The just-concluded "Golden Nine", judging from the report cards announced by many new energy vehicle companies, there is no doubt that there is good news one after another, and there is a lot of voice. As for the ongoing "Silver Ten", with some players successively announcing the order data of the past 7 days, it is foreseeable that the positive momentum will continue.
Anyway, in the face of an unstoppable wave of transformation, electric vehicles are rapidly becoming the so-called "mainstream". Whether it is the sales level of the terminal or the mental level of potential consumers, it is killing and killing.
As everyone knows, during the just-concluded National Day holiday, the author completed a self-driving trip of nearly 3,000 kilometers of coastline. The whole trip starts from Shanghai, passes through Wenling, Taizhou, Xiapu, Ningde, and then arrives at Quanzhou, and then returns to Shanghai from Wenzhou.
There are no accidents, for the sake of personality, I am still accompanied by an electric car, and it is a pure electric car. As for who it really is? Let's sell it first. In the following article, I would like to talk about some discoveries and personal feelings. Of course, all are closely related to the protagonist of today's article.
There are surprises, complaints, and likes.
Green card, conquer the low-tier market
At the beginning of this paragraph, I would like to share a few sets of data.
In July, the retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles exceeded 50% for the first time in history, reaching 51.1%. In August, the retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles continued to climb, reaching 53.9%; In September, according to the current forecast of the China Passenger Car Association, the retail penetration rate of new energy vehicles will break 50% again.
is still the same sentence, "On the monthly data alone, electric vehicles have steadily defeated oil vehicles, and the inflection point has really come." ”
It must be admitted that as the media always focuses on super first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, thanks to various positive stimuli, users' acceptance of the "green card" is indeed increasing at a speed that is visible to the naked eye.
However, it is important to know that in the huge scale of China's auto market, super first-tier cities are only an important part of it. In contrast, the "green card" is often easy to ignore for the capture of the lower-tier market.
It is precisely based on this background that during the self-driving trip of the National Day holiday, the author took the time to visit some new energy brand stores in Xiapu in Taizhou and Wenling in Ningde.
At the same time, I also had in-depth exchanges with several local car owners. To sum it up, similar to the situation in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the "green card" is located in lower-tier cities, and it is also becoming unstoppable.
To give a small example, I remember very clearly that when I drove through a country road in Xiapu, Taizhou, I suddenly wanted to make a rough count of the models purchased by 20 households on the street at random.
Among them, B BA occupies 4 vehicles, Volkswagen, Toyota, and Honda occupy 6 vehicles, and the remaining 10 vehicles are all "green plates" led by BYD, Aion, Geely, and Xiaopeng. Although I can't generalize, I was still very touched.
Another small example is a point of view thrown by an uncle next to him when he was replenishing energy in Xiapu, Ningde.
"Two or three years ago, if I wanted to buy an electric car, if it wasn't for the old man who was tens of thousands of yuan, or if it wasn't for the leek car of more than 300,000 yuan, I wanted to spend about 200,000 yuan to buy a high-quality and inexpensive scooter at all. Since last year, I obviously feel that there are more and more good products, especially plug-in hybrid cars, so I naturally chose to replace them with my old Tiguan. In addition, you see, almost every house here has a yard, and it is very convenient to install charging piles, and it is really cost-effective to use electric vehicles. ”
And what I read from it is more like the reason why the "green card" is located in the low-tier market and rises, as if it occupies the right time, place, and people.
First, the choice of various price ranges has become numerous and mature; second, to grasp the sensitivity of local potential customers to the cost of use; Third, the overall charging conditions are more relaxed than those in super first-tier cities.
Gradually hot sales, water comes naturally.
Plug and hybrid, should it be charged?
Every small long holiday, the topic of "difficult high-speed charging of electric vehicles" will rush to the hot search list. Following the trend, the "hard-to-serve electric dad" in the comment area will become one after another.
It must be admitted that limited by the congenital limited energy resources in most service areas, coupled with the current energy supply time of electric vehicles is often tens of minutes to an hour, "under the imbalance between supply and demand" will inevitably cause serious queuing, and even fight to grab charging piles.
Right now, the pain points are there. It is completely foreseeable that with the rapid increase in the number of "green cards", the above problems will become more prominent and profound.
So, is there no solution?
It can only be said: "It is necessary to continue to promote and work together at the government level, the enterprise level, and the user level." For example, it is reasonable to build more piles to improve the efficiency of power batteries and strengthen the energy quality of car owners. Otherwise, there will be a vicious circle. ”
Seeing this, there will definitely be readers who are curious, what is "energy quality"? Before elaborating, try to share a small paragraph that happened to be interesting.
He said, "An ideal MEGA owner came to a popular high-speed service area and found that the only few charging piles were full, so he got out of the car and gave a BYD Qin PLUS DM-i owner 100 yuan in cash, asking him to go to the side to refuel and give the charging pile to himself." ”
In this regard, most netizens are ridiculing the former's wealth. And what I care about is focused on: "Every time there is a small long holiday, the energy supply resources in the high-speed service area are limited, should the plug-in hybrid car be charged?" ”
In fact, during the entire National Day journey, a similar phenomenon was found more than once: "The plug-in hybrid car, which has a slow charging speed, occupies the charging pile for a long time, and is willing to leave until it is charged to 100%, and many pure electric vehicles are queuing up behind it." ”
Although objectively speaking, everyone is equal in the energy supplement of new energy vehicles, and the charging pile is also first-come, first-served, but from the perspective of commuting efficiency, should plug-in hybrid vehicles with "fuel tanks" be considered more for others? If you can refuel at the peak, choose the right time and place for charging?
However, the above suggestions only stay at "I think", and there are no relevant regulations. And the key behind this is still the "quality of energy supplementation".
How to improve, there is a long way to go.
If you change the battery, you can't go back after using it
In all fairness, if you are not a pure electric vehicle user with the ability to replenish energy in advance, you must be abused if you choose to blindly travel thousands of kilometers on a long vacation. In other words, the charging experience in the high-speed service area is poor and there is no solution for the time being.
Unless you have a "gas tank", or you can "change the battery".
This leads to the foreshadowing at the beginning of the article, this nearly 3,000-kilometer coastline self-driving trip, accompanied me by a NIO ES6.
As we all know, the "rechargeable, replaceable, and upgradeable" energy replenishment system has always been one of the most proud moats of this new force's car manufacturing.
Before departure, the power battery of this NIO ES6 was upgraded to a 100-degree long-range version using a flexible upgrade method, with a daily rent of 78 yuan.
Starting from Shanghai, passing through Wenling in Taizhou and Xiapu in Ningde, and then arriving at the destination Quanzhou, and then returning to Shanghai from Wenzhou, the high-speed battery swap station NIO has been opened throughout the whole process, and there is one at a suitable distance every other time.
It is no exaggeration to say that the comprehensive experience is the "unique" existence among all pure electric brands. Especially because of Typhoon "Shantuoer", it rains most of the time, so it is really cool to be able to continue with a full charge without getting off the bus for 3 minutes.
To borrow the original words of the same car friend, "If you use it, you can't go back." ”
Even in some popular service areas, there will still be a slight queue, but compared to the charging often need to wait for more than 1 hour, the energy replenishment efficiency is much higher.
And, it is worth looking forward to the fact that in September this year, NIO officially announced the latest battery swap station laying plan. That is, the first stage: by June 30, 2025, 14 provincial-level administrative regions will complete the battery swap of counties and counties.
Among them, Beijing, Shanghai and Macao have been completed, and the remaining are: Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Hubei, Shandong, Sichuan, Henan, Fujian, Tianjin and Chongqing, covering more than 1,200 county-level administrative regions.
Phase 2: By December 31, 2025, 13 new provincial-level administrative regions will be added to the battery swap county and county pass.
They are Hunan, Hebei, Shaanxi, Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, Jiangxi, Hainan, Shanxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Gansu and Ningxia, covering 27 provincial-level administrative regions and more than 2,300 county-level administrative units.
The third stage: Starting in 2026, the remaining 7 provincial-level administrative regions will be tackled, covering more than 2,800 county-level administrative regions across the country.
What is certain is that if it can be implemented step by step without any big deviation, NIO Power's comprehensive experience is destined to reach a new level.
In addition, during the just-concluded National Day holiday, looking at the official data released by NIO, its 2,560 battery swap stations across the country have provided users with a total of 797,120 battery swap services.
The peak of daily battery swap service exceeded 100,000 times for the first time, reaching 104,270 times, an increase of 33% year-on-year. Compared with the same period last year, the average daily number of highway battery swap orders increased by 38.6%.
Obviously, the numbers don't lie.
Of course, from the perspective of a bystander, I also want to say: "The construction of battery swap stations is destined to consume huge manpower, material resources, and financial resources. ”
Sailing against the current, if you don't advance, you will retreat.