“One vehicle, one pile” is not an ideal solution. To solve the charging difficulty, we also need to build a rich energy supplement system.
After the topic of “charging for one hour and queuing for four hours” of new energy vehicles repeatedly appeared on the microblog hot search during the National Day holiday, with the advent of the cold wave in the northern region, the “mileage anxiety” problems such as “shrinking” of new energy vehicles under low temperature, insufficient battery charging and users’ dare not turn on warm air have been magnified again.
On December 25, according to the financial report of China Central Television, in Beijing, where the charging infrastructure is relatively perfect, even new energy owners get up at 4 a.m. and grab public charging piles to charge new energy vehicles.
Behind the new energy vehicle owners seizing the public charging pile is the discussion on the energy supply mode of new energy vehicles triggered by the topic of “how to solve the charging problem of new energy vehicles”.
It is understood that at present, there are two ways of charging new energy vehicles: charging and changing electricity. Among them, it also takes one or two hours for a high-power fast charging pile to fully charge a vehicle; Although the power change mode only takes a few minutes, due to the increase of power change frequency in winter, the batteries of some power change stations are in short supply, and many car owners can only charge the batteries in the power change station.
“The shrinking battery life in northern winter is a problem faced by all electric vehicles. It’s good to have a 60% discount on NEDC mileage. Consumers in the north of the Yellow River need to consider carefully when buying electric vehicles. It’s best to have indoor fixed parking spaces and charging piles at home.” Some people in the automotive industry told the 21st Century Business Herald reporter.
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 to me about the difficulty of charging pile installation, I feel very heavy. This year, Weima delivered more than 40000 cars, but nearly 20000 charging piles delivered with the car can’t be sent out.” In December 20th, Shen Hui, founder of the car, make complaints about the installation of private charging piles in his personal micro-blog account.
The cause of the incident was that a Weima W6 owner had picked up the car for two months, but failed to install a private charging pile in the community.
As the charging pile of new energy vehicle infrastructure, the problem of difficult private installation has always existed, which is not only a pain point for users, but also a pain point for car enterprises, not just a problem faced by Weima automobile. Tens of thousands of car owners, including Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng, Byd Company Limited(002594) and other brands, have not installed household charging piles.
Whether the northern car owners “rob the public charging pile at 4 a.m.” or “Weima can’t send 20000 household charging piles”, it reflects the contradiction between the explosive growth of new energy vehicles and the difficulty of charging.
difficult charging restricts the consumption of new energy vehicles
Charging problems such as low utilization of charging piles, difficult for users to find piles, uneven distribution of charging piles and inconsistent standards continue to perplex the popularity of new energy vehicles. Statistics show that 56% of survey users reported that inconvenient and slow charging are the biggest reasons that hinder them from buying electric vehicles.
The reporter visited a community in Beijing and found that there are nearly 200 new energy vehicles in the community, of which more than 100 cannot be charged in the community, and can only be charged by a public charging pile a few kilometers away from the community.
There are more than 700 underground garage parking spaces in the reporter’s community, but there are only 38 public charging piles. At about 9 a.m. on December 27, more than 20 new energy vehicles were still charging.
“At that time, the national policy required that public charging piles should be installed according to the proportion of parking spaces, and the star charging people entered the site to install them.” The parking lot manager told reporters that at present, the charging pile in the parking lot must be enough.
According to the statistics of China charging technology and facilities alliance, as of November 2021, the cumulative number of national charging infrastructure was 2.385 million, a year-on-year increase of 55%, and the vehicle pile ratio was about 3:1.
The development speed of new energy vehicles is faster and faster than the layout speed of charging piles. According to the latest data, from January to November 2021, the increment of national charging infrastructure was 704000 units, and the sales volume of new energy vehicles was 2.99 million. Both new energy vehicles and charging infrastructure developed rapidly, with a pile vehicle increment ratio of 1:4.2.
“The sales volume of new energy vehicles has increased explosively, but the development speed of charging and replacing infrastructure does not match.” Wang Du, vice president of China Automobile Circulation Association, said.
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 in charging. First, the construction of infrastructure restricts the transformation from traditional gasoline vehicles to new energy vehicles. Especially when the stock of new energy vehicles accounts for more than 50% by 2025 or even 2030, the pressure will be greater and even become the bottleneck of industry transformation; second, the existing public charging efficiency is low, which can not meet the needs of users for energy supplement To meet the needs of enterprises, it can not meet the requirements of commercial operation. ” Previously, sun Guangmin, vice president of ideal automobile and head of charging network, said in an interview with 21st Century Business Herald.
“one vehicle one pile” optimal solution?
“In the first tier cities, the installation of charging piles is indeed a problem. First of all, there must be parking spaces. Having their own property rights in the old community or urban area is difficult for a group of people. Secondly, after having parking spaces, convince the community management unit. There is a problem of insufficient capacitance, which is a few cases. Unless every household installs them, the main consideration of the property is to avoid safety responsibility…” After Shen Hui microblogging, some netizens said.
Indeed, due to the limitations of many objective factors such as capacitance and safety, it is unrealistic for everyone to install private charging piles.
“Private household charging piles are not allowed to be installed in community parking lots.” A few days ago, the reporter called the property and parking lot management unit in the community and got a reply saying, “not to mention the wire cost and capacitance limit required for the installation of charging piles. From the perspective of fire protection, all aspects of fire protection can not pass. If charging is required, there are public charging piles for star charging in the community.”
Statistics show that among the 12000 residential areas in Beijing, 2700 are old ones, 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 at all.
On the one hand, the power grid pressure increases. Taking 500 households’ community as an example, it is equipped with 3 transformers with a total power of 3000kva and a capacitance of 6kW per household. Calculated by 7KW of slow charging pile, the realization of “one pile per vehicle” requires an additional 3 Transformers in the community, which is equivalent to the specification of 1000 households’ community.
At the same time, from an economic point of view, the expansion needs to increase the community transformer, and the cost of each transformer is about 200000. Coupled with the cost of re arranging cables, the expansion cost is as high as hundreds of thousands. For consumers, according to the industry conventions, a considerable number of owners face high wiring costs and pipe protection costs.
In addition, as the charging pile entering the community will increase the management difficulty and safety risk of the community, the property lacking interest driven generally has a less positive attitude towards building piles in the community.
“‘one car, one pile ‘is actually a waste of resources. To solve the charging anxiety of new energy users, we should look at different scenarios. Start from different scenarios to solve the charging problem.” Earlier this year, Tong zongqi, director of Information Department of China electric vehicle charging infrastructure promotion alliance, said in an interview with 21st Century Business Herald that to solve the charging problem of new energy vehicle consumers, we need to call for the introduction of corresponding specific guiding policies, fully mobilize relevant resources of the whole society, and focus on promoting the construction of charging piles and the improvement of energy supplement facilities in the community, To facilitate and meet the user experience.
Technically, the consensus in the industry is to promote high-power high-voltage fast charging technology, reduce the waiting time for charging, unify the interface and improve adaptability.
“High power, high voltage and fast charging is not only a breakthrough in technology, but also a breakthrough in business model. At present, the charging stations laid out by operators in the early stage are difficult to make profits because of their low utilization rate. Under the low level of operation services, users are not satisfied with the charging stations, but it is difficult for the operating stations to invest, forming a vicious circle. Faster charging not only brings better benefits to consumers The new experience will also bring higher benefits to operators. ” Recently, Gao Xiang, vice president of New Energy Research Institute of China electric vehicle hundred people’s Association, said at the partner dialogue activity of 2021 Huawei intelligent vehicle solution ecological forum.
At the same time, we should optimize the layout of charging infrastructure, provide consumers with efficient and convenient charging places, pay attention to highways, social public charging stations, etc., and solve the problem of rapid energy supplement from the perspective of planning.
government enterprise collaboration enriches energy supplement methods
Facing the “charging anxiety” of new energy vehicle users, as the main body of new energy vehicle production and development, many new energy vehicle enterprises are also gradually exploring various schemes to solve the problem of energy supplement for users, accessing public charging piles, self built super charging piles / super charging stations, self built power exchange stations and power exchange leasing services through self built / third-party cooperation Establish a joint venture charging pile construction and layout company, provide brand exclusive household charging pile installation free of charge or charge, and provide various characteristic mobile energy supplement services to enrich multi scenario energy supplement methods.
Among them, Tesla and Xiaopeng built their own overcharge stations, Weilai “walked on two legs” for charging and power exchange, and Weima was the first to lay out public charging infrastructure. The data show that the public charging network applicable to Weima has covered 32 provincial administrative regions and 361 cities in China. Users can use more than 440000 public charging piles in China through the “i.e. customer bank” app, covering more than 40% of the total number of public charging piles in China.
Compared with public charging piles, the development of community household charging piles is still a blue ocean. After the introduction of effective solutions, its commercial value and people’s livelihood value are immeasurable.
It is noteworthy that in order to accelerate the improvement of the service guarantee capacity of charging and changing infrastructure and support the development of new energy vehicle industry, in May this year, the national development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration organized and drafted the implementation opinions on further improving the service guarantee capacity of charging and changing infrastructure (Exposure Draft), which required to improve the promotion mechanism of charging pile construction in residential communities, Comprehensively promote the construction and transformation of charging piles in residential communities; If the installation conditions are met, the residential community management unit and the owners’ committee shall not obstruct users from building piles.
At the same time, we will promote the construction of charging piles in existing residential communities and strictly implement the requirements for the construction of new residential communities. The construction and installation conditions of 100% fixed parking spaces and reserved charging piles shall be implemented in new residential communities.
In addition, charging operation enterprises or residential community management units are encouraged to accept the entrustment of the owner to carry out “unified construction and operation” of charging piles in residential communities, uniformly provide paid services such as charging pile planning, construction, operation and maintenance, and improve the safety management level of charging piles and the proportion of green power consumption; Encourage new modes such as “sharing adjacent parking spaces” and “one pile for more vehicles”.
It is noteworthy that in the current “new blue ocean” of community energy supplement that consumers are concerned about, Weima is working with Yajule and other real estate enterprises to deepen the layout of household charging piles, ensure that 100% of its new houses are equipped with parking spaces or reserved construction and installation conditions, plan the public charging area of the new community, and provide a variety of flexible energy supplement means such as slow charging, fast charging and super fast charging.
“Optimize the layout, reduce the time for car owners to find charging piles, and refer to the models of local gas stations. No matter where the car owners are, they can find an available charging pile within 5km, so as to improve the average utilization rate of charging piles.” Liu Kai, director of the technology and Certification Department of China electric vehicle charging infrastructure promotion alliance, said, “the government and enterprises can really run new energy vehicles by cooperating, building, sharing and managing together.”
(21st Century Business Herald)
