Source of head image: NIO
"I came with a wish, but also with resources, and if NIO can fulfill my wish, I am willing to provide resources as much as possible, after all, it is a win-win thing." At a NIO center in Beijing, Li Kei (pseudonym), who came to participate in the "Thousand Stations Project丨Beijing Users Face to Face" activity, chatted with Cheshi Story.
As an old NIO user, his wish is that NIO can build a new exchange station in a certain area, so that he does not have to grab the battery with others every time; His resource is to get to know local properties.
"I have all the addresses, I will fill in the 'power exchange wishlist' function of the NIO App after it is online, and I also want to talk to the staff of NIO about this today." Li Kei said. In fact, there are many users who participate in the event with the same purpose as him, and when he learned of everyone's wishes and resources, Chen Tianyang, general manager of NIO Beijing Regional Company, was very excited, and immediately said that there would be employees responsible for following up on the matter: "Great, I hope that all car owners and friends can provide the resources in their hands, you are responsible for matchmaking, and we are responsible for negotiation." ”
On February 21, Li Bin, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, issued a document saying that he would revise the construction target of substation substations, raising the previously proposed target of adding 400 new stations in 2023 to 1,000, of which about 400 will be built in highway service areas or high-speed ports, and about 600 will be deployed in urban areas, focusing on the layout of third- and fourth-tier cities and counties with a certain user base and no substations.
Raising the 400 to 1,000 may seem like a radical goal, but after inviting users to the "chariot", NIO is becoming more and more confident about it. In the current system of the enterprise, the power exchange service is an excellent means to attract users to buy cars, improve user service satisfaction, and enhance user stickiness, and in turn, user participation and co-creation have also become the guarantee for the further expansion and rapid landing of the energy replenishment system.
Today, although the pain points such as difficulty in profitability, heavy assets, and difficulty in unifying specifications have not yet been solved, the power exchange model is no longer a utopia that was ridiculed by countless people a few years ago, but has jumped into a "new continent" where the operating market scale is expected to touch the threshold of 300 billion yuan. The sudden acceleration of NIO can be seen as the beginning of a new round of "enclosure movement" in the field of power replacement, and in the offensive, users armed by NIO began to gradually come to the foreground.
Taken from the user, used for the user?
Around the Spring Festival in the Year of the Rabbit, NIO did a major event, announcing that during the Spring Festival, 346 highway swap stations across the country will provide unlimited free power exchange services to all NIO vehicles (except operating vehicles).
Through this event, NIO completed the extreme pressure test of the energy replenishment system during the peak period of domestic vehicle flow, and the results were quite positive: during the Spring Festival, NIO provided users with more than 1.245 million battery replacement services and more than 900,000 charging services. On January 27, the number of NIO power exchange service orders peaked, of which 23,866 orders came from highway power exchange stations. On the peak day, the average waiting time for users to change power is 13.08 minutes.
Image source: NIO
For the above achievements, Qin Lihong, co-founder and president of NIO, is very satisfied. With the blessing of this free battery swap activity, NIO users traveled a total of more than 385 million kilometers in more than 20 days, of which 18 users covered more than 10,000 kilometers. The price paid by NIO is not large, according to Qin Lihong, it is "the price of a billboard in the city center".
However, Li Bin believes through a series of visits before and after the Spring Festival that NIO can do better, the power exchange service capacity of popular high-speed routes during the festival needs to be improved, and the northeast region has to build several times more power exchange stations, and there are still blank areas for power exchange stations in cities such as Wenzhou and Taizhou. In order to allow users to achieve truly worry-free travel, NIO also needs to further accelerate the construction of exchange stations. So he reversed the plan to "add 400 new substations in 2023" announced at NIO DAY in December and corrected the target to 1,000.
However, for NIO at this stage, it is not only funds that limit the expansion rate of power exchange points, but also "resources" and "qualifications". There are many requirements in the site selection process of the substation, taking the third generation substation as an example, its volume is 10.12m*6.12m*3.2m, the rated capacity needs to be greater than 630kVA, the ground load of the site needs to be greater than 800kg/m², the excavation space needs to be greater than 0.85m, and the driving passage needs to be greater than 6.5m.
Power & site conditions for the construction of the third generation swap station
"Some sites look like empty lots, but there may be subway entrances next to them, and there may be parking lots underneath, which cannot meet the requirements of construction standards and regulations; Some sites meet the construction requirements, but their property rights are more chaotic; Some site hardware meets the requirements and property rights are clear, but managers are biased against the emerging thing of power exchange and do not understand. If we want to quickly promote the construction of the energy replenishment system, it is not enough for us to rely on us, we need to borrow the power of the car owner. Talking about the "Thousand Stations Project", Zhuang Lei (pseudonym) and Cheshi Monogatari revealed that he was working at NIO.
Image source: NIO App
Perhaps, this is the reason why NIO held dozens of user meetings across the country immediately after announcing the "Thousand Stations Plan". On the event registration page of each city, the event initiator specially wrote NIO's appeal: "Please actively participate in recommending the site selection area of the exchange station, and also look forward to the help of users and friends who have resources such as site and power capacity".
In fact, there are many users who come with resources. Among them, there are also users who have done "matchmaking" work before, but for various reasons, the three parties have not negotiated, and this time they are urging work with expectations: "It has been a long time since the last negotiation, NIO's power exchange service has been known to more people, can you take the team to talk again?" ”
"In fact, before this collection, there were many exchange stations and charging station resources built with the help of users. If we can continue to carry forward this user co-creation thinking, it is indeed not difficult to add a thousand new exchange stations. Zhuang Lei said.
Construction of NIO's energy replenishment system Image source: NIO (data as of February 27, 2023)
In his understanding, NIO's substation construction can be divided into two stages, the first stage focuses on building with the static distribution of users, that is, "where there are more users, where to build", giving priority to more users to experience the power exchange service. In addition to filling the gaps in the first stage, the second stage is mainly focused on improving the service experience, and is built according to the dynamic distribution of car owners, that is, "users can build wherever they want". Therefore, highways and areas with poor experience in power exchange services have become the focus of this round of new power exchange stations.
"After the power exchange wishlist function is officially launched, each user can fill in 6 station exchange station construction addresses, including 3 urban areas and 3 highways, at which time the official will decide the location according to the frequency of user mention and physical conditions." You don't need to consider the number of replacement stations, the new 1,000 is NIO's commitment, it will definitely be achieved, and the focus can be on site selection. Chen Tianyang, general manager of NIO's Beijing regional company, said.
According to him, in order to optimize the travel experience of NIO users, the company has implemented a regional lead system in the construction of substations. Taking Beijing as an example, the construction of substations within a radius of 600 kilometers is the responsibility of the Beijing area, and popular self-driving routes such as Chongli, Chengde, and Beidaihe are already being planned and will land in the future. The popular self-driving tour routes with a radius of more than 600 kilometers will also be led by the Beijing region and jointly built with other regions.
Build a wall in the enclosure of the field of power exchange
In 2018, when Li Bin shouted the slogan "make it more convenient to power up than refuel", there was no lack of doubts from the outside world, mainly because the power exchange model is an extremely asset-heavy model, and it is difficult to make a profit in the short term. The bankruptcy of Better Place, the world's first Israeli company to do power swapping business in 2013, and Tesla's exit in 2015 have become "ironclad evidence" that the battery swap model is difficult to survive.
2018-2022 NIO substation construction Image source: NIO
However, with the unexpected increase in the penetration rate of new energy and the increasingly prominent contradiction of vehicle piles, the battery replacement mode has gradually become a key part of solving the above problems. In 2020, the National People's Congress and the National People's Congress officially wrote power exchange into the Government Work Report, which became an important part of the new infrastructure; In March 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "2022 Automotive Standardization Work Points" also proposed to "accelerate the construction and improvement of the electric vehicle charging and swapping standard system, and promote the formulation of standards such as pure electric vehicle on-board battery swap system, general platform for battery swap, and battery pack"; On October 9, the National Energy Administration issued the Action Plan for Standardizing and Improving Energy Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality, which clearly stated that it is necessary to promote the controllable charging load of electric vehicles and substations into the optimal control of the power grid, and promote the revision of flexible adjustment standards such as electric vehicle charging...
At present, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Shenyang and other cities across the country have successively introduced subsidies for the construction/operation of replacement stations. At the enterprise level, central enterprises such as PetroChina, Sinopec, State Grid, China Southern Power Grid, and National Energy Group have all launched relevant layouts in the field of power exchange; In terms of car companies, in addition to NIO, SAIC, Geely and other companies have also joined; Battery industry leader CATL announced its entry into the market and released a battery replacement brand; Even international oil giants Total, BP, Shell, etc. have successively put forward their own blueprints in charging and swapping.
In a few years, the power exchange mode has jumped from the original "heavy asset chicken ribs" to a sunrise industry with "hundreds of billions of market prospects". According to Soochow Securities, 2022 has become the first year of the increase in power stations, and by 2025, the number of new replacement stations may exceed 16,000 a year. According to Orient Securities, the scale of China's substation operation market will reach 263.1 billion yuan in 2025.
NIO's third-generation replacement power station
"The outlook is infinitely good, but the track will be more crowded. NIO is a leader in domestic C-end battery replacement services, but with the addition of power battery giants such as SAIC, Geely, and especially CATL, competition will inevitably be fierce in the future. Therefore, to a certain extent, the acceleration of the construction plan of the replacement station mentioned by Li Bin this time can also be seen as NIO taking the lead in enclosure. Speaking about this, automotive industry analyst Liu Dan (pseudonym) said.
"In fact, the construction of the substation is 'repulsive', and there are not many high-quality places. In cities, considering the distribution of existing new energy vehicle users and activity trajectories, the places suitable for the construction of substations are not rich; The high-speed service area looks empty, but considering safety, the construction of the substation should be kept at a certain distance from the gas station, and there must also be enough space for vehicles to pass, and the space for the construction of the substation is also limited. That's when you have to compare speed. ”
In his view, in addition to competing for speed to occupy high-quality resources, NIO is also constantly strengthening barriers in the field of power exchange. Among them, at the operational level where the external perception is not strong, NIO has an advantage. Previously, the industry has given a relevant conclusion on the "vehicle-to-electricity ratio" in the battery swap mode - the ratio between the battery replacement vehicle and the reserve battery must reach 1:1.3 to run smoothly.
Image source: NIO Data as of July 2022
THE FIGURES ANNOUNCED BY NIO IN THE JULY 2022 NIO POWER DAY ARE LOWER THAN THE ABOVE PERCENTAGE. At that time, the company revealed that as of July 6, 2022, NIO had a total of 8,961 batteries in exchange stations operating across the country, considering that NIO's cumulative delivery volume at the end of June that year was 217897, and the ratio between its battery exchange vehicles and reserve batteries was only 1:1.04. Thinking of the pressure test results between the Spring Festival in the Year of the Rabbit, NIO's skills in the operation of power exchange services can be seen.
In terms of technology, NIO is also constantly introducing new ones and shaping barriers. At the NIO DAY at the end of 2022, the company released the third generation of replacement stations. Compared with the second generation, the third generation technology adopts the three-station power exchange mode, and the power exchange time is shortened by 20%; The number of battery positions increased to 21, and the daily service capacity of a single station was 408 times, increasing the service capacity by 30%. In order to more accurately realize intelligent functions such as station coordination, support summoning power exchange, and automatic parking, NIO has also equipped the third-generation swap station with 2 lidar and 2 NVIDIA Orin X chips, with a total computing power of 508TOPS. In Li Bin's words, "Our exchange station is higher than the computing power of some smart electric vehicles." ”
"After policy support, maintaining technical advantages, and accelerating the construction layout of replacement stations, NIO only has the last hurdle left, that is, how to make a profit." Liu Dan said.
Previously, the industry has announced a set of data, the cost of NIO's first-generation replacement station is about 3 million yuan, the cost of the second-generation replacement station is about 1.5 million yuan, and the cost of the third-generation replacement station is unknown. Based on the cost of 1.5 million yuan for the second generation of replacement stations, plus operating costs such as labor, the cost of NIO's new 1,000 replacement stations will be astronomical.
Image source: iResearch
Although when talking about the profitability of the replacement station, Qin Lihong once compared it to "paper towels": "How can a restaurant make money by providing paper towels to customers? But in Liu Dan's view, although it is not realistic to talk about profits at this stage, considering the uncertainty of the future market, if we want to run this model healthily, NIO must at least control the loss amount in the power exchange mode. To do this, scale is an inescapable topic.
According to the research results released by iResearch Research Institute, in order to achieve single-station profitability, the utilization rate of passenger car swap stations must reach 20%. If the daily service capacity of NIO's third-generation replacement station is 408 times as the basis, its daily service frequency should reach 81.6 times. All this places demands on ownership. Although the latest sales target of the NIO brand is to catch up with Lexus, it is still far from enough for the profitability of the replacement station.
"Perhaps the second brand Alps, and possibly the third brand Firefly in the Chinese market, are the key to solving this problem." NIO internal employees revealed: "It is certain that Alps will support the battery swap mode, and the Firefly brand is unknown." Considering the price and positioning, the volume of these two brands is destined to be larger than NIO, and if they can be connected to the third-generation replacement station in the future, the overall loss performance of the power exchange service will be greatly alleviated. ”