10 years ago, the range of electric vehicles was not too long, the number of charging piles was also very limited, Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi boldly proposed and tried the idea of replacing the battery pack service in just a few minutes. Unfortunately, because battery standardization cannot be supported by car manufacturers, this seemingly perfect but high and low energy supplementation scheme has become a martyr in the early stage of the development of the electric vehicle industry.
10 years later, China has become the world's largest new energy vehicle market, providing a broad space for the coordinated development of a variety of energy replenishment methods, and the replacement of circuits has made waves again, and Enterprises such as Weilai, Ningde Times, and Geely have entered the market, so that the development of power exchange has shown signs of acceleration.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance expects that the number of electric vehicles in China will exceed 256 million in 2040, and if the power exchange model accounts for 10%-20%, the size of the power exchange market will reach 144 billion to 288 billion yuan. It's a huge, alluring pie that gives new players the opportunity to expand, and the once-unpromising power exchange model is beginning to resonate with the same frequency as the era of smart electric vehicles.
Towards spring
At about the same time as Shai Agassi's Better Place battery swap service, the mainland also began to explore power swap models and carried out related demonstration projects.
In 2011, the State Grid first studied the passenger car replacement technology, and determined the idea of "power exchange as the mainstay, plug-in and charging as a supplement, centralized charging, and unified distribution", but because the new energy passenger car market has not yet been launched on a large scale, the promotion efforts are less than expected, and then choose to vigorously develop charging infrastructure.
It is said that the construction of charging infrastructure is an important foundation and logistics support for the development of new energy vehicles. In the past decade, with the rapid and steady growth of the new energy automobile industry in the mainland, the contradiction between the growing production and sales of new energy vehicles and the insufficient number of charging piles has hindered the popularity of new energy vehicles to a certain extent.
Statistics from the Ministry of Public Security show that by the end of 2021, the number of new energy vehicles in the country will reach 7.84 million, the number of charging infrastructure will reach 2.617 million, and the ratio of vehicle piles will be only about 1:3.
In 2021, new energy vehicles have been rushed to the hot search many times because of the difficulty of charging. The topic of high-speed queuing for charging during the National Day holiday and grabbing charging spaces at 4 a.m. in winter has aroused heated discussions. On February 15, the China Consumers Association released a spring festival consumer rights protection public opinion analysis report, mentioning that "high-speed charging is difficult, there is no solution" is a typical problem. This obviously reduces consumer confidence in new energy vehicles.
Compared with relatively mature charging, power exchange is still in the early stages of development. According to data from the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance, by the end of 2021, there will be 74,700 charging stations in the top 10 provinces of the national charging station, and only 1,298 replacement power stations.
Since 2020, favorable policies have begun to favor power exchange, and the state has for the first time written the electric vehicle power exchange model into the government work report, listing it as a new format to encourage development and including it in the category of "new infrastructure".
In November of the same year, the State Council issued the "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)" pointed out that strengthening the construction of charging and replacing infrastructure, forming a charging network of "slow charging as the mainstay, emergency fast charging as a supplement", and encouraging the application of the power exchange mode will help the rapid development of the power exchange mode.
At the end of 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Launching the Pilot Work on the Application of the New Energy Vehicle Replacement Model", which included 11 cities in the scope of the pilot, including 8 cities with comprehensive applications (Beijing, Nanjing, Wuhan, Sanya, Chongqing, Changchun, Hefei and Jinan), and 3 cities with heavy truck characteristics (Yibin, Tangshan and Baotou).
Complementary to charging
The power exchange mode refers to the centralized storage, centralized charging, unified distribution of a large number of batteries through the centralized charging station, and the battery replacement service for electric vehicles in the battery distribution station or the collection of battery charging, logistics allocation, and power exchange services in one. The essence is to tap the full life cycle value of power batteries and realize the redistribution of enterprise and consumer benefits.
At present, the power exchange application is in the private end, the operation car end, the commercial vehicle end, mainly to solve the problem of high daily average mileage, high demand for energy efficiency, to make up for the lack of charging piles, in eliminating mileage anxiety and improving the safety level has certain advantages.
Compared with charging, the advantage of power exchange is that it can greatly shorten the energy replenishment time, through mechanical means, quickly replace the power battery, the process generally does not exceed 5 minutes, and the power exchange also has greater advantages in reducing the cost of car companies, prolonging the service life of the battery and the peak shaving and filling of the power grid, and is more friendly to taxis and commercial vehicles with operating cost pressure.
However, the power exchange mode also has disadvantages, that is, the early input cost of the power station is high, in addition to the cost of land, manpower, equipment purchase, etc., it also requires a huge battery reserve cost and battery charging and electricity costs. After completion, the working capital requirements are also large, such as battery investment, parking space site selection, wiring transformation, etc.
At the same time, the late operating costs of the substation are also high, the charging station can almost be unattended, and the operation and maintenance of the power exchange equipment, the unified charging of the battery, storage and deployment require staff.
At present, taxis, online car applications of power exchange mode is the most extensive, private car replacement market is being cultivated, the use of battery leasing, rent collection methods, reduce the threshold for car purchase, reduce the initial input and use costs of consumers. Compared with the network-intensive gas stations, the problems of difficult charging and slow charging still exist at this stage, which provides market space for power exchange and becomes an important promoter to improve the penetration rate of new energy vehicles.
In the future, the "power exchange" service will not only be "power exchange", but also include battery operation, decommissioned battery energy storage and utilization, scrap battery recycling and other industrial chain links.
Players fish through the admission
There are three factions of players in the field of power exchange: OEMs, battery companies and operators, who are jointly involved in coordinated operations.
The representatives of the small and medium-sized achievements of car companies are BAIC New Energy, which mainly focuses on taxi replacement, and Weilai Automobile, which mainly promotes private power exchange.
According to NIO's NIO Power 2025 substation layout plan: from 2022 to 2025, 600 new substations will be added to the Chinese market every year, and by the end of 2025, the global total number of NIO substations will exceed 4,000, of which about 1,000 substations in markets outside China.
Representative companies of operators include Aodong, which is committed to commercial operation, and Botan Technology, which takes into account both technology development and commercial operation. Since 2016, Aodong has reached a strategic cooperation with BAIC BJEV to promote the power exchange model on a large scale. Aodong plans to complete the construction of 10,000 substations within 5 years.
According to the data in 2021, Weilai has 789 substations, accounting for 60.8%, Aodong has 402 substations, accounting for 31%, and Hangzhou Botan has 107 substations, accounting for 8.2%.
In the battery enterprises, the Ningde era is the most prominent, in 2021, Weilai launched the BaaS power exchange model, established the Weineng Asset Management Company, Ningde era is one of the shareholders, to supplement the battery under the business model. Zeng Yuqun, chairman of Ningde Times, once said that as an energy source for electric vehicles, power exchange and fast charging are better than hydrogen energy in terms of economy and maturity, and the company and car companies have discussed relevant cooperation.
On January 18, CATL released the EVOGO power exchange brand, as well as the "combined power exchange overall solution", which is composed of chocolate power exchange block, power station (quick change station) and App three elements, emphasizing the adaptation of 80% of the world's pure electric platform models that have been listed and will be listed in the next 3 years, and have the advantages of only 1 minute to replace the power, rechargeable and replaceable, etc. EVOGO will choose to take the lead in starting the power exchange service in 10 cities in China. This marks that the power exchange products of the Ningde era will be for all car companies, officially enter the power exchange market, and aim to build the world's largest power exchange service network after two or three years.
Since then, Geely and Lifan have also entered the power exchange track strongly, and jointly established the "power exchange travel brand" - Chongqing Ruilan Automobile positioning a new generation of power exchange travel potential energy, will work together at the B and C ends to try to meet the needs of different markets such as online car-hailing, private cars, taxis, logistics vehicles and so on. It was at the previous "Smart Geely 2025" strategic conference that Geely Automobile Group CEO Gan Jiayue proposed the upcoming new launch. According to the plan, Geely will establish 5,000 substations by 2025, with the goal of becoming the first ecological service provider in China that integrates the research and development of power exchange models, power exchange research and development, power exchange operation and travel services.
The unprecedented support of national policies has allowed more and more enterprises to start developing and investing in power exchange products and operating models, and automakers such as Dongfeng, Changan and SAIC will start to enter the market from 2021. The State Grid, state power investment, Sinopec, GCL energy and others all have more than 4,000 charging and replacement power stations planned during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period.
Giants deeply involved in the replacement market, will undoubtedly be conducive to the promotion of power exchange technology, at present, the number of power exchange models on the market is gradually increasing, to the new energy vehicle promotion and application of recommended model catalog (2021 batch 12) as an example, in the 511 models, there are 41 power exchange models, accounting for 8%.
Although the development of the power exchange model has ushered in an unprecedented positive, but it is difficult to achieve profitability in the early stage is also an undeniable fact, which requires continuous capital investment and more players to join, with the entry of all parties, the power exchange track will become more and more lively, the improvement of policies and standard systems, as well as the continuous maturity of related technologies, will make the power exchange in time, space, resources, efficiency and other dimensions to be further optimized, the power exchange mode will eventually become one of the best ways to replenish energy.