Who is the "new top stream" of new energy vehicles this year?
The answer is the Xiaomi SU7, which was launched at the end of March.
Since its launch on March 28, the new car has been hot for Xiaomi, and to some extent it is impacting the pattern of China's auto market.
In addition to paying attention to the future ramp-up progress of Xiaomi Auto's production capacity, Volkswagen is also judging its performance and service, after all, it is easy to build momentum, but it is difficult to build a good car!
The competition of new energy vehicles has also been involved in the field of charging, we can find that Lei Jun announced that the compatibility of third-party charging piles of Xiaomi SU7 models has reached more than 99%, claiming to have tested more than 200 different models of charging piles, a total of 18900.
What has attracted the attention of the market is that Xiaomi has also launched its own home charging pile, known as "one-key open cover, plug and charge", and support OTA upgrades, including 7kW charging power version 3999 yuan, 11kW charging power version 5999 yuan. At the same time, it said that Xiaomi super charging stations are currently under construction in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.
With the vigorous development of the new energy vehicle market, charging piles, as its basic energy supplement facilities, have become an important part of the promotion and popularization of new energy pure electric vehicles. Major car companies have started this charging battle, especially focusing on the frequent layout of supercharging.
1. Everyone has "energy anxiety"
Entering 2024, China's new energy vehicle production and sales have ranked first in the world for nine consecutive years, and the production and sales volume will exceed 9 million units in 2023.
Continental regards new energy vehicles as a key element in the transformation of a large automobile country to an automobile power, therefore, charging piles as energy supplement facilities for new energy vehicles should also become the most basic starting point in the transformation process, and its development is the basic guarantee for the development of new energy vehicles and electric vehicles. Since BYD built the first batch of electric vehicle charging piles in Shenzhen in 2006, China's charging infrastructure has undergone different stages of development with the increase in the number of new energy vehicles in China and the advancement of electric vehicle technology. As of December 2023, the cumulative number of charging infrastructure nationwide is 8.596 million units, an increase of 65% year-on-year.
According to the Prospective Industry Research Institute, from the perspective of the charging pile industry chain, the construction to operation mainly involves charging equipment manufacturers, charging construction operators, and overall solution providers.
However, the current construction of the charging network is far behind the plan. By the end of 2023, the number of new energy vehicles in mainland China will be 20.41 million, and the vehicle-to-pile ratio will be 2.4:1, which is a large gap compared with the vehicle-to-pile ratio of 1:1 planned in the "Development Guide".
What's more, both for users and car companies, they have the so-called "energy supply anxiety". The main concern of the former choosing to buy electric vehicles is still the charging problem, that is, slow charging and inconvenient charging.
In order to meet the rapid energy replenishment needs of the market, new energy charging has gone through the stage of "horse racing" and entered the competition of attaching importance to efficiency.
Generally speaking, charging piles can be divided into slow charging, fast charging, and overcharging according to different charging speeds, and the charging power of 50kW and below is generally called slow charging piles, 50-150kW is fast charging piles, and more than 150kW is overcharging piles, and the maximum output power of overcharging can reach 600 kilowatts, and the fastest can be charged at a speed of "one kilometer per second". Today's new energy vehicles want to quickly replenish energy, and they need to use high-power ultra-fast charging.
At present, there are two technical routes to achieve high-power fast charging: one is high-current fast charging technology, and the other is high-voltage fast charging technology. The former requires thermal management technology, which is difficult to achieve, and high-voltage fast charging technology is expected to become the mainstream fast energy replenishment method in the future, while under the standard of overcharging, the high-voltage technology path is realized through the upgrade of the 800V architecture of the whole vehicle, and the charging voltage is not less than 750V, and the current is not less than 400A.
From the perspective of market structure, Tesla began to deploy the super charging station network in September 2012, and now the number of super charging piles in the world has reached 55,000, ranking first in the world, and has achieved 100% coverage of provincial capitals and municipalities in Chinese mainland. Chinese car companies are also struggling to catch up, and public information shows that most of the advanced pure electric vehicles on the market are equipped with batteries from 400-volt voltage platforms, and there are about 40 new energy models that support overcharging. BYD, Tesla, Xpeng, Ideal, Aion, Zeekr and many other manufacturers have released 800-volt voltage platform supercharging models, however, due to the limited ceiling of technological development and fewer players, they are all working hard to lay out this future technology direction.
In order to cope with the significant increase in thermal effect caused by high power, liquid cooling technology has obvious advantages, such as effectively reducing the damage rate of charging equipment and improving the safety and service life of the equipment based on the isolation of the module from the external environment, and the heat dissipation capacity of the liquid-cooled charging pile is significantly improved, reducing the number of power devices and improving the reliability of the module.
Starting in 2023, Huawei has taken the lead in the construction of large-scale "600KW fully liquid-cooled supercharging piles" in the market, and has deployed more than 10,000 fully liquid-cooled supercharging piles, covering 31 provinces across the country, and is expected to deploy 100,000+ Huawei fully liquid-cooled supercharging piles in 340+ cities and major highways across the country by the end of 2024. This kind of supercharging pile is suitable for a wide range of models, with a maximum output voltage of 1000V, a current of 600A, a single gun power of up to 600kW, a range of 200 kilometers in 5 minutes of charging, and the fastest speed of "one kilometer per second" in an ideal state.
As mentioned earlier, Xiaomi in this article is not far behind, Xiaomi SU7 and Xiaomi SU7 Pro both belong to silicon carbide 400V voltage platform, with 15 minutes to 350km of fast energy replenishment. The Xiaomi SU7 Max uses an 871V high-voltage platform, which can provide 220km of energy from 5 minutes to fast charging and 510km from 15 minutes. At the same time, it also adopted a 600kW liquid-cooled supercharging scheme and announced the first batch of planned cities. Interestingly, in Xiaomi's first blueprint, there are first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, and even new first-tier cities such as Hangzhou, but there is no Shenzhen, which is now striving to build a "world-class supercharging city", and its layout strategy is worth exploring.
2. I didn't choose Shenzhen, but hugged the north and Hangzhou
Before discussing Xiaomi's strategy of deploying northbound to Hangzhou, we can understand the development commonality of the industry through Shenzhen's layout of supercharging stations, that is, the necessary elements for the establishment of supercharging stations.
According to the Prospective Industry Research Institute, by the end of 2023, the total number of public charging piles in the top 10 regions of Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Hubei, Shandong, Beijing, Anhui, Henan, and Sichuan will account for more than 70%, and the regional application market is relatively concentrated.
According to the 2023 Hurun China New Energy Industry Concentration City List, Shenzhen was rated as the city with the highest concentration of new energy industries in China, followed by Shanghai, Suzhou, Beijing, and Changzhou.
The reason why Shenzhen dares to point to the "world-class supercharging city" lies in the confidence brought by policy-driven, market demand and industrial foundation.
From the top-level design, the government's favorable support is an important driving force for the application and promotion of supercharging products.
The Shenzhen Municipal Development and Reform Commission officially issued and implemented the "Shenzhen Special Plan for New Energy Vehicle Supercharging Facilities (2023-2025)", and the supercharging with the slogan of "a cup of coffee, full power" will become Shenzhen's new city card. At the same time, Shenzhen is the first city in the country to have two local standards: the grading evaluation of supercharging equipment and the design of supercharging stations.
More importantly, Shenzhen has formed a good ecology of the whole industry chain in the manufacture of new energy vehicles.
In 2023, the country's new energy vehicle production will be 9.443 million units, of which Shenzhen's new energy vehicle output will exceed 1.78 million units, ranking first in the country, with an increase of 104.2%, beating Shanghai and Xi'an to become the "first city of new energy vehicles". The giants have made significant contributions, and BYD, a new energy vehicle company headquartered in Shenzhen, surpassed Tesla in sales of pure electric passenger cars in the fourth quarter of 2023 to become the world's first for the first time.
According to public information, Shenzhen has a closed-loop core technology chain of "three electrics" for new energy vehicles, covering all aspects of R&D and manufacturing of new energy vehicles such as battery cell modules, power batteries, precision structural parts, and motor and electronic control, and has 24,000 new energy and digital energy enterprises, and lithium-ion energy storage and other technologies are at the forefront of the world.
Shenzhen's proposal to build a "new generation of world-class automobile city" is not empty talk, new energy vehicles have become a bright spot in its economic growth, and it is expected that by the end of 2025, the number of new energy vehicles will reach about 1.3 million. Behind the huge incremental demand, the construction of charging infrastructure has also become the focus of development.
Thanks to giving full play to the advantages of the cluster, Shenzhen has formed a complete layout of the charging pile industry chain.
According to public information, only in the charging pile industry chain, Shenzhen has gathered more than 20 Shenzhen listed companies. Among them, the total market share of the whole pile equipment in the country exceeds 50%. In the field of charging modules, the core components of charging piles (accounting for about 50% of the terminal cost), 8 local enterprises in Shenzhen, including Yonglian, Infineon, UUGreenPower, Huawei, Kehua, Megmit, Shenghong, and Encore, have a total national market share of more than 70%.
As a local leader, BYD's layout in charging is worth paying attention to, although as a "new energy vehicle brother", based on its own strategic layout, it does not build its own charging station, but under the premise of fully considering the existing market environment, through technological innovation to continuously meet the user's charging needs and experience.
Looking back, as early as 2015, BYD launched an 800V high-voltage platform, and at that time, it was mass-produced on the 2015 Tang DM, 2015 Qin EV and e5, becoming the first new energy vehicle company to apply this technology. Nowadays, most of the low-voltage charging piles on the market are not compatible with the charging needs of high-voltage models, BYD is the world's first step-up charging technology, which makes high-voltage models compatible with low-voltage charging piles by boosting the voltage during the charging process, further improving the charging efficiency.
At the same time, based on the electric vehicle charging standards have not yet reached a consensus, BYD released passenger car dual-gun overcharging technology, this technology is mainly through two charging guns at the same time to charge electric vehicles, the maximum power can reach 230kW, and the public fast charging pile can be charged 350 kilometers in 15 minutes, which means that electric vehicle users can easily improve the charging speed and efficiency in a short time.
It can be found that BYD starts from its own strategic perspective and user experience, and focuses on a single idea: instead of letting users compete with themselves for supercharging piles that have not yet become popular, it is better to make full use of the existing resources of more than one million public fast charging piles to bring a better and faster charging experience. In contrast, if Xiaomi spends a lot of effort to build its own supercharging station in Shenzhen, it may seem a little "unadaptable".
On the other hand, Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou are also accelerating the development of new energy vehicles, and they all have a relatively mature industrial base, forming their own regional agglomeration advantages, which is conducive to enhancing the construction of charging facilities, especially the extension of supercharging. Xiaomi took the lead in choosing to build a supercharging station in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, which also wants to have the advantage of industrial aggregation, that is, through the leadership and layout of leading enterprises, combined with a high degree of supporting and linkage of the mature industrial chain, so as to gain more markets and opportunities.
Let's take a look at Shanghai first, Shanghai has always been the source of innovation in the new energy vehicle industry, and it is inseparable from the investment of giants. For example, the localization rate of Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory industry chain has reached 95%, and as of November last year, it has built 194 supercharging stations and 1,500 supercharging piles in Shanghai.
At the same time, the first delivery center of Xiaomi Automobile in the country is in Songjiang Jiugan 168 Park, which is dominated by "new energy + information innovation", and has attracted many leading automobile brands to settle in, including AVATR Automobile Delivery Center, Xiaopeng Motors delivery, maintenance, sales center and flagship store, Li Auto Maintenance Center, Leapmotor Shanghai flagship showroom, Changan Qiyuan 4S store, etc., which represent a complete industrial ecology and a strong consumer market, which is conducive to Xiaomi's supercharging station to further play its role.
As of 2023, the output value of Qiantang's automobile and related manufacturing industries will be 113.9 billion yuan, and the output of automobiles will be 232,400 units, accounting for more than 99% of Hangzhou's automobile production. It has gathered more than 300 upstream and downstream enterprises, including three leading vehicle enterprises such as Changan Ford, GAC Passenger Vehicle and Geely, and more than 20 auto parts companies such as Magna, Lear, Cosma and Sanhua, involving many fields such as travel, intelligent networking, manufacturing, R&D and design, and supply chain products. The Xiaomi Auto Hangzhou Delivery Center project is located in Mengma Automobile Port, Xiasha Street, Qiantang District, which is the first new energy vehicle brand sales headquarters base in Qiantang District, and will become the sales and settlement headquarters of Xiaomi Auto in Hangzhou in the future. In addition, as of the beginning of April this year, the city has built 1,626 charging facilities, with a completion rate of 54.2%, and plans to add and transform 3,000 charging facilities this year, which has potential.
As for Beijing, it is the city with the largest number of autonomous vehicle companies and innovative talents in China, and has formed a leading autonomous driving industry ecosystem, but there is still room for improvement in the field of new energy vehicles.
In order to enhance the competitiveness of the new energy industry, Beijing has proposed to optimize and adjust the action plan for the development of high-tech industries, promote the start of Xiaomi automobiles and the construction of ideal cars, and Xiaomi cars also urgently need to be on the right track, which is also a two-way rush. While Beijing has obtained Xiaomi's car-making qualifications at a high speed, it also provides resources and support for site selection, environmental impact assessment and approval, production qualifications, etc., to escort the production and listing of Xiaomi cars. In less than a year, the Xiaomi Gigafactory was born in Yizhuang, which completed the entire process from production to delivery, and successfully achieved the set goal of formal mass production in the first half of 2024.
After the launch of the new car, Lei Jun once said that within three years, Xiaomi has gone from 0 to today, and the local government of Beijing has made great contributions, and I am sincerely grateful to Beijing. Obviously, the government's strong support for Xiaomi's new energy vehicle blueprint has a supporting role, combined with Beijing's continuous reinforcement of its new energy industry foundation through the introduction of giants and other measures, which is also conducive to the further rooting of Xiaomi's industrial chain, especially the construction of supercharging piles to be stable and solid.
3. Where are the potential stocks?
At present, the construction of supercharging stations in mainland China is still in the growth period, but with the continuous improvement of the charging pile industry chain, its development space can be expected.
Throughout the country, Guangdong and Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions of the new energy vehicle industry chain is relatively perfect, the number of charging pile enterprises in each link is larger, the radiation effect on the market is strong, Beijing, Hangzhou, Shenzhen and other cities have unique development conditions, leading enterprises gathered here to shine, Xiaomi and other new entrants will naturally make trade-offs, rooted in it.
We will find that with the strong support of favorable policies, "new energy" is placed in a prominent position, and the vitality of new energy vehicle enterprises is very important, especially the leading enterprises will play a significant key role, and the pull effect on the upstream and downstream of the industry is highlighted. The main enterprise of the chain will drive the small and medium-sized enterprises in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain to strengthen together, form a strong industrial chain, and then promote the transformation and upgrading of related industries.
So, based on the above conditions, in addition to those head cities, what other dark horses are there in the country? According to the regional heat map of the industrial chain of the electric vehicle charging pile industry of the forward-looking intelligent investment promotion system, Zhengzhou, Xi'an, Chengdu and other places have potential.
For example, Xi'an itself is a traditional industrial city, and in 2022 it will become the "first city in the production of new energy vehicles", which is indispensable for the support of BYD. A number of upstream and downstream supporting enterprises in the industrial chain, such as Qingtaike New Energy and Qiangzhong Power Battery, have obvious industrial cluster effects, which are conducive to promoting the development of the supercharging industry.
On the whole, supercharging is a powerful tool to effectively solve the "energy anxiety", drive a new round of technology iteration from the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and with the market landing, it is conducive to the new energy automobile industry to make up for the shortcomings and achieve upgrading and reform.
Prospective Economist APP Information Group
For more research and analysis of this industry, please refer to the "2024-2029 China Electric Vehicle Charging Pile Industry Market Prospect and Investment Strategic Planning Analysis Report" by Qianzhan Industry Research Institute
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Resources:
[1] "Shenzhen, a rising "supercharged city"", interface news
[2] How to realize the "convenient refueling" of charging - a survey on Shenzhen's promotion of the construction of a "supercharging city", Xinhuanet