development of heavy trucks is constrained by many factors and is difficult to promote on a large scale.

First, the number of substations is small.

By the end of 2021, there are only 1192 substations in the mainland, and the regional distribution is uneven, mainly distributed in cities with more coasts and ports, and most areas have not yet been replaced.

Imagine such a large area of the country, just more than 1,000 substations, how can it promote the large-scale promotion and application of heavy power replacement trucks in the mainland? Therefore, in order to promote the large-scale promotion of heavy truck replacement, it is imperative to build the required replacement power stations in various places.

Second, the construction and operation of electric heavy-duty truck replacement power stations lack common industry standards.

The lack of industry standards for the replacement power station is one of the major problems encountered in the construction and operation of the current electric truck replacement power station. Electric Card Observation believes that the national competent department should clarify who will take the lead in formulating and introducing the construction and operation standards for electric truck replacement power stations as soon as possible to regulate the construction and operation of electric truck replacement power stations in the mainland.

This is also one of the specific meanings of "we must clearly speed up the construction of power exchange stations" put forward by Deputy Li Shufu at this year's "two sessions." If this suggestion is adopted, it will be good for promoting the construction of the mainland power station in the future, and it will also be good for the development of heavy trucks for power exchange.

Third, the construction of electric heavy-duty truck replacement power stations is facing the practical problem of difficult land approval.

According to the observation and investigation of the main station network electricity card, the current construction of the replacement power station is facing the practical problem of difficult land approval in many places.

At present, there are relatively many heavy trucks for power exchange in the fleet of large-scale logistics companies, mainly concentrated in port cities. If you want to choose these places to build and replace power stations, land approval is a big problem.

Land resources are tight, who is in charge of the approval department for the construction of the substation is not clear, and the construction of the substation is "stuck" in the land approval link.

Therefore, Deputy Li Shufu's proposal to "clarify the relevant provisions on the approval of land and construction of power stations and incorporate them into the national market management standard system" is targeted and believes that it will be paid attention to by the competent state departments.

Fourth, the relevant regulations on the replacement of heavy truck models are not perfect, especially the vehicle announcement mode is insufficient.

Needless to say, the mainland does lag behind the needs of market development in the formulation of national standards for electric trucks.

For example, in addition to the three mandatory national standards issued by the National Standards Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in May 2020, such as "Safety Requirements for Electric Vehicles", "Safety Requirements for Electric Buses" and "Safety Requirements for Power Batteries for Electric Vehicles", most of the others are recommended standards and industry standards issued in previous years. In today's rapid development of new power exchange technology, it is urgent to revise and improve and form mandatory national standards.

At the same time, the current announcement mode of heavy truck replacement products is insufficient and is not suitable for the needs of the current market development.

In 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued 12 batches of new product announcements for heavy-duty trucks, and more than 160 new models of heavy-duty trucks were released, all of which were announced on the whole vehicle (including batteries). However, in vehicle-to-electricity separation mode, a heavy-duty truck model will match multiple batteries, and a battery will also match multiple models.

For example, if the three cars can correspond to three batteries (the interface is unified and interchangeable), then the three cars need to be announced nine times, and new batteries are developed and need to be re-announced. With the rapid development of battery technology, the battery power will continue to increase, and models that have been announced need to be re-announced according to the new battery.

If the car company is ready to develop a new model, it needs to announce all the batteries that can be matched. Obviously, at present, the vehicle announcement mode of changing heavy trucks cannot keep up with the speed of technological development and market demand, which may cause waste of resources of heavy truck replacement enterprises, and even greatly reduce the efficiency of car companies in developing new products for heavy trucks. If the vehicle and battery announcement certification are separated, the announcement can greatly improve the above situation.

Therefore, the suggestion put forward by deputy Li Shufu to "further improve the relevant policies and regulations of the power exchange model, optimize the announcement regulations of the power exchange model, establish an exclusive announcement certification system for the power exchange model, and form a separate certification of the car and the battery under the separation of vehicle and electricity" can be said to be the drawbacks of the current "lagging regulations for power exchange heavy trucks and unreasonable announcement certification system".

Fifth, the battery standard is not uniform, the generalization rate is low, which is a major bottleneck restricting the development of the current heavy truck for power exchange.

At present, the specifications, brands and even materials of electric heavy trucks produced by different manufacturers are different. This is mainly because the electric heavy truck itself has the problem of inconsistent models of various vehicle models such as tractors, dump trucks, mixer trucks, and sanitation vehicles.

In addition, because the research and development direction and progress of various battery manufacturers are different, the battery models produced by battery companies are also very different. For example, at present, the battery brands equipped with more battery brands are Ningde Times, Yiwei Lithium Energy, Shenlan Power, BYD, etc., and the power batteries of these brands cannot be unified in terms of energy density, battery structure, size specifications, etc.

There is no doubt that the low degree of standardization of the battery replacement restricts multiple electric heavy-duty truck brand models from sharing the same substation, delaying the development process of the electric heavy-duty truck substation, and also restricting the development scale of the replacement heavy-duty truck market.

Of course, the adaptation of the power exchange mode requires car companies and battery companies to jointly promote, if there is no standard promotion, the car company brand will still use different power exchange interfaces, can not complete the adaptation, will inevitably seriously hinder the future large-scale promotion and application of heavy trucks.

Therefore, the sustainable development of heavy trucks requires the cooperation of government authorities, industry associations and enterprises to jointly promote. Establishing uniform standards in the industry is a top priority.

It is precisely for this reason that Deputy Li Shufu put forward the proposal of "accelerating the standardization and generalization of the power exchange mode", and I believe that this proposal will be highly valued and adopted by the competent state departments in a timely manner.

In short, the people's congress deputies will be highly valued by the state for "taking the pulse" to change electric vehicles, or will promote the mainland to change heavy trucks into the fast lane of development.