Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology publicly solicited opinions on the recommended national standard "Electric Vehicle Conduction Charging Connection Device Part 3: DC Charging Interface", compared with the previous version of the national standard, the new national standard has some obvious changes, these changes may have a huge impact on the electric vehicle charging market.
The new national standard for the rated voltage of no more than 1500V DC charging interface, the rated current increased by 10A, 16A, 25A, 32A and 50A, and 16A and 32A is the current charging current rating of AC slow charging pile, that is to say, the DC charging interface power in the new national standard has been compatible with the previous AC charging interface power.
At the same time, it also increases the high-power DC charging requirements of 300A, 400A, 500A, 600A and 800A, and with the rollout of hardware in the future, the charging time can be further shortened and the charging efficiency of the overall social surface can be improved.
At present, some car companies have begun to promote their high-power fast charging technology, GAC Aeon has built the world's highest 900V high-voltage platform and 6C magnification supercharge capacity, as well as the world's largest charging power of 480kW supercharging pile, and plans to build 1000 supercharging piles by 2025.
Although high-power fast charging is a trend, for most new energy car owners, more often they will still choose household piles to charge, and the new national standard has a trend to make the current AC pile into a DC pile.
First look at the actual situation of the current electric vehicle, most electric vehicles have 2 charging ports, one is a fast charging port, also called a DC charging port, and one is a slow charging port, also called an AC charging port.
The grid outputs alternating current, but the batteries of electric vehicles can only accept direct current. Fast charging piles will directly convert ALTERNating current into DC power input to the battery on the electric vehicle, and slow charging piles require the on-board charger (OBC) on the electric vehicle to convert AC power to DIRECT Current and store it on the battery.
For charging piles, when the charging power of DC piles has been fully backward compatible with AC piles, and even if it is slow charging, DC can also meet higher power than AC, especially under the current conditions of higher and higher battery capacity, AC slow charging is bound to be eliminated.
Before the announcement of the new national standard, in 2019, more than 20 enterprises such as Weilai, Xiaopeng, BAIC, Geely, Volkswagen, audi and so on began to participate in the compilation of industry standards for DC piles below 20KW.
And at the end of 2021, the National Energy Administration approved the industry standard "Technical Conditions and Installation Requirements for Non-vehicle Chargers of 20kW and Below", which has been officially implemented since March 22 this year.
From the perspective of car companies, it is hoped to eliminate AC piles, because the existence of AC piles requires vehicles to be equipped with AC charging interfaces and OPCS, which undoubtedly increase the cost of vehicle manufacturing.
According to the data, the car company cancels the OPC and the AC charging pile donated by the supporting gift, and modifies the 7KW DC charging pile, which can save 1000-2000 yuan of BOM cost per vehicle, reduce the scale of waste at the same time, but also reduce the safety hazards and release the vehicle space.
Only retaining DC imports is more friendly to car companies, but it will increase the manufacturing cost of charging piles, which is equivalent to completely handing over the operation of AC/DC to the charging pile, the current price of 20kW DC household charging piles is about 3700 yuan, and the price of 7kW AC household charging piles generally does not exceed 2000 yuan.
Although the new national standard has not yet been officially released, in the process of formulating the standard, car companies and charging pile companies must have been deeply involved, and the current result may be a reflection of the game between all parties.
In fact, some car companies have shown their abandonment of communication and slow charging with practical actions. The new models of Weilai and Xiaopeng have upgraded the household charging pile to a DC interface, and the whole vehicle only retains DC as the only interface.