Written by | DoNews Edited by Zhang Yu | Yang Bocheng
The competition in the battery replacement industry is intensifying.
On December 31, 2022, Weilai officially disclosed that in 2022, 528 new power stations will be added to the layout of the country, and the cumulative number has reached 1,305 (including 346 expressway power stations). NIO users have changed batteries more than 15 million times.
Previously, on “NIO Day 2022”, NIO also released the third-generation power station. It is reported that the third-generation power exchange station adopts a brand-new three-station coordinated power exchange mode, which improves the service capacity by 30% compared with the second-generation power exchange station. In 2023, the deployment of the third-generation power stations will begin, and more than 1,700 power stations are planned to be built in China.
Not only NIO, but also in December, CATL’s patent for the battery swap station was authorized. According to the disclosed information, the battery swap station body has a battery storage area and a turnover channel; the battery storage area includes adjustment positions and multiple storage positions. The turnover channel is used to transfer the batteries on the storage position; the adjustment position and the turnover channel together form a battery adjustment area. The wall of the main body in the first direction forms a battery inlet and outlet, and the battery inlet and outlet are connected to the battery adjustment area.
In addition, Ruilan Automobile, Guangzhou Automobile Group, SAIC Motor, Sinopec, and PetroChina have also entered the battery swap industry one after another. Behind the gathering of many powerful players in various fields, they are actually vying for a huge cake with a scale of 100 billion . Orient Securities pointed out in a research report that by 2025, the number of battery swap models in China is expected to reach about 5 million, and by 2030, this number may be close to 40 million. From this point of view, by 2025, the size of the entire equipment market will reach 70 billion yuan, and the scale of the operating market is expected to touch 263.1 billion yuan. The average annual compound growth rate from 2021 to 2025 is expected to exceed 100%. 01．
Has the outlet for power replacement arrived?
Energy replenishment has always been one of the most concerned topics for the new energy vehicle industry and new energy vehicle owners. The power exchange mode of replacing the power battery of new energy vehicles to solve the battery life problem has high hopes.
The battery replacement industry started in 2007 and will enter a period of rapid development in 2020. Tianyancha data shows that there are currently more than 81,000 battery replacement-related companies in China, of which 45,000 will be added in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 171.1%, and 16,600 will be added in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 348.7%.
Behind the rapid development of the battery swap industry is the huge advantage of the battery swap model.
First of all, for the owners of new energy vehicles, the battery replacement mode can not only achieve rapid energy replenishment and higher efficiency, but also better solve the problems of power battery maintenance, performance degradation, and safety; secondly, for new energy vehicles For car companies, the cost of power batteries often accounts for 40%-60% of the cost of a complete vehicle, which greatly increases the overall cost of new energy vehicles, while the “separation of vehicle and battery” in the battery swap mode can significantly reduce the cost of car purchases. Especially after the decline of the “National Subsidy”, models with a battery swap model may be more popular in the market; finally, the power battery is managed and maintained by professionals at the swap station. Compared with individual consumers, the power battery under the former management The service life can be extended by 30%-60%, and it is easier to find problems with power batteries, thereby greatly reducing battery failures and safety accidents.
The advantages of the battery swap model have gradually been favored at the policy level.
Since 2021, policies to support the development of the battery swap industry have been issued frequently. Among them, the “Notice on Starting the Pilot Work of the Application of the Battery Swap Mode for New Energy Vehicles” issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in October 2021 has decided to The pilot work of the application of new energy vehicle battery replacement mode was launched, and a total of 11 cities were included in the pilot scope.
The goal of the pilot work is to promote more than 100,000 vehicles and over 1,000 battery replacement stations. In addition, it also includes breakthroughs in key technologies for battery replacement products, clearing up the infrastructure approval process, establishing a vehicle monitoring platform for battery replacement, and improving the technical standard system for battery replacement. Form the industrial ecology of the battery exchange model, build a battery exchange policy support system, and so on.
In March 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the “Key Points of Automobile Standardization Work in 2022” clearly requiring that the construction and improvement of the electric vehicle charging and swapping standard system should be accelerated, and the vehicle-mounted swapping system for pure electric vehicles, a general platform for swapping, and a battery swapping system should be promoted. Development of standards such as battery packs.
The development space of battery swap mode cannot be ignored. According to the “Research Report on China’s New Energy Vehicle Battery Swap Market in 2022” released by iResearch, it is conservatively predicted from the demand side that the number of battery swap stations in China is expected to reach 31,000 by 2025; The volume is expected to reach 34,000 by 2025.
It is obvious that the power swap model, which was once not optimistic, has entered the fast lane of development. 02．
Power replacement is still facing difficulties
Shenang Securities pointed out in the research report that the battery swap mode will become an inevitable form of popularization of new energy vehicles in all scenarios, and is an effective supplement to the charging mode. The first year of rapid development.”
Some people in the industry predict that in the future, the battery replacement model for passenger cars will take shape, especially after the energy replenishment time is greatly shortened, it can more effectively solve the problem of charging anxiety of new energy vehicle owners.
Although the battery swap industry is developing at a high speed, what needs to be splashed with cold water is that the battery swap mode has not been truly popularized.
First of all, the cost of battery replacement business is much higher than that of charging business. The battery swap business is an asset-heavy model. The initial research and development and adaptation costs for the battery swap block, as well as the construction, leasing, and operating costs of the swap station in the later stage are all a considerable expense.
According to the model designed by Huaxi Securities, the fixed investment (including power battery) is 5 million yuan, the depreciation period is 10 years, the operating costs such as land rent and labor costs are 600,000 yuan/year, the charging capacity is 70kWh each time, and the charging service fee It is 1.8 yuan/kWh, and the number of daily charging reaches 50 times, and the investment recovery period of a single charging station is 5.21 years.
Secondly, the utilization rate of the power station is not high. According to the calculation model of CITIC Securities Research Institute, the single-station input cost of passenger car swapping stations is about 4.9 million yuan, and the single-station input cost of commercial vehicle swapping stations is about 10 million yuan. The break-even point of the passenger car replacement station corresponds to a utilization rate of about 20%, that is, it serves 60 vehicles per day, while the break-even point of the commercial vehicle replacement station corresponds to a utilization rate of about 10%, that is, it serves 24 vehicles per day. When reaching 100 vehicles, the net profit margins of the two are 18% and 19% respectively. But at this stage, the utilization rate of the power station has not yet reached the break-even point.
Finally, the lack of uniform technical standards for power batteries is also a major obstacle. As a highly customized product, due to the different research and development directions and standards of power battery manufacturers, the power batteries produced cannot be unified in terms of energy density, battery structure, and size specifications. At present, there are dozens of models of power batteries. Almost every time a car company develops a new model, there will be a new model of power battery to match it. The specifications of the power battery are not uniform, so that the replacement station can only serve a single brand of models, and cannot Cross-platform and cross-model use, the replacement station will not be able to radiate more models, resulting in waste of resources. 03．
Commercialization problems to be solved
A fact that has to be faced squarely is that there is still no precedent for battery replacement companies to achieve profitability.
Take the Israeli battery swap service provider Better Place, which first proposed the battery swap model, as an example. As early as 2007, it proposed an idea: to establish a complete set of battery swap systems and technologies, so that new energy vehicles can solve the battery life problem by replacing the power battery. and slow charging problem.
In order to implement the battery swap mode as soon as possible, Better Place signed a cooperation agreement with Renault for 100,000 Fluence ZE models. However, Fluence ZE only sold more than 1,400 units in the end. Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn even expressed pessimistically that Fluence ZE was the last Renault model designed according to the battery swap mode, which is a dead end. one. In 2013, Better Place had to close its headquarters in California and declared bankruptcy soon after.
Since then, the curse that the battery replacement model is difficult to commercialize has not been broken. In 2019, when BAIC New Energy increased the capital of the third-party power exchange operator Aodong New Energy, an announcement revealed that the net loss of Aodong New Energy from January to April of that year reached 19.1222 million yuan. Later, Yang Ye, co-founder and senior vice president of Aodong New Energy, said frankly: “The power stations in various cities generally achieve breakeven within 3-4 years.”
Qin Lihong, the co-founder and president of Weilai, also said from the side that the power exchange model is not easy to make a profit, “Battery exchange is not a business, but a service. Many people regard battery exchange as an (independent) business. , Caring about when this business will be upgraded, it’s like asking a restaurant when the paper towels he delivers will make a profit, no restaurant can rely on napkins to make money. Battery replacement is part of Weilai’s service, and Weilai has never thought about it How much profit can be made by relying on battery replacement.”
The significance of developing the battery-swapping model is unquestionable. It fundamentally solves the pain point of slow charging and difficult charging of new energy vehicles. Behind the battery-swapping model is a blue ocean market waiting to be tapped. Although there are many players in the electric field, there is still a long way to go before the successful business model. Before the power battery standard is not unified, there are still huge variables in the battery replacement industry.
(Disclaimer: This article only represents the author’s point of view, not the position of Sina.com.)
This article is reproduced from: https://finance.sina.com.cn/tech/csj/2023-01-05/doc-imxzayim3639296.shtml
This site is only for collection, and the copyright belongs to the original author.