Author丨Du Qiaomei
Edit丨Zhang Ruosi
Picture Source丨Picture Worm
Following the topic of “charging for one hour and queuing for four hours” during the National Day holiday, new energy vehicles have repeatedly appeared on Weibo’s hot searches. With the advent of the cold wave in the northern region, the cruising range of new energy vehicles has “shrunk” and the batteries are not fully charged. The problem of “mileage anxiety” such as users not daring to turn on the warm air has been magnified again.
On December 25, according to CCTV Finance, in Beijing, where the charging infrastructure is relatively well-developed, new energy vehicle owners even got up at 4 am to grab a public charging pile to charge new energy vehicles.
Behind the scramble for public charging piles by new energy vehicle owners is the discussion on the energy supply method of new energy vehicles triggered by the topic of “how to solve the problem of new energy vehicle charging”.
It is understood that currentlyThere are two main ways to charge new energy vehicles: charging and switching.Among them, it takes one or two hours to fully charge a car with the high-power fast charging pile; although the battery swap mode only takes a few minutes, due to the increase in the frequency of battery swaps in winter, the supply of batteries in some swap stations is in short supply. Few car owners can only recharge their batteries at a replacement station.
“The shrinking battery life in the northern winter is a problem that all electric vehicles face. It is good to have a 40% discount on NEDC mileage. Consumers in areas north of the Yellow River need to consider carefully when buying electric vehicles. It is best to have indoors at home. Fixed parking spaces and charging piles.” A person in the auto industry told a reporter from the 21st Century Business Herald.
However, due to the existence of practical problems such as capacitance, safety, and fire protection, it is not easy to install household charging piles.
“Every time I hear car owners complain about the difficulty of installing charging piles, I feel very heavy. This year, Weimar delivered more than 40,000 vehicles, but nearly 20,000 of the charging piles delivered with the car could not be delivered.” On December 20th, Shen Hui, the founder of Weimar Motors, posted on his personal Weibo account “Tucao” about the difficulty of installing private charging piles.
The cause of the incident is that a Weimar W6 (Configuration|Inquiry) owner has been picking up the car for two months, but has never been able to install a private charging pile in the community.
As a charging pile for new energy vehicle infrastructure, the problem of difficulty in private installation has always existed. This is not only a pain point for users, but also a pain point for car companies. It is not only a problem faced by Weimar Motors, including Tesla, Weilai, Tens of thousands of car owners, including Xiaopeng, BYD and other brands, have not yet installed household charging piles.
Whether it is northern car owners “grabbing public charging piles at four o’clock in the morning” or “Weimar cannot deliver 20,000 household charging piles”, it reflects the contradiction between the current explosive growth of new energy vehicles and the difficulty of charging.
Difficulty in charging restricts consumption of new energy vehicles
Charging problems such as low utilization rate of charging piles, difficulty in finding piles for users, uneven distribution of charging piles, and inconsistent standards continue to haunt the popularity of new energy vehicles. Statistics show that 56% of surveyed users report that inconvenience and slow charging are the biggest reasons hindering them from buying electric vehicles.
The reporter visited a community in Beijing and found that there are currently nearly 200 new energy vehicles in the community, of which more than 100 cannot be charged in the community, and can only choose public charging piles a few kilometers away from the community to charge.
There are more than 700 parking spaces in the underground garage of the reporter’s community, but there are only 38 public charging piles. At around nine o’clock in the morning on December 27, more than 20 new energy vehicles were still charging.
“At that time, the national policy stipulated that public charging piles should be installed according to the proportion of parking spaces, and those who charge stars would enter the site to install.” The parking lot manager told reporters that the current parking lot charging piles must be sufficient.
According to statistics from the China Charging Technology Facilities Alliance, as of November 2021, the cumulative number of charging infrastructure in the country was 2.385 million units, an increase of 55% year-on-year, and the vehicle-to-stack ratio was approximately 3:1.
The development speed of new energy vehicles is getting faster and faster than the speed of charging pile layout. The latest data shows that from January to November 2021, the national charging infrastructure will increase by 704,000 units, and the sales of new energy vehicles will be 2.990 million. Both new energy vehicles and charging infrastructure will develop rapidly, and the pile-to-vehicle increment ratio will be 1: 4.2 .
“The sales of new energy vehicles have exploded, but the development speed of the charging and swapping infrastructure is not matched.” said Wang Du, vice president of the China Automobile Dealers Association.
In addition, due to the uneven distribution of public charging piles, the average utilization rate of public charging piles is less than 10%.
“At present, there are two biggest problems with charging. One is that the construction of infrastructure restricts the conversion of traditional gasoline vehicles to new energy vehicles.Especially by 2025 or even 2030, when the entire stock of new energy vehicles exceeds 50%, the pressure will be even greater, and it will even become a bottleneck in the transformation of the industry;The second is that the existing public charging efficiency is low, which can neither meet the user’s demand for energy supply, nor can it meet the requirements of the commercial operation of enterprises. “Prior to this, Sun Guangmin, vice president of Ideal Motors and person in charge of charging network, said in an interview with a reporter from 21st Century Business Herald.
“One vehicle, one pile” optimal solution?
“In first-tier cities, the installation of charging piles is indeed a problem. First of all, there must be parking spaces. Owning their own property rights parking spaces in old communities or urban areas has stumped a group of people. Second, after owning parking spaces, convince the community management unit. There is indeed insufficient capacitance. This is a rare case, unless every house is installed, the main consideration of the property is to avoid safety responsibilities…” After Shen Hui posted a post on Weibo, some netizens said.
Indeed, due to the limitations of multiple objective factors such as electrical capacity and safety, it is not realistic for everyone to install private charging piles.
“It is not allowed to install private household charging piles in the community parking lot.” A few days ago, the reporter called the property and parking lot management unit of the community and got a reply saying, “Let’s not talk about the cost of wires required to install the charging piles and the limitation of electric capacity. From the perspective of fire protection, It can be seen that all requirements of fire protection cannot be passed. If charging is required, there are public charging piles for charging by stars in the community.”
Statistics show that among the 12,000 residential communities in Beijing, 2,700 are old communities, with less than 0.5 parking spaces per household, and nearly 40% of private electric vehicle parking spaces do not have the capacity to install charging piles.
On the one hand, the pressure on the power grid has increased. Take a 500-household community as an example, equipped with 3 transformers, with a total power of 3000kva, and an electric capacity of 6kw per household. Calculated with a slow charging pile of 7kw, the realization of “one vehicle, one pile” requires an additional 3 transformers in the community, which is equivalent to 1,000 households. Specification.
At the same time, from an economic point of view, capacity expansion requires additional community transformers, each costing more than 200,000 yuan, plus the cost of re-arranging cables, and the cost of capacity expansion is as high as hundreds of thousands. As far as consumers are concerned, according to the industry’s conventions as the 150-meter wiring distance limit and 30-meter free wiring distance “profiles”, a considerable number of owners face high wiring costs and pipe protection costs.
In addition, since the charging piles entering the community will increase the management difficulty and safety risks of the community, the lack of profit-driven properties generally have a less active attitude towards the construction of the community.
“One car, one pile” is actually a bit of a waste of resources. To solve the anxiety of new energy users, we still need to look at different scenarios. Start with different scenarios to solve the charging problem.” Earlier this year, China’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure promoted In an interview with 21st Century Business Herald, the director of the Information Department of the Alliance, Tong Zongqi, said that to solve the charging problem of new energy vehicle consumers requires multiple calls for the introduction of corresponding specific guidance policies, fully mobilize relevant resources of the whole society, and focus on promoting the construction of charging piles in the community and replenishing energy. Only with perfect facilities can it be convenient and satisfy the user experience.
Technically, the current consensus in the industry is to promote high-power and high-voltage fast charging technology to reduce the waiting time for charging, and at the same time unify interfaces to improve adaptability.
“High-power and high-voltage fast charging is not only a technological breakthrough, it may also form a breakthrough in the business model. At present, the charging stations deployed by operators in the early stages are difficult to make profits due to low utilization rates. Users are dissatisfied with charging stations, but it is difficult for operating stations to invest, forming a vicious circle. Faster charging not only brings a better experience to consumers, but also brings higher benefits to operators.” A few days ago, China Gao Xiang, vice president of the New Energy Research Institute of the Electric Vehicle Hundreds of Peoples Association, said at the partner dialogue event of the 2021 Huawei Smart Car Solutions Ecological Forum.
At the same time, it is necessary to optimize the layout of charging infrastructure, provide consumers with efficient and convenient charging places, pay attention to highways, social public charging stations, etc., to solve the problem of rapid replenishment from the planning.
Government-enterprise collaboration enriches energy supplement methods
Faced with the “charging anxiety” of new energy vehicle users, as the main body of new energy vehicle production and development, many new energy vehicle companies are gradually exploring various solutions to solve the problem of users’ energy supplements, through self-built/third-party cooperation. Into public charging piles, self-built super charging piles/super charging stations, self-built power swap stations and power swap rental services, joint ventures to establish charging pile construction and layout companies, free or chargeable brand exclusive household charging pile installations, and various special mobile supplements Enriching multi-scenario replenishment methods.
Among them, Tesla and Xiaopeng built their own overcharging stations, Weilai used “walking on two legs” for charging and replacing electricity, and Weimar was the first to deploy public charging infrastructure. The data shows that the current public charging network applicable to Weimar has covered 32 provincial administrative regions and 361 cities across the country. Users can use the “Instant Travel” APP to use more than 440,000 public charging piles across the country, covering public charging piles nationwide. More than 40% of the total.
Compared with public charging piles, the development of community home charging piles is still a blue ocean. After effective solutions are introduced, its commercial value and people’s livelihood value will be immeasurable.
It is worth noting that in order to accelerate the improvement of the service guarantee capacity of charging and swapping infrastructure and support the development of the new energy automobile industry, in May this year, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration drafted the “Regarding the further improvement of the service guarantee capacity of charging and swapping infrastructure Implementation Opinions (Draft for Solicitation of Opinions)” requires the improvement of the mechanism for promoting the construction of charging piles in residential communities, and the overall promotion of the construction and renovation of charging piles in residential communities; where the installation conditions are available, the residential community management unit and the owner’s committee shall not obstruct users from building piles.
At the same time, promote the construction of charging piles in existing residential communities and strictly implement the requirements for the construction of new residential communities. Newly built residential communities should implement 100% fixed parking spaces reserved for the construction and installation of charging piles.
In addition, encourage charging operation companies or residential community management units to accept the owner’s entrustment to carry out the “integrated construction and unified operation” of charging piles in residential communities, provide unified charging services such as charging pile planning, construction, operation and maintenance, and improve the safety management level and greenness of charging piles. Electricity consumption ratio; encourage new models such as “nearby parking space sharing” and “multiple cars and one pile”.
It’s worth noting that the “new blue ocean” of energy supplementation in the current consumer-focused community,Weimar is working with real estate companies such as Agile to deepen the layout of home charging piles to ensure that 100% of its new residential buildings are equipped with parking spaces or reserve construction and installation conditions, plan public charging areas for new communities, and provide a diversified mix of slow and fast charging. A variety of flexible energy supplement methods such as charging and super fast charging.
“Optimize the layout to reduce the time for car owners to find charging piles. Refer to the gas station model in various places. No matter where the car owner is, a usable charging pile can be found within 5 kilometers, which improves the average utilization rate of charging piles.” China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Liu Kai, director of the Technology and Certification Department of the Promotion Alliance, said, “The government and enterprises work together to build, share, and manage together, so that new energy vehicles can truly run.”
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