"Station pile" new energy charging pile

With the gradual end of the era of fuel vehicles, new energy vehicles have accelerated to make up for and undertake the lost market of fuel vehicles.

At the same time, like the original "fuel vehicle + gasoline" through more than 100 years to adjust each other's complementary relationship, the equilibrium relationship between new energy vehicles and their complementary - energy charging, has also become a new thorny problem.

However, the difference in the tension between fuel vehicles and gasoline in the early period is that the replenishment of new energy vehicles is accelerated at the same time on the two major tracks of charging and power replacement, and the charging, especially the investment and large-scale development of public charging piles, has rapidly achieved a vehicle-to-pile ratio of about 3:1, and in time, through the common development of the industry and group enterprises, it is expected to truly achieve the balance of the relationship between "new energy vehicles + rechargeable charging" complementary products.

It is worth noting that in order to solve the current unbalanced vehicle-to-pile ratio relationship, a new industry was born - the charging operation industry. The companies and brands that appear in this industry are not only the national team, but also a number of private enterprises with new technologies and innovative business models, such as Star Charging, Special Call, State Grid, Cloud Fast Charging, Yiwei Energy, Hui Charging and so on.

The sustainable development of recharge charging requires collaboration, joint innovation and large-scale investment in various supply chains. The top priority is that, on the one hand, charging operation enterprises need to improve service efficiency, such as charging network construction, charging convenience services, charging efficiency improvement, service model innovation, etc.; on the other hand, the private piles of "car-with-the-car" can be shared by the community to activate a large number of idle charging equipment stocks and intensive social utilization rate of new energy vehicles related to energy replenishment charging.

Source | Manager Media's Manager magazine

■ Text/Zuo Qin

"Production of fuel vehicles will be stopped from March 2022, and in the future, BYD will focus on pure electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles in the automotive segment."

With the announcement on April 3 this year, Bydir, a Chinese automobile company, became not only the first car company in China but also in the world to announce the suspension of production of fuel vehicles.

In fact, BYD's "oil cut" decision has been seen in the past two years: in 2020, BYD passenger car sales were 426,000 units, of which fuel vehicle sales were 237,000 units, accounting for 55%; in 2021, BYD passenger car sales increased by 75.4% to 730,000 units, of which fuel vehicle sales were adjusted to 130,000 units, accounting for 17.8%.

In March this year, BYD's production of new energy vehicles was 106,600 units, an increase of 416.96% year-on-year, and in March, a total of 104,300 passenger cars were sold, an increase of 160.9% year-on-year. Among them, DM models sold 50,600 new vehicles and EV models sold 53,600 units. This means that BYD's fuel vehicles have withdrawn from the company's history, while new energy vehicles have achieved a full proportion.

For BYD's "oil cut- out" decision, public opinion has a variety of views: for example, Interface News quoted the views of the media kanjing Finance and Economics that "there is still some uncertainty about the direct suspension of fuel vehicles"; Mei Xukang, the author of Yiou Network, believes that "BYD 'cuts off oil', Tesla should panic"; Sohu cites the author of its public platform as saying that "the suspension of production with the trend" ...

Summarizing the views of all parties, there are three main categories: BYD's uncertain prospects; BYD's attention will be more focused; AND's adaptation to the times.

Regardless of the views of all parties, from the perspective of SLEPT theory, BYD's strategy of "cutting off oil and supporting electricity" has sufficient basis in the analysis of external environmental factors such as social, legal, economic, political and technological (Technology). Among them, the focus is: politics (relevant national industrial policies) - subsidies for new energy vehicles will be terminated at the end of 2022; technology - battery technology, intelligent technology, Internet technology is becoming more and more mature (as shown in Figure 1).

Up to now, the whole industry chain of new energy vehicles and the supply and demand market have been fully formed, and next, the market will affect the development of the new energy automobile industry. At the same time, a large number of new energy automobile companies will enter the increasingly fierce brand growth and competition stage from the product founding stage, and the innovation derived from battery technology and intelligent technology will bring the market to a higher level.

According to the China Automobile Association, China's new energy vehicle sales reached 3.521 million units in 2021, an increase of about 160% year-on-year. According to this, the Association expects that in 2022, China's new energy vehicle sales can exceed 6 million units, an increase of 70% year-on-year. According to the forecast of Dongguan Securities, by 2025, China's new energy vehicle sales are expected to be close to 10 million units.

However, while the sales of new energy vehicles are growing wildly, there is a conflict with the balanced supply of its "complementary product", the rechargeable charging.

The so-called "complementary products" are economic concepts. That is, two commodities that are often linked together for consumption.

In the automotive field, the most typical is that fuel vehicles and gasoline are "complementary" relationships. In the relationship between the two in the early stage of history, because the fuel vehicle has just replaced the horse-drawn carriage, and the gas base station at that time can not achieve large-scale construction investment, so a mixed scene of the horse-drawn carriage and the fuel vehicle was formed, until the popularization of the gas base station, the fuel vehicle officially entered the national and commercial consumption. The ensuing conflict is that with economic fluctuations and oil supply and demand fluctuations, gasoline prices are uncertain, which has a significant impact on automobile consumption.

History repeats itself. The logical relationship between new energy vehicles and the inability to charge once again replicates the original conflict scene between fuel vehicles and gasoline:

According to the analysis of Dongguan Securities, by the end of 2021, the number of domestic new energy vehicles will be 7.84 million, while the number of charging piles will be 2.617 million units, and the vehicle-to-pile ratio will be 3:1. According to the data model calculation of Tianfeng Securities, the vehicle-to-pile ratio by the end of 2021 is 3.35:1.

Whichever kind of data is more accurate, the disparity in the vehicle-to-pile ratio is an indisputable fact. Moreover, in some densely populated cities, the estimated vehicle-to-pile ratio is even much larger than the results of the two institutions.

Obviously, the shortage of charging piles has seriously affected the development of the new energy automobile industry. It should be noted that the new energy vehicle track is the best curve overtaking route found in China's automobile industry and industry, in order to make this track more smooth, the infrastructure construction and investment of charging piles must match the development speed of the new energy automobile industry.

Charging, or replacing?

With the technical improvement of the mileage capacity of various new energy vehicle manufacturers, users' anxiety about the mileage of new energy vehicles has begun to turn to the anxiety of supplementary charging.

In order to solve the problem of not being able to charge, there are currently two paths: first, charging pile mode (including AC and DC types); second, substation mode. The former is commonly known as charging, and the latter is commonly known as power exchange. So, which of these two models can better solve the anxiety problem of the moment?

Pattern differences. From the perspective of applicable scenarios, the alternating current mode in the charging pile mode is small in size and low in cost, and can be widely applied to public walls, such as special calls, cloud fast charging, star charging and other brand modes; and the direct current mode in the charging pile mode, which is slightly larger in volume, needs to be equipped with a transformer and AC-DC conversion module, and needs to rent a larger site to establish a charging pile position, such as Tesla.

In contrast, the power exchange mode is mainly presented in the form of a substation, requiring a larger site area and higher requirements for the accessed power grid, mainly for ports, logistics and transportation, and operating vehicles, such as the third-party intelligent substation launched by Geely Technology Group, as well as the replacement power station of independent car companies Weilai Automobile, Nezha Automobile, Xiaopeng Automobile, etc.

Market size. According to the statistics of China Charging Pile Network, as shown in Figure 2, by the end of 2021, the total number of charging piles will be about 2.44 million, while there are only 1192 replacement power stations. Obviously, the development scale of charging piles is much faster than that of replacement power stations. In addition, according to the "Energy-saving and New Energy Vehicle Technology Roadmap 2.0", charging piles will achieve 13.8 million units by 2025, while the demand for substations in the same period will exceed 28,000. This means that in the next four years, charging piles must invest 2.84 million units into the market every year, and the replacement power station must invest up to 6702 units in the market every year to match the demand for new energy vehicle recharge charging, otherwise the contradiction between supply and demand will still be entangled.

User selection. According to the user attribute division, users are mainly divided into two types, one is a civilian user, and the other is a commercial user. In the case of other parameters are relatively fixed, the two types of car owners will have different considerations when choosing to charge or change the power.

In addition to the special power exchange service of Weilai and BAIC, most of the civilian owners of new energy passenger cars are more willing to choose the charging method, mainly due to concerns about the quality, safety and service life of their batteries through the replacement of third-party power stations.

Operating vehicles, such as taxis, logistics vehicles, time-sharing leasing, etc., because such vehicles are mostly customized models, the brand is more concentrated, the battery specifications are relatively consistent, and the degree of standardization is high, so it is conducive to the advantages of the power exchange mode, and some vehicle driving routes are relatively fixed, which can optimize the location layout of the power exchange facilities, reduce the investment burden of power exchange facilities and improve the utilization rate, and easily form a sustainable development business model.

Operational value. At present, the ownership of new energy vehicles is still relatively low, and the public charging and replacement operation model has not yet entered a stable profit stage, but with the further growth of the production and sales scale of new energy vehicles and the improvement of charging and replacing services, the profit model is expected to gradually mature.

In terms of charging mode, according to the analysis and calculation of CITIC Securities, the theoretical operation limit of a single station per day is 24 hours, assuming that a single station is based on 20 charging stations, the average power of a single pile is 60kW, the charging power charge is 1.3 yuan (including 0.5 yuan / kWh charging service fee and 0.8 yuan / kWh charging electricity fee), and the charging station construction investment is depreciated by 10 years. In the calculation, it is assumed that the average investment per unit power of the charging station is 1.5 yuan / W, of which the investment in charging equipment accounts for about 60%.

The time utilization rate of the break-even point of the charging station is about 8.3%, that is, 2 hours a day are in the standard working state for 24 hours, and the profitability increases with the improvement of the utilization level. and profitability increases as utilization levels increase. If the utilization rate of a single-day effective working time reaches 15%, the corresponding service time is up to 3.6 hours (72 100kWh batteries with charge 30% 80% SOC), and the net profit rate of a single station is about 11%.

Therefore, the utilization rate of the charging industry is still low, and it is still in the industry at this stage. However, with the impact of the epidemic expected to gradually decrease, and benefit from the accelerated growth of new energy vehicle ownership, as well as the upgrading of charging equipment, it is expected that the utilization level of public charging piles is expected to continue the steady growth trend of the previous period.

In terms of power exchange mode, according to the survey of CITIC Securities, the average daily service vehicle of passenger car replacement at this stage is more than 30 40 vehicles per station, and the corresponding utilization rate is about 10% 15%, which is still a gap compared with the break-even point. In terms of commercial vehicle demand, because it has clearly corresponded to a specific demand group in advance, and pays more attention to the efficiency of energy replenishment, the power exchange model has a stronger comprehensive cost advantage, and the demand and profit base are more supportive, so it has stronger replicability and promotion.

So, back to the origin of the problem again, since charging and changing power have their own strengths, is charging first, or replacing electricity first?

In addition to the demand pull mentioned earlier, there are also positives in terms of policy promotion. Last year alone, there were at least 9 policy-related charging and replacing industries, so from the perspective of policy promotion, there is no favoritism.

However, from the perspective of capital attitude, the heat of investing in charging piles is far greater than the power exchange mode. In 2016, the number of charging pile-related enterprises registered in the mainland was only 7,781; in 2017, it exceeded 10,000; in 2020, it exceeded 20,000, reaching 24,049; and in 2021, the number of charging pile-related enterprises registered exceeded 50,000, reaching 52,634 (see Figure 3 for details).

Air outlet, charging pile

Strictly speaking, charging piles are a structural industry chain industry that includes upstream equipment manufacturers, midstream charging operators, and downstream overall solution providers (see Figure 4 for details).

Among them, the upstream includes enterprises that produce main materials and charging equipment such as shells, bases, cables and charging equipment for charging piles and charging stations; in the middle reaches, it is responsible for the construction and operator of charging piles and charging stations; and downstream is enterprises that provide charging pile location services and appointment payment functions or provide charging pile operation management platforms and solutions.

In this industrial chain, the core links are in the upstream and midstream - the internal competition situation is different.

In the upstream chain, due to the low technical threshold for the production of charging equipment, the degree of product homogenization is high, and the number of related companies in the field of domestic charging pile equipment production is currently about 300. Major enterprises such as Guodian NARI, Crestec, Shenghong Shares, Kelu Electronics, Xu Ji Electric, Heshun Electric, Siyuan Electric, Zhongheng Electric, Senyuan Electric, Juhua Technology and so on.

Due to the low production threshold of charging equipment and the large number of suppliers, according to the analysis of the five-force model competition theory, it means that the upstream chain enterprises cannot take a strong "bargaining" behavior against the midstream chain customers who hold the power of the terminal market.

Look at the midstream chain. The identity of the midstream chain enterprise is mainly a charging operator, responsible for operating large charging stations or providing charging pile charging services.

Midstream chain enterprises are divided into two camps, one is the private pile mode equipped with the car, and the other is the public charging pile mode. The former, mainly vehicle companies with the main purpose of promoting new energy vehicles, such as Tesla, Weilai, SAIC, BYD, Xiaopeng and so on. The cost of private piles, mainly bundled with the sales of automobile products, and then with the encouragement policy of new energy vehicle charging piles in relevant countries, free installation is carried out in the site jointly provided by car owners and properties, but because "one car and one match" has a strong fixed and private assetization characteristics, in particular, there are still many controversies and discussions in the private charging pile in the sharing mode, at present, the public utility of private piles equipped with cars is currently far less than 5%. Therefore, the focus of the real midstream chain operation is actually the public charging pile, which accounts for up to 95%.

As of January this year, there are 13 public charging piles operated by charging operation enterprises nationwide with more than 10,000 units, namely: Star Charging, Special Call, State Grid, Cloud Fast Charging, China Southern Power Grid, Yiwei Energy, Hui Charging, Shenzhen Vehicle Power Grid, SAIC Anyue, China Putian, Wanma Aichong, Wancheng Wanchong, Hengtong Dingchong (see Figure 5 for details). These 13 operators account for 93% of the total, and the remaining operators account for only 7% of the total.

Among the 13 companies, the CR4 (concentration ratio; the top four share concentration indicators) of the head reached 74.4%, followed by star charging operations of 266,000 units, accounting for 22.6; special call operation of 262,000 units, accounting for 22.2%; State Grid operation of 196,000 units, accounting for 16.6%; cloud fast charging operation of 152,000 units, accounting for 12.9%.

Therefore, the monopoly competition pattern of the midstream chain industry in the field of public charging piles has been established. Among them, the star charging and special caller are not only ahead of all opponents, but also between each other, the competition for the first position of the head is also very clear.

From the perspective of electric vehicle charging pile product layout, the DC pile product layout of Star Charging is more diversified, while the special call is more in the field of AC pile product layout, and the two operators' electric vehicle charging pile product layout is more comprehensive, and their respective product layouts in the DC or AC field are more abundant.

From the perspective of the relevant qualifications of the electric vehicle charging pile business, at present, the two companies have participated in a number of national projects, and the special call "safe and controllable, energy interconnection, open and interoperable intelligent charging network research and application demonstration" project was successfully accepted in 2020. Star Charging also participated in the drafting of all domestic charging standards, and participated in the drafting of IEC international standards as a Representative of the Chinese side, and is one of the two high-power charging lead units designated by the National Standards Committee.

According to the perspective of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, the business layout and development path of Star Technology and Telai in the field of electric vehicle charging piles have their own characteristics, but in view of the advantages in terms of business product types, overseas market expansion, business performance and other aspects, at present, among the leading electric vehicle charging piles in China, Star Technology is slightly better.

As an industry leader, the development model of Star Technology and Special Caller is not only related to the development of its own enterprises, but also affects the overall growth environment of the public charging pile industry.

Since the operation of Star Technology and Telai directly faces the public user market, no matter how the two companies face peer competition, suppliers, potential competitors or alternative competition from the future introduction of the sharing model with private piles with cars, user experience and user relationship are the niches on which the two companies depend for survival and development.

In order to objectively reflect the attitude of public users to Star Technology and Special Call, take the public consumer service platform - Black Cat Complaint Platform dimension to look at the situation:

Star Technology has a total of 29 complaints, of which 7 have been replied to and completed. These complaints mainly focus on the quality of the charging gun, the excessive electricity charges compared to competitors, the free suspension of the charging of the bound license plate, but the actual charging, the induced recharge card, the arrears of invoices, the failure of the electric pile, and the long-term maintenance.

Looking at the special call, the total number of complaints is 35, but the response and completion are zero. The complaints against the special call are mainly that the APP charging power is different from the actual situation, applying for a refund, no refund, overlord clause, arbitrary charging, forced consumption, price problem, coupon problem, uncharged, but directly deducted and so on.

Similar situations of user complaints about Star Technology and Telai are actually common in the industry, but as the two companies that occupy the largest market share, it is necessary to improve and optimize the existing operational quality as a whole.

Although the public charging pile industry has realized the monopoly competition pattern in advance, from the demand side, the full coverage of the domestic market by various enterprises also needs long-term investment, and while the scale development, it is still necessary to take into account the user's feelings synchronously, so as to consolidate the healthy foundation for the sustainable development of the industry.