Under the background of the increasingly serious global energy crisis and environmental crisis, new energy vehicles have become a major trend in the development of the global automotive industry. At the current stage of the mainland's economic development, the low-carbon economy has become the main direction of the mainland's future development. New energy vehicles have the advantages of energy saving, emission reduction, environmental protection and other aspects, and also represent the development direction of the world's automobile industry.
At present, the mainland is methodically implementing the formulation of the delisting plan for fuel vehicles, and it has become inevitable that new energy vehicles will replace fuel vehicles.
In the State Council, the "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)" was officially released. This blockbuster document has aroused great concern in the field of gas stations, and even caused uneasiness and even panic among practitioners, in the face of the challenges and impacts of new energy vehicles, how should gas stations exist? The "Planning" proposes that by 2025, the sales volume of new energy vehicles and new vehicles will reach about 20% of the total sales of new automobiles. By 2035, pure electric vehicles will become the mainstream of newly sold vehicles, and public domain vehicles will be fully electrified.
Under the vigorous promotion of charging piles, the new energy automobile industry has also ushered in considerable sales in recent months, and most mainstream automobile OEMs have basically announced the suspension time promotion table of their own brand fuel vehicles, which indicates the development direction of future automobiles, fuel vehicles will gradually withdraw from the historical stage, and new energy vehicles using electric drive technology will become the mainstream.
Because the development of new energy vehicles has obvious demand, that is, for the construction of charging stations, the number of fuel vehicles on the mainland is huge, and it is still impossible to shake the mainstream status of traditional gas stations in a short period of time, since "can't fight, join him", many gas stations have made plans for the future and integrated charging piles into it.
In the face of challenges, gas stations must make changes, not only to actively plan, upgrade and transform the existing gas station sites and facilities, but also to improve the efficiency of the use of public service land and space, especially in the city where there is little land, to do a good job in the convenient service of charging and safe charging of new energy vehicles at any time, not only to grasp the operation and management of the main business (that is, the refined oil business), but also to appropriately expand the new energy business according to the situation. From product-oriented to service-oriented, it can also create a diversified integrated energy service station for living expenses, leisure, energy supply functions, etc.
A National Day holiday shattered the illusion of "charging pile freedom" of new energy vehicle owners. Due to the surge in charging demand in the high-speed service area, there are new energy vehicle owners waiting in line for charging, "charging for one hour, queuing for four hours".
Why are charging piles insufficient?
According to the data released by the China Charging Alliance, at the end of 2020, the number of new energy vehicles and charging piles in China was 4.92 million and 1.681 million units, respectively, and the vehicle-to-pile ratio was about 2.9:1. With the outbreak of new energy vehicle sales, as of June this year, the number of new energy vehicles was 6.03 million units, an increase of 22.6%, and the number of charging piles nationwide was 1.947 million units in the same period, an increase of only 15.8%, and the vehicle-to-pile ratio fell to 3.1:1.
Not only that, 1.024 million of the 1.947 million charging piles are private charging piles, installed in the owner's community, mainly for self-use at night, and only 923,000 public charging piles that provide charging services to the outside world. Based on the public charging pile, the vehicle-to-pile ratio rose from 6.1:1 at the end of last year to 6.5:1, and the average public pile corresponds to 6-7 vehicles.
Charging piles are not evenly distributed across the country. Taking the largest charging pile operator in China as an example, its charging pile distribution is generally more in the east and less in the central and western regions. Statistics from the China Charging Alliance in June this year show that the number of public charging piles built in the top 10 provinces and cities such as Guangdong, Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu and Zhejiang reached 667,000 units, accounting for 72% of the total number of public charging piles in the country, of which the charging piles in the top 5 provinces and cities accounted for more than half.
In addition to the geographical imbalance, the distribution of charging piles in the scene is also uneven. A large number of charging piles are set up in urban areas, and the current number of highway charging piles is 10,836, accounting for less than 1.2% of the total number of public charging piles in the country. This is the current charging dilemma of new energy vehicles: you can go home, you can't go out of the city, you can't go to the countryside.
At present, one of the primary problems facing the development of the charging pile industry is "difficult to make a profit", if it is not profitable, the company has no incentive to build more charging piles. This problem has always been more prominent, and now there is a certain degree of relief.
In fact, the charging pile itself has a relatively low equipment cost, but the comprehensive cost related to the charging pile is relatively high. Because in addition to charging pile equipment, building piles requires a site and the necessary investment, and also requires a lot of construction costs. In the process of operation, there will be problems such as electric vehicles not necessarily charging, parking spaces occupied by fuel vehicles and so on. So the industry profitability is not too good.
Charging piles in non-core areas and high-speed service areas of the city are not used frequently in ordinary times, and it is not surprising that there are problems with operating efficiency, and may even be in a state of long-term loss.
For the next direction of the charging pile industry, it may develop in the direction of supercharge piles, such as charging 5 to 10 minutes can travel 200 kilometers, so that it can better meet the use of highway scenarios. If such charging piles are arranged on the highway in the future, the charging needs of centralized travel on holidays will be better met, and the problem of similar "queuing charging" will be easier to solve.
In addition, "power exchange" is also a supplement to "charging", so a certain number of power stations are also needed on the highway. These are the explorations being carried out by industry companies, such as Weilai, which is actively laying out the replacement power station.