The new energy supplement pattern of "charging as the mainstay and power replacement as the supplement" has been formed with the rapid development of new energy in China in recent years. Over the years, compared with the infrastructure of charging piles, the construction speed of substations has been very slow, and there are very few operators, car companies, and third parties who are really willing to participate in it. In addition to Weilai, which has established 900 substations, almost only two enterprises, Aodong and Hangzhou Botan, have completed the establishment of 100 substations.
"Guangzhou will take the lead in building itself into the world's first supercharge capital", at the end of April, with the completion of Aian's first super charging and replacement center in Guangzhou, in the monthly sales of its own models have repeatedly exceeded 10,000 stalls, GAC began to establish its own power exchange system, which marks another car company officially entering the power exchange market in 2022.
GAC Aeon is not the only new player to enter the power exchange market this year, in the short four months of 2022, including Ningde times, Geely, Ruilan, FAW, SAIC, Dongfeng, Nezha and other well-known enterprises have successively thrown themselves into the power exchange market, and the "big brother" of power exchange, Weilai, recently announced that it will continue to increase the number of power exchanges, which makes the original long-dormant and has been sung down The power exchange industry seems to have a new life in 2022. Why has the power change become everyone's fragrant feast?
Change the battery to "King"
Changing the battery to "king" is not an empty phrase. The power exchange mode has too many advantages over other energy replenishment methods, including high energy replenishment efficiency, greatly shortening the energy replenishment time, etc., in fact, the benefits of power exchange are far more than this.
For the national power, the continuous unified replenishment of the power station is easy to achieve peak shaving and valley filling, reducing the pressure on the power grid; for the car company, the separation of vehicle and electricity is more conducive to the unified management of the battery state of the car enterprise, improve the safety of the battery, and ensure the reputation; for consumers, the substation can not only facilitate the replenishment, because the battery is no longer calculated in the price of the car, but also conducive to the stability of the price of new cars and the price of second-hand cars.
In October 2021, the General Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Launching the Pilot Work on the Application of The New Energy Vehicle Power Exchange Model", and 11 cities were included in the pilot, and more than 1,000 substations are expected to be built.
In January 2022, the National Development and Reform Commission and seven other departments jointly issued the Implementation Plan for Promoting Green Consumption, which clearly proposed to strengthen the construction of supporting infrastructure such as power exchange, new energy storage, and hydrogenation.
In March 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "2022 Automotive Standardization Work Points", which proposed to promote the formulation of standards for pure electric vehicles such as on-board power exchange systems, power exchange universal platforms, and power exchange battery packs. These all convey that the country believes that the replacement of new energy is the weak link in the new energy industry after understanding the current domestic new energy charging and replacing construction.
In fact, as early as 2011, the State Grid determined the basic commercial operation mode of electric vehicles as follows: power exchange as the mainstay, plug-in charging as a supplement, centralized charging, and unified distribution. However, the difficulty of substation laying is far greater than the construction of charging piles, which has also led to the change from "mainly replacing electricity" to "replacing electricity as a supplement".
Switching electricity to make a profit is a mathematical problem
Since the replacement of electricity is "king", why has the change of electricity gone so slowly over the years. Many people will say that this is because the power exchange is a heavy asset model, construction investment is large, land is difficult to get, in the view of the travel bureau, the business model of power exchange has not been able to go through until now, the biggest key is still not to find the corresponding profit point or break-even point.
In fact, the power exchange industry is different from other industries, players who dare to step into this industry are often from the leaders of various related industries, the funds they hold in their hands are unimaginable to ordinary people, how much asset investment in the early stage is not something they care about, they almost all have sufficient "ammunition" and psychological preparation for continuous combat, but what they really care about is when the power station can be profitable?
Bloomberg predicts that by 2040, the proportion of new energy vehicle power consumption in the total electricity consumption of the whole society in the mainland will climb from 1.3% in 2020 to 8%, when the size of the mainland power exchange market will exceed 500 billion yuan.
The wind outlet is coming, there must be "fish" in the pool of electricity replacement, but until now, including the largest Weilai, there is still no company that has figured out how to catch "fish" and realize the interconnection of business models, and everyone is "investing money to do stupid things", hoping that industry changes can promote the success of power exchange.
The profitability of changing electricity is a mathematical problem to put it bluntly. Shen Fei, vice president of Weilai, estimated that 50 orders were accepted every day, which is the break-even point of a single replacement power station in Weilai, "calculated by 6 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity, an average of 50 kilowatt-hours of electricity per unit, 50 singles a day of electricity replacement, and an annual income of 500,000 or 600,000 yuan, which can basically cover the site rent and equipment depreciation."
If according to the average five days of a car to change electricity, a substation to at least radiate to 250 cars, in order to achieve revenue balance, and then consider that in addition to the replacement of electricity users will also use additional means of charging and other means of replenishment, take Weilai's 900 replacement power stations for example, roughly estimated that Weilai has at least 300,000 loyal owners a year to change the power, but now Weilai's annual sales are less than 100,000, and it is natural to want to achieve profitability.
Power exchange ushered in a new era
As calculated above, in order to be profitable, a substation must serve more users, but no one can reach the equilibrium point now. As a result, all companies engaged in power exchange have set their sights on the "unified battery specifications" that are constantly mentioned in the documents, because as long as the battery specifications of all new energy vehicles can be unified, everyone's replacement power station can usher in more brand customers and solve the problem of some power station replacement.
Li Shufu once mentioned that if the power exchange model wants to be profitable, unified battery specifications are a prerequisite. "At present, it is necessary to promote the standardization of the software and hardware protocol of the power exchange interface, promote the standardization of the battery pack, so that the battery pack can really be interchanged between different car companies, different power stations, and different users, and improve the efficiency of resource utilization" "Accelerating the standardization and generalization of the power exchange mode is the prerequisite for achieving profitability."
This set of statements is also the consensus of many people, but in today's new energy market with a hundred flowers, it is almost a fool's dream to achieve it. Weilai has proposed to let companies participate in their own power replacement plans as early as a few years ago, but this has not attracted everyone's attention, and no car company has relevant intentions. After all, once the standard of Weilai is used, it means that important designs such as batteries and chassis will be limited and affected by Weilai in the future, and the R& D dominance will be surrendered, and no one is willing to fall into such a passive situation.
How can a substation quickly radiate 250 vehicles? After the C-side encounters many restrictions, a better unified and more standardized B-side becomes the optimal solution. According to data from the China Charging Alliance, as of March 2022, the number of substations nationwide reached 1451, an increase of 136.7% year-on-year, of which 40% of the substations are mainly used by taxis and other operating vehicles, and this data will become larger and larger as operating vehicles are gradually updated.
Ningde era power exchange system EVOGO first supply model is FAW Besturn NAT under FAW Besturn, and most of this car will be invested in the online car market; Geely and Lifan composed of Ruilan power exchange is to win the new cooperation of Cao Cao travel in one fell swoop, the replacement power station is mainly aimed at the online car market; and GAC Aean itself has a lot of stock in the online car market, in a sense, Aeon is a new energy brand that relies on the amount of online car-
It is the B-end market for the entire industry to support, which makes companies dare to participate in the power exchange industry in 2022, stable users bring the possibility of profitability, who can take the lead, who has the possibility of becoming an industry giant.
The two-way rush of policy and market, the gradual clarification of business models, and the large-scale addition of the B-end market have made the power exchange from a pool of stagnant water to vitality. In any case, the popularity of power exchange will only bring indescribable benefits to the new energy industry, and now you and I just need to wait for development, because power exchange has entered the right path.