The deep reasons behind the replacement of new energy buses back to fuel vehicles in many places

Text/Wang Xinxi

Previously, it was reported that after Baoding, new energy buses in Hubei, Hebei, Nanjing, North and other places were replaced with fuel vehicles. According to Hunan Daily, because of the termination of the subsidy, the damage to the car is serious, and many cities have fallen into business difficulties, and many new energy city buses have recently quietly changed back to fuel vehicles.

There are many considerations behind the replacement of new energy buses in many places with fuel vehicles.

First of all, the battery technology of the first batch of new energy buses is immature, and it will soon reach the service life, the battery attenuation is serious, and the cost of replacing the battery is too high

As early as March 2015, the Ministry of Transport issued the "Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Promotion and Application of New Energy Vehicles in the Transportation Industry", which clearly stated that public transportation will give priority to the promotion of new energy vehicles in the future.

As of the end of 2022, there were 703,200 buses in the country, of which 455,500 were pure electric vehicles, accounting for more than half.

But the problem is that the battery technology of electric vehicles around 2015 is not very mature, and these electric buses have not yet reached the legal service life, and the problem of battery damage and attenuation has begun to appear, and the high cost of replacing the battery is scary. Hubei Huangshi Bus's electric buses were purchased in 2016-2017, and the current battery attenuation is so serious that drivers don't even dare to turn on the air conditioner in the summer.

From the point of view of Baoding, when the battery was to be replaced, it was found that the battery cost more than 600,000 yuan, and the battery was replaced in large quantities, and the price could not be replaced.

So why not change to a batch of pure electric buses?

We know that when comparing joint venture A-class cars, local A-class cars, mid-to-high-end sedans and mid-to-high-end MPVs, pure electric vehicles have similar configurations, but they tend to be more expensive. Generally, it will be 1~20,000 or 2~30,000 yuan more expensive.

In the bus market, the same is true, the price of an 8-meter-long electric bus is 70-800,000 yuan, and 10-12 meters or more requires millions or even millions of yuan. Compared with the same level of oil vehicles are more expensive, and in 2015 when the purchase of electric buses, there was a relatively high amount of new energy vehicle subsidies, each car can enjoy about 80,000 yuan of subsidies, but now the new energy vehicle subsidies have been completely canceled, and buses, belonging to the public service field, bus companies are not profitable, mainly relying on state subsidies.

Therefore, in this case, the advantages of fuel buses in terms of service life begin to be highlighted, as long as they are properly maintained, fuel buses can easily be used for more than ten years. Therefore, from the perspective of service life, procurement cost, etc., fuel buses are more cost-effective.

Safety and battery life are the core experience issues of buses

Generally speaking, the bus attaches great importance to safety issues, after all, its passenger capacity is very large, once a safety problem occurs, the situation will be very serious, and in the past two years, the safety factor of the battery has also been questioned by many people.

Especially this summer, the overall weather situation is relatively hot, and spontaneous combustion of new energy vehicles across the country is also frequent. According to the data, in the first quarter of this year, there were a total of 640 fires of new energy vehicles, an increase of 32% year-on-year, equivalent to an average of 7 fires per day.

In the second and third quarters, there are no statistics on how many fires occurred in new energy vehicles due to collision accidents or spontaneous combustion, but judging from the cases exposed by the media, there are many cases of spontaneous combustion and fire. Although it is said that oil vehicles will also spontaneously combust, relatively speaking, new energy vehicles spontaneously combust quickly, are not easy to extinguish, and have a higher risk factor. In the summer of this year, the traffic police in many places also issued safety guidelines for charging new energy vehicles, reminding car owners to try to avoid charging immediately after high temperature exposure and use charging piles that meet national standards.

Behind the frequent fires, according to incomplete statistics, in the past three years, summer has been a high incidence period of electric vehicle burning accidents, after all, the high temperature in summer affects the state of the power battery. In high temperature weather, the probability of fire accidents in new energy vehicles is greater, accounting for 66%.

An important reason behind this is that new energy vehicle companies and battery manufacturers are promoting a significant increase in the energy density of the battery in order to have a long battery life, but the increase in the energy density of the battery is often a decrease in the stability of the battery cell, which may further increase the "runaway risk" of the battery pack.

For buses, a problem is that the entire new energy vehicle is now the battery is basically placed at the bottom of the car, if you accidentally bump and bump, damage the battery, then basically the entire battery has to be replaced, the cost is very expensive, if the collision fire, it will be more troublesome.

For buses, safety issues need to be paid special attention. According to the statistics of the proportion of fire accidents, the proportions from high to low are fire when stationary, fire when charging, fire during driving, and fire after accident or collision. According to the Sichuan fire report, in August this year, a bus of the Haikou Public Transport Group caught fire while charging in the bus depot on the north side of the Century Bridge. This means that there is still an uncontrollable side to the safety of the battery.

In addition, there is battery life. From the current point of view, due to the heavy daily load, even if it is equipped with a large-capacity battery pack, the actual range is only about 200-300 kilometers, plus the battery attenuation, year after year, the battery life is very low.

The area of the new energy bus exchange back fuel vehicle is more in the north, and the characteristics of the north are very high requirements for battery life, because the battery in the low temperature state often leads to a significant decrease in the activity of the electrolyte, the viscosity of the electrolyte increases, the endurance is greatly reduced, the charging is slow, and the power deficit of the battery in the north is relatively large, which is a great constraint on the bus.

Because the bus runs on the road all the year round, the battery life requirements are higher, can not be in the charging state all the time, in general, safety and battery life are related to the core experience of the bus, which can be better met by the oil car.

The bus does not pursue intelligent driving and refrigerator color TV sofa, and the fuel truck is more cost-effective

We know that new energy vehicles have an intelligent experience and comfortable experience that cannot be achieved by gasoline vehicles, which is attractive to consumers. But it is not used on the bus.

The bus does not pursue intelligence, zero hundred acceleration, refrigerator color TV sofa and other indicators, therefore, the new energy vehicle comes with intelligence and experience advantages can not be used on the bus, and the bus pursues stability, durability, safety, cost performance, service life and other needs, just the oil car can better meet.

In the past, new energy vehicles have been advertised that the higher the frequency of use, the more kilometers run, and the lower the cost of the car. However, due to the perennial bus running on the road, the battery decay is faster, and the service life is lower than expected.

The oil vehicle does not open for a long time to affect the overall performance of the engine, but needs to be driven more, so it is understandable to change from new energy vehicles back to buses in many places.

Switching back to fuel vehicles: We need two options, which also show the shortcomings of new energy vehicles

In fact, we found that the replacement of buses with fuel vehicles is just a mirror, reflecting the shortcomings of new energy vehicles. In the past, it was often said that the cost of new energy vehicles is very low, how to save fuel, but in fact, buses run on the road all year round, and the battery depletes faster, and then you will find that all this becomes very uneconomical. The advantage of lower cost of ownership is offset by the process of replacing batteries at a high price.

This incident also sounded a wake-up call for us, if the car is running on the road all the year round, how to reduce battery exhaustion and reduce the cost of battery replacement will be a big problem that car companies need to solve.

This also makes us think, is it really right to go all-round electrification? In order to seize the market and over-elevate the advantages of new energy and ignore their own shortcomings, will the whole industry fall into an unfavorable situation? Especially our charging infrastructure is being laid on a large scale, and many public parking lots have more and more special parking spaces for trams (oil trucks cannot be parked), and many gas stations are also closed, all of which are making way for new energy vehicles, making oil vehicles more and more inconvenient.

In general, in some areas, new energy buses to fuel vehicles do not mean that new energy vehicles are not good, there is no need to deny the future of electric vehicles, but this also tells us that we need two choices of oil vehicles and trams or even a variety of choices, different industries, different consumers, will have different car pursuits. You prefer refrigerators, color TVs, and large sofas, but in many scenarios, people are more interested in stability and service life, as well as more consideration of battery cost and cost performance.

Therefore, the bus is a mirror to replace the fuel vehicle, reflecting the shortcomings of new energy vehicles and different consumers, different industries have different considerations, how to solve these shortcomings, is a key part of consumer experience and choice.

Author: Wang Xinxi, Senior Reviewer of TMT This article is not reproduced without permission