Text | Financial Street Old Lee
It is only a matter of time before car companies become energy companies.
Old Li has always mentioned that Tesla's high valuation code is car companies, data companies and energy companies, and there are many domestic car companies that lay out big data through automatic driving, but there are not many companies that lay out energy, and at present, only BYD and Weilai Automobile are seen.
When it comes to energy layout, everyone immediately thinks of charging and replacing, as the terminal of the energy industry chain, charging and replacing is the most important part of the energy layout, and many enterprises at home and abroad have laid out charging and replacing. Recently, SAIC Motor established an energy company, Shanghai Jieneng Yidian Energy Technology Co., Ltd., whose business scope includes the sale of new energy vehicle replacement facilities and the operation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, which is wholly owned by SAIC Motor.
Since the birth of new energy vehicles, from slow charging to less charging piles, and then to the industry to encourage power exchange, charging and replacing has always been a topic that everyone can't avoid, Lao Li today from the user and industry and capital perspective to chat with you, car companies to carry out charging pile services behind what strategic layout? Where is the end result of the charging and replacing network of car companies?
Who is doing user service with heart?
Judging from the public disclosure information, the operating positioning of the energy company established by SAIC Motor is very clear - the manufacturer and operator of charging and replacing infrastructure, which means that SAIC Motor should lay out the charging and replacing business from the perspective of the group. When it comes to the layout of energy companies, Lao Li believes that the strategic direction of enterprises is divided into three categories:
The first category is the Ningde era and Fordy battery,these two companies are essentially battery companies. With the power battery as the core, the upstream and downstream layout, the upstream photovoltaic and downstream energy storage and the more downstream power exchange business of the Ningde era layout; Fordy battery not only lays out the energy storage battery, but also directly associates with BYD passenger cars in the downstream, linking the C-end energy network.
The second category is dominated by Tesla and NIO, which are essentially car companies. Tesla undoubtedly laid out energy storage batteries, power batteries and automobile business; Weilai Automobile laid out a variety of energy replenishment methods such as slow charging, fast charging, power exchange, mobile charging, etc. Although there was no layout battery business, Weilai built a power battery asset company through Weineng and let the "battery" turn up.
The third category is mainly based on Car companies such as Xiaopeng Automobile and Volkswagen. These enterprises are essentially through the layout of charging pile business to carry out user services, in the short term there is no idea of layout of the energy sector. As I just saw, the core business of energy companies is "light storage and charging inspection", that is, photovoltaic power generation, battery storage, charging and replacing services and vehicle battery detection. In fact, the energy layout industrial chain of "light storage and charging inspection" is very long, and car companies must invest higher costs in carrying out layout.
Old Li communicates with many corporate strategic departments, the current third type of car companies can also be subdivided into two categories, one is only want to layout the charging and replacing service users of the enterprise, one is short-term service users- mainly, long-term layout of energy enterprises, Old Li believes that SAIC Group belongs to the latter.
Seeing this, many friends will understand why all car companies are now "posting money" to subsidize users. If you only do charging and replacing infrastructure manufacturing, it must be a profitable business, but car companies to improve the user energy experience, must carry out charging and replacing operations, and so far, charging and replacing operations are essentially a car company has to do, but short-term and not profitable business.
Gas stations, charging piles or future hydrogen refueling stations, are the same business model, can use a simple "cost and profit" model for business calculations: although the current ownership of new energy vehicles has exceeded 10 million, but so far, in addition to some of the high utilization rate of charging and replacing power stations in profit, new energy vehicle charging and replacement operations still have not reached the breakeven point, is still a non-profitable business, if there is a pile size of more than 10,000 units of enterprises to say profit, it must be lying.
Enterprises invest in the construction of charging and replacing network is also real money and silver, old Li to refer to a data: at present, a 150kW fast charging pile complete construction costs in about 100,000-150,000, including charging pile purchase costs, site costs, power grid capacity increase fees, etc., the investment is very large, if you add daily operating costs, a single fast charging pile is used for 10 hours a day, it takes 2-3 years to recover the cost.
The current problem is that the utilization rate of the charging and replacing network is too low, taking the data of Shanghai EV Data as an example, in recent years, the average utilization rate of public piles in Shanghai except for public transport is basically between 1% and 3%, but the charging utilization rate generally needs to be higher than 5% to have the opportunity to achieve breakeven, so the current market investors in addition to the State Grid, special call and star charging, no enterprise can afford heavy asset investment and early losses.
Although many companies announced that they have operated their own fast charging pile networks, but most of these networks are in the form of "outsourcing OEM", car companies and charging pile companies such as star charging cooperation, the charging pile operators to replace the OEM into the charging pile of the car company, the current charging and replacement layout density of the car company is not high, it is difficult to fundamentally change the dilemma of charging difficulties.
The industrial layout behind "light storage and inspection"
User service is essentially following the industry, and the layout of charging piles by car companies in addition to user services is to consider the energy layout at the root. As we all know, the charging and replacing network is the most important part of the future "optical storage and charging inspection" large energy system, and the charging and replacing system is one of the largest terminals of the energy industry chain.
In the "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)", it is mentioned that "new energy vehicles integrate new energy, new materials and the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence and other transformative technologies to promote the transformation of automobiles from simple means of transportation to mobile intelligent terminals, energy storage units and digital spaces." ”
In the national planning, the charging and replacing network is the most important transit point of the combination of automobiles and energy, in the short term, the public charging and replacing network compared with private piles is only the advantage of charging speed, there is no cost advantage, but in the long run, with the "light storage" to drive energy change, public charging and replacing will also have unique advantages.
Domestic is mainly thermal power, energy is not zero emissions, so after the "30 · 60 double carbon target" proposed, the renewable energy represented by thermal power will gradually be replaced by renewable energy represented by photovoltaic wind power, wind power and solar power generation and other new energy leapfrog development, comprehensively subvert the traditional energy, to achieve photovoltaic + energy storage comprehensive cost is lower than thermal power, which is the most basic goal of domestic energy development in the next decade, but also the core competitiveness of energy companies such as car companies.
When the public charging and replacing network achieves low cost, the company with the integrated layout of "light storage, charging and inspection" will replace the power grid company and the oil company and become the real "energy manufacturer" and "energy operator". As the largest distributed application scenario in the downstream, car companies have broad market prospects, and at that time, car companies will become "energy companies" in the true sense.
For more than a decade, the cost of photovoltaic power generation has been declining, and it is faster than the cost of power batteries, so "photovoltaic + energy storage" has become a mainstream energy source not because it is the cleanest, but because it is the cheapest.
At present, the system cost of photovoltaics has dropped to 3 yuan / W, remote imagination in 2007 the system cost reached 60 yuan / W, more than ten years, the cost fell to only the original 5%; lithium iron phosphate energy storage system dropped to 1.5 yuan / Wh, the number of charge and discharge can reach 5000 times.
Assuming that the cost of the photovoltaic system in 2025 is 2.2 yuan / W, amortized to 25 years of depreciation plus financial cost, 1500 hours / year of power generation hours, its electricity cost is only 0.1 yuan;
The cost of the energy storage system is 1 yuan / Wh, the number of charging and discharging times is 10,000 times, according to 15 years of depreciation, the cost of electricity storage is 0.1 yuan, and the financial cost is only 0.13 yuan / kWh;
Therefore, the power generation cost of photovoltaic + energy storage system is only 0.23 yuan / kWh, and the cost is expected to drop to 0.15 yuan / kWh in 2030, which is far lower than the current cost of thermal power of 0.5-1 yuan / kWh, sweeping all fossil energy.
The future imagination of the charging and replacing system is "light storage and charging inspection", the charging and replacing operator is the key node under the vehicle-pile-network system, and the car company can serve as the transit node of smart energy, and in the future process of charging and replacing storage integration, it can develop multi-scenario applications, and can master the car-pile big data, and the interactive business model of the car network will bring new business prospects.
Frankly speaking, this business is essentially in its infancy, but the future is "the spark of stars, can burn the plains", which is an industrial layout problem: in the past, car companies only produced cars, who can lay out power batteries, who will hold the bull's ear, BYD and Great Wall Motors took the lead in doing it; the charging and replacing network is the same, who can control the charging and replacing network, who can be unique in the era after the "light storage" reform, Tesla and Weilai took the lead in layout.
This is the mystery of industrial investment, and its profit point is not now but in the future, not in the industry but in capital.
The profit code of the capital market
Recently, many industry experts have said that the hard work of building cars in the first quarter, it is not as good as Changan to transfer Avita, through the incubation of the Avita project, Changan easily increased the net profit of more than 2 billion yuan in the first quarter, which is the power of investment, to say that the automotive industry investment is the best, it is Tesla and BYD.
Many car companies are in the past three years to react, the development of the new energy automobile industry to today, the research and development stage can invest in the industrial chain is basically very saturated, now to do investment, can only invest in the use of the industrial chain, the use of the stage or after the market potential is greater, but the difficulty of finding the target is greater. The charging and replacing network is one of the few areas where car companies can "kill two birds with one stone", one is that they can market models in the name of serving users, and the other is that they can carry out industrial layout.
Since last year's special call financing, the primary and secondary markets have been paying attention to the field of charging and replacing, because the development situation of head charging and replacing operators is getting better and better, mainly for three reasons:
First, the demand for users is increasing. Needless to say.
Second, leading operators have realized the problem of refined operation. Head operators (star charging, special call) are becoming more and more stable in development, paying more attention to assets such as refined operations and traffic data value, and profitability is getting better.
Third, the story of "light storage and charging" is getting smoother and smoother, especially driven by Tesla, domestic car companies have laid out charging and replacing networks, and the business model creation of head car companies will drive the business reform of charging pile operators. Before Lao Li mentioned that car companies have mastered a large amount of charging data and service data through the vehicle's BMS terminal and charging and replacing terminal, and then transform digital energy services, the charging and replacing plate of car companies must be the law valuation of "energy manufacturers" + "energy operators" in the future.
Despite the optimistic outlook, the charging and swapping network led by car companies will also face many challenges:
On the one hand, the most scarce part of the charging and replacing network layout is "land resources". A city can lay out a limited area of charging and replacing the network, and the total market volume of a single region also has an upper limit, and the competition of car companies is bound to be your life and death;
On the other hand, due to the heavy asset investment, car companies must have a strong user support system. Only by improving the quality and frequency of user services in their own networks can car companies survive the competition with third-party charging and replacing operators, but the problem is that third-party companies have multi-brand service capabilities and inherent cost-sharing advantages.
From a long-term point of view, Lao Li believes that the spin-off and listing of the charging and replacing operation sector of car companies is the best end. At present, charging pile operators are seeking a good time to go public, perhaps in the next 2-3 years, although charging operators have been losing money in their financial reports, the primary market and the secondary market have a high enthusiasm for the new energy vehicle aftermarket sector.
At present, the private head of the charging operator has formed a "double male" (special call + star charging) pattern, the operator at the bottom of the ranking is not a high-quality target, and so after the "double male" listing, the charging and replacing network incubated by car companies will become a hot target in the capital market, and the financing listing is only a matter of time.