Zhang Shanshan, chairman of Wanma Shares: The bright future of charging piles has come

Nowadays, the existence of charging piles can be seen on both sides of the streets and near office buildings in major cities, and various brands of new energy vehicles supplement kinetic energy with the assistance of charging piles, which not only facilitates people's travel, but also provides capital with investment space.

At the same time, the new infrastructure has given new development opportunities for the new energy vehicle charging pile industry, a trillion-level market scale is gradually forming, and more and more industrial capital has begun to intervene in the layout, wanting to "share a cup".

There is no doubt that the delivery of the Model 3 of Tesla's Shanghai Lingang factory is a landmark event for the further opening up of China's automobile industry, and also indicates that the new energy automobile industry has entered a stage of rapid development, and the essential driving force of the charging pile industry comes from new energy vehicles, which will benefit from the development of the new energy automobile industry.

"We started in 2010 in the charging pile industry. At the beginning, the State Grid was the main body of charging infrastructure construction, we mainly did the research and development and manufacturing of charging pile products to meet the industry's demand for charging pile equipment, and after allowing social capital to enter the charging pile industry in 2014, we also extended from equipment research and development and manufacturing to the investment and operation of charging stations. "Recently, Wanma Shares (002276. SZ) chairman Zhang Shanshan said in an exclusive interview with the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that this year's charging pile into the new infrastructure, is placed in the same height as 5G, industrial Internet, "this is for the entire new energy charging pile industry to lay a strong agent, in the future, from the central to local governments, will give the charging pile industry more powerful and sustained policy tilt." ”

From the industry to the policy, it confirms the bright future of charging piles. So, is the bright future of charging piles coming?

<h4>It is clearly included in the scope of "new infrastructure"</h4>

According to the "Guidelines for the Development of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure (2015-2020)", by the end of 2020, the number of electric vehicles in the country is expected to exceed 5 million, and 4.8 million new public and private charging piles will be built in 2015-2020, and it is planned that the national "vehicle-to-pile ratio" will basically achieve 1:1 in 2020. According to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, as of the end of 2019, the number of new energy vehicles in the country was 3.81 million, an increase of 46% year-on-year; as of December 2019, the total number of public charging piles and private charging piles nationwide was 1.219 million units, an increase of 50.80% year-on-year.

Nowadays, it seems that it is still far from achieving the goal of "vehicle-pile ratio" of 1:1, which also indicates that there is still a lot of space in the charging pile market. Zhang Shanshan told the 21st Century Business Herald that the development of the charging pile industry will certainly be affected by many trends such as the popularity of electric vehicles, the development of battery technology and the use habits of vehicle consumer groups.

On April 20, 2020, the National Development and Reform Commission clarified the scope of "new infrastructure" for the first time. Different from the traditional "infrastructure", "new infrastructure" refers to the infrastructure construction of the scientific and technological end, which includes 7 major industrial directions, namely new energy vehicle charging piles, UHV, 5G infrastructure, big data centers, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, intercity high-speed railway and intercity rail transit.

Zhang Shanshan said that in fact, the national policy attaches importance to and guides to the charging pile industry, which has always existed. As early as March 2012, the Ministry of Science and Technology formulated the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan for the Development of Electric Vehicle Science and Technology", which laid a solid foundation for the development of charging piles. "The inclusion of charging piles in the new infrastructure has a huge impact on the entire industry. First of all, this shows that the country's emphasis on the charging pile industry is continuous, and the strength is getting stronger and stronger, long-term good, can enhance industry confidence; secondly, policy inclination and capital injection will further accelerate the update and iteration of charging pile related technologies; third, the further development of the industry, but also guide capital to the entire industry for long-term investment. ”

In addition, Zhang Shanshan also said that the synergistic impact of policies and capital will also accelerate the renewal of the industry pattern. "Since private capital officially entered the charging pile industry in 2014, the entire industry has been running wild for 6 years, but with the gradual deepening of the competitive situation, some companies will gradually fall behind, and the advantages will gradually shift to the head enterprises."

In addition, Zhang Shanshan mentioned that at present, the entire charging industry is still in a continuous stage of development, far from reaching the saturation stage. "The whole industry is currently in a state of competition and cooperation, but there is no complete competition, more or cooperation, some in the country, some in the local market to cooperate, the entire industry is currently more needed is to hug the group for warmth."

<h4>Self-built power station to co-construction development</h4>

The inclusion of charging piles in the new infrastructure is not only good for the charging pile industry, but will benefit the entire new energy vehicle industry chain. The upstream industrial chain, including automotive power batteries, major new energy OEMs, downstream online car-hailing, time-sharing leasing and other industries will be very positively affected.

"From a macro level, the automobile industry is a strategic and pillar industry of the national economy, and now we are already the world's largest automobile consumer market, and the rapid development of the automobile industry has played an irreplaceable and important role in accelerating the industrialization process, promoting the innovative development of the manufacturing industry, increasing employment and promoting consumption upgrading." Zhang Shanshan said.

In terms of technological development trends, Zhang Shanshan told the 21st Century Business Herald that lightweight, electrification, intelligence, networking, and sharing are the general trends in the development of the entire automobile industry, and new energy vehicles are the outlet for the development of the current automobile industry and an important part of promoting the "five modernizations". "The large-scale electrification of vehicles has become an indisputable fact in both domestic and foreign markets. From the electrification of international car companies and the gradual maturity of new car manufacturing forces at home and abroad, it is certain that the entire industry has broken through the incubation period and entered a period of high-speed growth. "At the same time, intelligence and networking make electric vehicles assume more functional experiences beyond the means of transport in people's lives, and develop a richer ecosystem around the CP (content provider) / SP (service provider) of intelligent electric vehicles."

It can be said that in this ecosystem, charging services must be an indispensable and important link. Charging services are mainly achieved by charging pile operators, and their profits mainly come from service fees, power differences, subsidies and value-added services, of which charging electricity charges and service charges are the most basic profit models for most operators.

Zhang Shanshan told the 21st Century Business Herald that as a domestic listed company, Wanma shares have long been deeply cultivating cables and polymer-related power industries, and are now a well-deserved leader in the industry, and its new energy brand Wanma Aichong layout new energy charging pile field, which is essentially an extension of Wanma shares' business in the industrial chain, whether from the perspective of technical reserves or the company's own understanding of the industry, has a very obvious advantage. "As a private enterprise, we have been paying more attention to product research and development for many years, especially in some new products, willing to invest, but also willing to invest, we have our own advantages." After years of layout, we have built and operated more than 10 cities across the country to build and operate the "urban fast charging network" based on public fast charging stations, providing a good service for the owners of major charging electric vehicles. In the future, we will also carry out deeper extension around customer needs to build a more complete charging platform. ”

For charging operators, the main problem at present is profitability. Zhang Shanshan said that Wanma shares were originally their own foreign investment in the construction of power plants, "now we have appropriately adjusted their own rhythm, after all, the charging pile operation is a business with a relatively heavy asset structure, the challenge to the company's capital and operation team is still quite large, and at present, with the acceleration of the popularity of electric vehicles, charging demand has also increased rapidly, attracting many enterprises and individuals with related resources to invest in this field, looking for platform service providers and product suppliers, and we are based on these years in the cloud platform, Product technology and offline operation experience accumulation, has a full set of solutions to empower small and medium-sized operators, so since last year, we on the one hand to build, on the one hand, began to build with small and medium-sized operators around the world, the current site on the Wanma Aichong app has included these two types of sites, this way to improve the Wanma Aichong in a region to form a multi-level charging network service capabilities, but also improve our profitability. ”

<h4>It's not a simple "gas station."</h4>

At present, after the approval of the State Grid, the owners of new energy vehicles can install charging piles for private use on the parking spaces of the community to meet the daily charging needs. Public piles can be divided into special piles for the use of operating vehicles and public piles for social vehicles, which are highly efficient and are the main targets of the State Grid and various operators.

Zhang Shanshan introduced that in terms of business model, in the past 3-5 years, electric vehicles have been highly concentrated in the field of public service vehicles (such as buses and sanitation vehicles, official vehicles) and operating vehicles (such as online taxis, logistics vehicles) promoted by policies, so the charging pile business model is also more based on the toG and toB models, and in the field of public transportation, EPC or BOT methods are often used, and in the field of social operation vehicles, the mainstream operators represented by the State Grid, the South Grid and Tlailai Wanma shares have adopted the "self-investment, self-construction and self-operation" The model of public fast charging stations, in this mode, the general asset structure of each charging operator is relatively heavy, and the main business income is highly dependent on charging service fees. "With the promotion and popularization of electric vehicles, on the one hand, the demand for electric vehicles in the field of private cars has gradually emerged, and the demand for charging has become more diversified, on the other hand, the funds and resources of all parties entering the charging pile industry are increasing." This also provides feasibility for diversification of business models. ”

In terms of technological development, the development path of the charging pile industry depends on the development path of electric vehicles, especially power battery technology. From the perspective of the development trend of battery technology in the past two years, the battery energy density continues to increase, the battery pack voltage level continues to increase, and the electric vehicle user group continues to expect to increase the charging speed to approach the refueling experience, and the application and popularization of high-power charging piles and ultra-high-power charging piles will be one of the important directions for the development of the entire industry in the next few years.

According to the data, Wanma Aichong has a provincial key enterprise research institute for intelligent charging of electric vehicles, and has made remarkable achievements in technical research and exploration of the adaptive technical level of the regional power grid, including the echelon utilization of power batteries, the integrated microgrid control of fast charging and energy storage, and the high-power fast charging equipment. Among them, in order to meet the technical needs of high-power charging piles and realize the intelligent distribution of terminal power, Wanma Aichong Research Institute successfully developed 360KV-480KV charging reactors, which have officially entered the market.

"On the other hand, some OEMs have proposed to cancel the OBC interface from the perspective of vehicle cost optimization, and if this technical route is widely adopted, low-power DC charging products will also have a wide range of application scenarios." Zhang Shanshan told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter that at present, Wanma Aichong already has 30kw DC charging products, which are being applied to residential, office buildings, commercial complexes and other scenarios, and the next 15kw, 20kw DC charging products will gradually go to the market, focusing on meeting the "destination charging" needs of new energy vehicle users in addition to rapid power replenishment.

For the comparison of "charging stations" and "gas stations", in Zhang Shanshan's view, both are energy retail sites serving the automobile group, in the offline scenario, the service content will extend from simply supplementing the energy to the vehicle owner's convenience store, after-car service, etc., but the charging station naturally has the basis of networking, each charging pile is an intelligent terminal in the Internet of Vehicles, and at the same time of selling electricity, it is also constantly interacting with each vehicle data, and the urban power distribution network interaction data, Charging piles and charging stations will become a key node connecting the life of car owners, vehicle services and smart energy networks in the city, and through the effective use of data in the future, it will bring greater imagination to the development of the charging pile industry.

Benefiting from the rapid development of new energy vehicles, the research data of Everbright Securities predicts that the market size of charging piles will be 98.2-183.1 billion yuan from 2020 to 2025. In the face of this market that is expected to exceed the scale of 100 billion, charging pile equipment and operating companies will certainly benefit from it.

"The trend of automobile electrification has become increasingly clear, and the corresponding industrial chain construction and change is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our generation, and it is also a great mission that we must go all out." Zhang Shanshan said.

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