The charging anxiety of young people can not be solved by joining the charging pile?

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Text / Meng Huiyuan

Source/Zinc Scale (ID: znkedu)

Queuing, no vacancies, no charging, no refund for the balance… I believe that many tram owners have experienced the bitterness of running for electricity. How do new energy vehicle owners solve the charging problem? Yu Qi, who has just bought an electric car, believes that at this stage, there is no more appropriate solution on the market.

Aiming at this market vacancy, the charging pile franchise brand boldly opens the wheat. “0 yuan to join”, “tens of thousands to start a business”, “no need for manual duty”, it seems to be a very “high-quality” investment project.

However, Zinc Scale found that behind the brand’s many slogans of “easy to start a business”, the overall utilization rate of the charging pile industry is not high, the cost recovery period is long, and the financing channels are single. The existence of hidden expenses shows that this is by no means a project that can make “quick money”.

How difficult is it for young people to achieve tram freedom?

“You follow the navigation and come to a pile of charging piles, either there are no vacancies, or it takes half an hour to find out that it can’t be charged at all. I don’t know if it is broken or not turned on. The whole thing is speechless.” After the electric car passed, Yu Qi felt that there was a high probability that there would be a “journey to meet the devil” waiting for her at the charging time.

Because there are no charging pile brands that can be rented temporarily in her own community, and it is not cost-effective to install a charging pile by yourself, Yu Qi can only go to the nearby business district with charging piles, or find a special public charging pile parking lot, but just like her As said, you will only know what will happen when you drive the car to the end.

“Our community is a new building a few years ago. Although there are more parking spaces than those in the old communities, the problem is that there are too many people with cars. The parking space itself is very tight. Unless you have a parking space and install a private charging pile for electric vehicles, you have to look at fate and charge like me.” Thinking of this difficult time, Yu Qi was quite emotional, “But now I seem to have found the correct way to open the charging pile. Yes, some charging pile brands have developed their own small programs, which can be operated with mobile phones such as suspending charging and canceling charging, but it still does not show whether a car is currently charging, so to sum up, it depends on whether it can be charged or not. lucky.”

Just like the bad experience shared by Yu Qi, Zinc Scale has also seen similar experiences of many users on the Internet, which seems to be explaining to the outside world how far young people are from the freedom of trams.

“I just moved to a new community, and after charging the car a few times, I noticed that there is a problem with the charging pile. My electric car can be charged at most one yuan at a time, and in most cases, it is more than five cents. This is my first time. I paid 4 yuan for charging and refunded more than 3 yuan, and I want to choose to pay 4 yuan for charging again, but I will never refund it again.”

“I met two girls when charging today, and they unplugged other people’s electric cars with 100 or 200 minutes left. I said how do you unplug other people’s chargers? They said that the chargers can be unplugged directly when they are green. It was a few times when the charging didn’t work, and they blamed me for a problem with the charger, so I should have left a note on it, and I can only see the logic of this type of person.”

“Some people are really annoying. There are so many places in the garage that you don’t stop at all, and you choose the ones with public charging piles. If your gas-burning car doesn’t have charging troubles, don’t delay others. We make people who have to go to work the next day always charge the battery. If you don’t have the power on, is it more superior to occupy a position for nothing?”

In addition, Zinc Scale found on the black cat complaint that the reasons for complaints about the brand of charging piles are relatively concentrated, including the lack of charging piles, the lack of contact with customer service, the non-refundable balance, and the sudden withdrawal of the piles. It is not perfect, and the adverse impact on the daily travel of the majority of tram families is obvious.

Is the “0 yuan joining” charging pile business reliable?

Looking at the charging anxiety of young people, the current business of charging piles is becoming more and more urgent and prominent.

“0 yuan to join, no stores, no labor, all equipment is free and unlimited supply, low-cost agency, high real share, later maintenance pays, a strong after-sales team, support you throughout the process, and you can easily get started with zero entrepreneurial experience.”

“The supplier of electric vehicle charging piles and residential charging piles provides charging solutions for residential areas and factories. It does not require manual duty, and it is easy to operate. The equipment is all over the country, and there is no running water.”

“You can start a business with only tens of thousands of dollars. There is no technical threshold. The headquarters will help you lay it out, select the site and plan, and help you to land, so that you can get rid of various negotiation difficulties and seize the blue ocean market.”

In the comment area of ​​these franchise advertisements, Zinc Scale saw the netizens who were interested in expressing their optimism and expectations for this “high-quality” investment project: “How much do you need for this investment?” “How much? How to do it?” “How to join?”

“For specific project details, click on the avatar or swipe left on the video to leave a message, and a dedicated customer service will contact you.” According to the customer service’s reply to these netizens, the zinc scale will be charged in Diandu, Dingding, Street Electric, etc. The affiliate advertising page of the pile brand left its own contact information.

After consultation, Zinc Scale found that some of the charging pile brands are indeed as advertised, and their joining costs are not like milk tea, coffee, chain snack shops and other industries, but in the aspects of opening a store, labor, water and electricity, etc., but in the “site”. In terms of keywords, it is equivalent to providing equipment, and the franchisee negotiates with the property on how to enter the venue.

“We mainly sell equipment, and we need the partner to provide the installation site, and a customer service will provide one-to-one operation guidance based on the partner’s situation in the follow-up.” When explaining “0 yuan to join”, one of the customer service points out that this In fact, it is not a franchise, it is more like a cooperation of resource exchange. That is to say, the equipment does not need to be purchased by franchisees, but is provided and installed by the charging pile brand itself.

The fee for the charging pile brand lies in the “technical operation service” after the equipment is put into operation. Taking one of the brands as an example, he said that when he first settled in, some companies subsidized, so he only charged about 1 point of commission, and after the return of capital and profit, the commission will rise to 3 points.

The other part is the brand party that has no commission at all. To cooperate with them, you need to directly buy a large number of charging pile equipment. The investment cost is undoubtedly higher than the previous one, which is equivalent to a one-shot deal with the brand party. However, “the price of equipment must be more discounted the more you buy it”, and the follow-up admission and operation are the franchisees’ own business.

Bringing into the role of franchisee, when Zinc Scale further asked how to find property resources, some charging pile brands said that although they can provide some property contact information, it does not guarantee that franchisees will get the opportunity to enter the market and charge Whether the pile can be settled actually depends on the franchisee to negotiate the terms of cooperation with the property.

That is to say, the main cost of joining is the admission fee agreed with the property, as well as part of the income that may be given to the property (for details, see that the cooperation package between the franchisee and the property does not include this part of the expenses).

“First of all, let’s see if there is any equipment. If we don’t have it, we will directly discuss the conditions for admission. Even if we have it, it doesn’t matter. It depends on whether these equipments are purchased by themselves or delivered by a third party. There are corresponding solutions.” Another A salesperson told Zinc Scale that if it was purchased by the property, you can communicate with the property to replace it with new equipment, and then buy the old equipment at a price of one or two hundred yuan. See when their contract expires, or the charging pile equipment is not enough, and then talk about how to install more.

Hidden expenses may be higher than the entrance fee

If you want to do business with the tram family, it sounds like the process is really simple, and there are ways of cooperation that don’t require a lot of capital investment, as long as you get the key point of the property (site), but is this really the case?

“Actually, it mainly depends on whether you have resources and relationships.” Under the repeated questions of Zinc Scale, a salesperson of a charging pile brand told the truth, “Of course you can run without looking for relationships. For example, if you are optimistic about a certain venue, then You have to get the contact information of the person in charge of the property first, and then negotiate with them about the conditions of concessions and admission fees. It is certainly time-consuming and laborious. The key is that such a whole process may not be able to be negotiated. , It takes so much time to talk about one, how long will it take to enter more venues? It’s different if you have a relationship, and many intermediate links are reduced, and it’s much simpler to talk about admission.”

From the standpoint of the property owner, it is more straightforward to put it more bluntly. If there is no so-called “relationship”, it must be the charging pile brand that can maximize their income. It can be seen that wanting to cooperate with the property management is far from the above-mentioned means of “replacing old equipment with new equipment”, “waiting for the contract to expire”, and “adding more equipment when there is not enough equipment”.

Recalling that the sales staff of several brands have asked questions related to “Do you have venue resources” when contacting Zinc Scale, the importance of “relationship” is evident.

“For each piece of equipment installed, the property company will be given 3,000 yuan, and the parking space occupancy fee will be paid 1,000 yuan per month. The two parties agree on a five-year operation period. Counting all the costs of these five years, including equipment, venues, installation, operation, etc., Only one charging pile will cost more than 100,000 yuan.” A person in the industry once broke the news that the competition in the charging pile industry is very fierce now, and the admission fees given by some brands have even fallen below the level of many people. Imagine that the hidden expenditure is so large, whether it can be recovered is really a matter of opinion.

In addition to the barriers to entry, franchisees also need to be aware of the inherent limitations of some venues. Some property staff told Zinc Scale that if you want to install charging piles, you not only need to obtain the consent of the property management company, but also whether the selected place is suitable for installation. The demand for charging is high, but the parking space is already tight, and there are fewer parking spaces that can be vacated and suitable for retrofitting.”

He also mentioned that after confirming that it can be installed, it is necessary to submit information to the relevant departments to ensure the safety of the battery. “Take our community as an example. After so many years, we have installed a private charging pile. Think about how troublesome it is?”

It is undeniable that the industry prospects of charging piles are indeed very impressive. According to the “2022 Panorama of China’s Electric Vehicle Charging Pile Industry”, it is expected that after 2025, as the competitiveness of new energy vehicles gradually surpasses that of fuel vehicles, the charging infrastructure market has entered a mature period, and the vehicle-to-pile ratio will reach 2:1 , and the industry will likely be profitable on a large scale.

However, the map also clearly points out that the current charging network construction is far behind the plan, and there are problems such as low overall utilization rate, long cost recovery period, and single financing channel.

If you really want to do this business, you have to think about how to solve these industry problems while taking into account the actual needs of users. After all, this is not a project that can make “quick money” from any point of view.

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