- This article is reprinted from the autocarweekly public account
Author: Financial Street Lao Li
Queuing for charging is a hot topic recently, and super charging piles are also a hot topic. Some people discuss queuing for charging, but no one discusses super charging piles.
During the long vacation, the topic of difficulty charging new energy vehicles repeatedly topped the search list. Whether it is “8 hours of driving for 16 hours of new energy vehicles” or “1 hour of charging, 4 hours of queuing”, the focus is on new energy vehicles “not working”.
Lao Li took a look at his circle of friends. Except for some organizations that are “sponging” and making a lot of noise, most industry friends still showed a relatively “rational” attitude. Everyone’s opinions can be summed up in one sentence: From the perspective of time and space, this is a local problem and a problem that existing technology cannot solve.
A complete new energy vehicle industry includes four major participants: government, enterprises, users, and capital. Lao Li used to chat with everyone from a capital perspective. Today, let’s talk about the problem of difficult charging from the perspective of the four parties. The reason why difficult charging is difficult to solve is because it involves the four parties, and none of them has found a reasonable point.
The essence of congestion is mismatch of supply and demand
Lao Li briefly shared with everyone the scene of difficult charging for new energy vehicle owners during the 11th period: At first, a woman from Guangdong who returned to Hunan queued for 4 hours on the expressway to charge her vehicle, and didn’t have the opportunity to charge until 1 hour later. It took a total of 16 hours to complete the originally 8-hour journey. Afterwards, some other vehicle owners also posted on various platforms about the queuing problem for difficult charging during the National Day period, the scene was both funny and helpless……
Lao Li is also a new energy vehicle owner. He usually chooses to travel at off-peak hours during holidays. Firstly, no matter what vehicle you drive, you will get stuck on the road. Secondly, charging for new energy vehicles will indeed be crowded. Lao Li would like to say that although the charging speed of new energy vehicles is indeed slow, the essence of difficult charging is a supply and demand problem in specific scenarios and times. During holidays, whether you drive a fuel vehicle or a new energy vehicle, you still need to queue up at the gas station….
Before and after the holidays, some friends also asked Lao Li about the reasons for difficult charging. Lao Li discussed and answered several common questions with everyone:
Firstly, is charging difficult during holidays because there are not enough charging piles? No, from the perspective of time and space, the number of charging piles in China is enough, but there are indeed situations where they are not enough in special times and places, and holidays are typical examples.
According to data released by the Charging Alliance, as of September this year, China’s new energy vehicle holdings amounted to 6.78 million, and the cumulative number of charging infrastructure was 2.105 million, with a car-to-pile ratio of nearly 3:1, which means that each charging pile corresponds to three vehicles. This ratio is not low, but the problem now is that the distribution of charging piles is uneven.
– Secondly, since there is a problem of time and space mismatch and insufficient charging piles, why not solve it? This problem cannot be solved fundamentally due to profitability issues. So far, major charging pile operators in China, such as State Grid, Teld, and Star Charge, have been struggling to achieve decent profits due to high electricity prices and station construction costs while low user saturation and revenue. They all prefer to deploy charging stations in urban areas, especially in the first and second-tier cities, despite the high site construction cost, high utilization rate, and better balance between income and expenditure. Currently, many individual stations in some first and second-tier cities have already achieved profit and loss balance.
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The low-utilization, “distributed” stations on highways are difficult to achieve profit and loss balance, and, except for the long holidays, they are mostly idle. In the early days, State Grid Electric Vehicle invested heavily in building highway charging stations, but most of them lost money.
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Thirdly, considering the interests of all parties comprehensively, is there any way to solve the problem of slow charging speed? The answer is possible, and the approach is to improve the energy replenishment efficiency of pure electric vehicles, which includes two modes: overcharging and battery swapping. At present, almost all automakers are promoting the construction of overcharging piles because from a commercial perspective, overcharging is easier to promote in the C-end parity scenario than battery swapping.
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When it comes to overcharging piles, people first think of Tesla, whose V3 overcharging pile can reach a maximum power of 250 kW. However, the advantage of Tesla’s overcharging is not its power but its broad layout. NIO, XPeng, Naza, Volkswagen, Zeekr, GAC Aion, and other companies have also announced their layouts of overcharging piles. XPeng’s overcharging pile can achieve a maximum of 120 kW. The highest power of Zeekr’s overcharging pile released is 360 kW, and the maximum power of GAC Aion’s overcharging pile reaches 480 kW.
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Although the concept of overcharging piles is idealistic, the reality is somewhat harsh. Despite the fact that they can improve energy replenishment efficiency to a certain extent, it is still difficult to meet everyone’s expectations.
Are overcharging piles helpful or just look good?
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Overcharging is the Up-gan-ling Campaign for technological upgrades in the new energy vehicle industry.
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After more than a decade of industrialization of new energy vehicles, many technical problems have been solved successively, such as vehicle endurance mileage, battery energy density, and battery thermal management. From a technical perspective, overcharging is more challenging than the above problems. Firstly, overcharging involves not only batteries but also the entire vehicle system and the power grid, and therefore requires a systemic solution. Secondly, overcharging is a dynamic response, requiring the solution of key technical problems such as lithium deposition.# Translation
All major companies have proposed the industrial application of supercharging. However, at present, the supercharging is similar to the new energy vehicles ten years ago, and it is in its infancy. Let’s briefly chat with Mr. Li about the “tricks” of supercharging: the so-called high-power supercharging piles do not actually have high charging power, and the charging speed is not fast.
Charging is a complex chemical process. Mr. Li simply expresses it according to the formula P = UI, where P is the charging power, U is the charging voltage, and I is the charging current. Although this algorithm is not completely accurate, most vehicles will not exceed this limit. Therefore, charging speed is essentially determined by charging current and charging voltage.
The higher the charging voltage, the faster the charging speed. However, existing vehicles have an upper limit on the supporting charging voltage, which is related to the vehicle companies’ voltage platforms. Basically, vehicles with high-voltage platforms support high-power charging, while those with low-voltage platforms do not support high-power charging. Currently, the voltage platforms of most new energy vehicles on the market are at 300-500V.
Let’s assume that the maximum acceptable voltage is 500V. According to the national standard for charging piles’ maximum current of 250A, the maximum charging power of the battery is 125 kW. Generally speaking, a 60-degree electric vehicle has a range of approximately 400-500 km. At this ideal charging power, it takes more than half an hour to fully charge.
Some friends might say, “Let’s increase the maximum charging voltage to 800V, and the maximum current to 500A. Won’t the charging speed double?” Yes, the next generation of new energy vehicles and charging systems are indeed moving toward this direction. However, the time it takes to achieve it may be 5 years or even 10 years, not at present.
High-voltage platforms will definitely develop toward 800V or even higher. Vehicles need to have strong bearing capacity like upgrades in mobile phone hardware. Upgrades mean high costs, and the high-voltage platform of new energy vehicles is the same. At present, high-voltage platforms are mainly used in super-luxury brands. It will take a long time to reduce costs in the future. Mr. Li believes that it is difficult to promote high-voltage platforms for economic pure electric vehicles in the next 3-5 years.Compared with the charging voltage, increasing the charging current is relatively easier, but it still takes time to achieve. According to the national standard requirements, the maximum rated voltage for DC charging piles is 1000V, and the highest rated current is 400A. Under the usage condition of the existing DC interface, the single-gun current cannot exceed 250A, and the maximum charging voltage is 1000V, and the maximum current for a single-gun charging is 250A. Therefore, theoretically, the maximum charging power for a single-gun is 250 kW under the national standard.
Currently, China is also promoting new standards, and in the next generation of standards, the maximum charging current for a single-gun may reach 600A. Some friends mentioned that the single-gun charging current of Zeekr 001 exceeded 500A during holidays, which will accelerate the upgrade of the national standard.
Everything mentioned above is under theoretical conditions. In actual charging processes, both the charging current and voltage are dynamically changing, especially when the battery level is too high or too low, the vehicle will automatically reduce the charging current to protect the battery. Therefore, many companies often promote this way, “It takes only 30 minutes to charge the battery from 30% to 80%.”
Therefore, the actual charging power of the vehicle changes with the remaining battery capacity. Different car companies have different control strategies. Generally speaking, it is good enough if the average charging power can reach 60% of the maximum charging power. Calculated at the commonly used 400V charging voltage and 250A charging current, the maximum charging power is 100 kW, and the average power is only 60 kW according to the 60% ratio.
The so-called super-fast charging speed of the battery is not really fast; it just gives people the “feeling” of being fast within a specific range.
Where is the boundary of electric vehicles? The energy supplement mode is essentially about finding the best match between time, cost and technology. Old Li wants to say that “if a company claims that its energy supplement mode is both time-saving, convenient, durable and cheap without achieving revolutionary breakthroughs in current battery technology, then it is definitely lying.”
The advantage of the battery swapping mode is time-saving, but the disadvantage is high cost. In a C-terminal pricing scenario, operators are basically impossible to profit from it, and except for NIO, no car company is doing battery swapping in a C-terminal pricing scenario because it’s not cost-effective. Everyone is familiar with the slow-charging mode. Its advantage is low cost, but the disadvantage is time-consuming, and there is no room for improvement. Therefore, people’s expectations for energy supplement methods are reduced to supercharging now.Just like different types of boundary enhancement, different types of energy vehicles also have different boundaries, and the key is which one has a wider boundary. In the century-long PK between electric vehicles and gasoline vehicles nearly a century ago, electric vehicles lost due to technological and external environmental reasons. After nearly a century, with the advancement of vehicle technology and changes in electricity environment, electric vehicles are once again starting to challenge gasoline vehicles.
Human nature tends to pursue benefits. Everyone always wants to find a low-cost and easy-to-use product that works in all time and space. However, Mr. Li believes that under the current level of technology, electric cars do not possess these attributes, and everyone needs to have a clear awareness of the ability of new energy vehicles.
The first issue is the problem of endurance mileage. With the development of technology in recent years, the endurance mileage has gradually improved. But the actual user experience is far from as good as the enterprise propaganda, such as the longest endurance version of the XPeng P7 with an NEDC endurance mileage of 670 km which looks higher than most gasoline vehicles. But in the case of air conditioning, the actual endurance mileage of the vehicle is less than 600 km, and it is even lower in low-temperature environments. Many users do not have this awareness.
The second issue is that there are still many problems with charging, such as the charging speed mentioned above, which is a real technical problem that takes a long time to solve. Convenience of charging is another problem. If there is no condition to install a slow charging pile at home, it will greatly affect the private user’s experience. But when buying a car, salespeople often recommend going to a public charging pile to charge. After purchasing, charging at the public pile is not only far away, but the charging cost is also higher.
The above two issues have set boundaries for the use of new energy vehicles, and Mr. Li’s personal viewpoint is:
For vehicle models with endurance mileage of less than 400 km, the usage scenario is limited to the city or countryside and is not suitable for long-distance use.
For vehicle models with endurance mileage exceeding 400 km, the usage scenario can be extended to long-distance use but must be on highways.
Most companies and users currently lack an objective and clear understanding of new energy vehicles. Although companies are making cars, they are all groping in the dark. Coupled with excessive marketing, it is difficult to convey the real information to users.
There are two ways to solve these problems. One is that as the number of vehicles in use increases, users gradually improve their understanding by learning from their own mistakes, and the second is the industry’s self-regulation, which is an inevitable process of development for new things. Thirty years ago, gasoline vehicles and ten years ago, electric vehicles had experienced similar iterations and upgrades.At present, the new energy vehicle industry is still in the growth stage, and the charging service is in its infancy, which has caused many problems. According to Mr. Li, due to technical and human reasons, new energy vehicle charging piles have inaccurate charging amount and charging fees. Especially, some public charging pile operators have multiple billing, which appears to save money for users on the surface, but in fact, they spend more money. This situation will also occur in super charging piles.
Commercialization has brought vitality to the market, while chaos and speculation are the inevitable process of commercialization. From this perspective, free development and market regulation are not contradictory but complementary.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.