Policy is undoubtedly a weather vane. At the National People's Congress held in May, "power exchange" was named by the state for the first time. In the "new infrastructure" section of the government work report, the term "building charging piles" was formally extended to "adding charging piles, changing power stations and other facilities". Miao Wei, then Minister of Industry and Information Technology, also said, "We will continue to increase the charging infrastructure and encourage the interconnection of various charging and replacing facilities."
In other words, these short seven words added to the work report have officially driven hundreds of billions of automobile markets. Soon, many enterprises began to take action.
On July 27, BAIC Group reached a strategic cooperation with State Grid Electric Vehicle Service Co., Ltd., indicating that it will carry out in-depth cooperation in the field of power exchange; On the 28th, China Southern Power Grid Electric Vehicle Service Co., Ltd. and Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd. also signed a strategic cooperation agreement, announcing that heavy truck replacement will be the key cooperation direction of both parties. On the 30th, Changan New Energy established Chongqing Power Exchange Alliance and signed a contract with Aodong New Energy to provide power exchange services for its E-series models. On August 4th, Aodong New Energy and Japan Softbank New Energy reached a strategic cooperation, and cooperated in the fields of power exchange mode and battery recycling.
Soon, the new forces of building cars also kept pace. Whether it's the BaaS model of Weilai Automobile, the battery bank of He Zhong Automobile or the battery rental service officially launched by Xpeng Automobile, although they are called differently, they all belong to the service model of "separation of automobile and electricity".
It can be seen that in just two months, this strong wind has blown all over the entire industrial chain. As early as a few years ago, Beiqi New Energy, as the leader of new energy vehicles in China, has taken the lead in becoming a promotion enterprise of power exchange mode.
Then, ten years later, when the country is vigorously building charging piles and car companies are scrambling to develop long-life and fast-charging technologies, can the "separation of vehicles and electricity" in "Back to Life" live up to expectations?
The separation modes are quite different.
First of all, although they are all called "separation of vehicles and electricity" mode, judging from the current plans of several enterprises to put into the market, the so-called "separation" is also true and false.
Among them, Wei Lai is undoubtedly the representative of "true separation".
On August 20th, Weilai launched NIO? Buzz? Weilai battery rental service, if users choose this mode to buy a car, the car price will be reduced by 70,000 yuan, and the 980 yuan battery rental fee will be paid every month.
At the press conference, Li Bin, the founder of Weilai, clearly pointed out that although the vehicle was still equipped with batteries when it left the factory, at the time of sale, the car was sold to users and the batteries belonged to its battery asset company. That is to say, users who choose this scheme, even if they pay 980 yuan every month, still have no battery ownership in essence. This is similar to * * * charging treasure running around the city. Although each one is fully charged, none of them belong to you.
Therefore, Weilai's "separation of vehicles and electricity" model adopts a separation model in ownership and financial plan.
Tucki, which launched the battery leasing plan on September 1, is a member of the "fake" separation. Literally, Xpeng Motors' battery rental plan is divided into two versions, namely "early adopter" and "standard". Under the standard version of the battery lease plan, the prices of Tucki P7 and Tucki G3 are reduced by 75,000 yuan and 60,000 yuan respectively, while the users who purchase P7 models need to divide them into 84 installments, and each installment will be sent to 980 yuan and G3 780 yuan.
Obviously, although all of them are in 980 yuan, after the 84th issue, Tucki, who received a 7-point rental fee, still sold the batteries to the users. In other words, although it is called "separation of vehicles and electricity", it is essentially just an installment loan.
Similarly, Nezha Auto, which recently launched the "Battery Bank", is likely to be a member of the "Tucki War Camp". In August this year, Nezha Auto, together with Contemporary Ampere Technology Co., Ltd., Huading Guolian and other suppliers, set up a "battery bank" to provide consumers with the service of renting batteries.
Although the details of the plan have not been announced, Nezha has made it clear that this is not a power exchange model, but a financial product. It can be speculated that no matter how different the schemes are, the essence of installment purchase is still unavoidable.
Therefore, from the current point of view, perhaps only Weilai and BAIC can truly meet the national requirements and realize "power exchange".
Why did the "separation of vehicle and electricity" appear again?
Although the ways of separation are different, we have to admit that there are more now than a few years ago. Compared with the B-end service, due to the addition of some new entrants, "power exchange" has indeed entered the sight of more C-end consumers.
Theoretically, in addition to completely solving the problems of difficult and slow charging for users, it also has greater advantages for enterprises and industrial chains.
First of all, because charging usually takes a long time, in order to improve the utilization rate, it is necessary to set aside a large charging work area for vehicles during construction, but the speed of changing electricity is much faster than charging, so it can be more flexible when selecting the site, just setting aside the area for charging the battery monomer.
Secondly, under the same battery conditions, the degree of loss in the battery replacement mode will be lower than that in the charging mode, which will increase the life of the battery. This greatly improves the safety of battery recycling and use in the later period.
We saw such a set of data in a college test. In the charging mode and battery replacement mode, the newly manufactured battery, the battery after one year's use and the battery after two years' use are selected for comparison. Although the battery observed in the battery changing mode comes from the bus and the charging mode comes from the private car, the capacity retention rate of the battery in each period can still reveal some information.
It is not difficult to see from the comparison chart that with the increase of time, the attenuation rate of the battery in charging mode is obviously higher than that in changing mode. In fact, this is not difficult to understand, because the staff of the power station are professionally trained, and because there is no requirement for fast charging, the power station usually uses more suitable power to supplement the battery, so this will definitely play a better role in maintaining and prolonging its service life.
In addition, from the perspective of charging cost, the cost of the power exchange mode is actually less. Let's work out an account. Assume that the charging price of DC charging piles is 2 yuan /kW, and the capacity of each charging station is 2000kW. At the same time, the slow charging power of electric vehicles is designed to be 4000W and the fast charging power is 8000W W. On this basis, we can see that:
In the ideal mode, the ratio of car to charging pile in charging mode should be greater than 1. According to the ratio of 1 10%, if the ratio of DC charging pile to AC charging pile is set to 1: 50, the total charging power = number of cars * 1 10% can be obtained.
If the power exchange mode is adopted, AC charging piles can be equipped according to the car-pile ratio of 5: 1, so the total charging power is the number of cars/5 * 4000 W.
Although both of them are in an ideal state, it is not difficult to see from the comparison of these two sets of data that the charging cost can be obviously saved by adopting the power exchange mode, and there is a great profit space for enterprises that produce and build charging piles.
Reality is still full of difficulties.
Although the idea is perfect, "theory" is most afraid of encountering "reality". With the policy bonus, the power exchange industry seems to be a hot spot again, but the problems encountered before 10 have not been completely solved so far.
Such as how to make a profit. People who know something about this industry must be better? Place is no stranger to this company. As a world-renowned company, it is better to do "power exchange" business? Place defined itself as a power exchange operator from the beginning-it can provide you with battery maintenance, replacement and charging services no matter which car manufacturer you buy.
The result is obvious. After evaporating $6543.8+25 million, it is better? Place finally declared the failure of its vision with bankruptcy. Is it because it is better? With the bankruptcy of Place, the US government even publicly stated that the power exchange model is a dead end.
In fact, a large amount of upfront investment has overwhelmed many enterprises. Suppose an enterprise invests in 100 power stations, and the battery production service company is responsible for replacing the batteries. If a charging station can serve 100 vehicles at the price of 4 yuan per kWh, the company's annual profit can reach 40 million yuan, and the profit of each vehicle is 4,000 yuan.
The cost of each battery is 40-50 thousand yuan. If the service life of each battery is 5 years, then each car will lose up to 6000 yuan a year, and the total loss will reach 60 million yuan a year. Therefore, in the absence of market scale, it is difficult to achieve profitability in the power exchange model.
If we want to expand the scale, we must unify the battery standards, but this is not easy for today's highly competitive market. Zhang Xiang, an analyst in the automotive industry, said, "The battery replacement mode is conditional, not that every car company can do it. The biggest problem now is that the battery specifications are not uniform. For example, BYD, even the battery specifications of its own internal models are not exactly the same. It is impossible to build power stations for so many car companies and prepare battery packs of different specifications. "
Therefore, Zhang Xiang believes that at present, in the field of electric taxis, it is very promising to realize the profit of power exchange mode similar to that made by BAIC. "A team like BAIC may be close to 20,000 vehicles. With such a large volume, if you change power stations, you can achieve economies of scale. " Moreover, he also mentioned that power stations are usually charged at night, and the electricity bill is only about 10% during the day, which is its biggest advantage.
At the same time, he also believes that enterprises like Weilai do the power exchange mode, which actually includes the cost of power exchange in the car price, but because it can create a very good user experience for users, users pay the bill. But in this way, it is difficult for other companies to achieve profitability. ?
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.