Writing | Zheng Wen
Editor | Zhou Changxian
Battery swapping mode has returned to people’s vision again.
On July 6, at NIO Power Day 2022 held by NIO in Shanghai, NIO announced a new battery swapping network plan, which will build a high-speed battery swapping network covering all nine vertical and nine horizontal city clusters and 19 major cities by 2025.
With the vision of “making charging more convenient than refueling,” NIO plans to weave a huge alternative energy network across 9.6 million square kilometers of land in China. According to the data released by NIO, in June of this year, the proportion of charging scenarios from battery swapping among NIO users’ total charging volume reached 52.3%.
As of July 6, 2022, NIO has built a total of 1,011 battery swapping stations nationwide, including 256 on highways, connecting the high-speed battery swapping network of five vertical and three horizontal city clusters and four major cities.
Qin Lihong, NIO’s co-founder and president, told “AutocarMax” of “Transportation Innovators”, “The data disclosed by the Public Security Bureau shows that as of the end of June, China’s new energy vehicle fleet reached 10 million. For a market with 10 million vehicles, it would be inadequate if we don’t have 1,000 battery swapping stations.”
The next morning, Qin Lihong took a high-speed train to Wuhan to attend the 14th Chinese Automotive Bluebook Forum. Interestingly, in the afternoon of that day, the organizer organized a theme forum on the battery swapping mode to discuss the development status, bottlenecks, and future prospects of the battery swapping mode.
Within two days, the echoes between Shanghai and Wuhan repeatedly reminded the industry that “battery swapping mode” is already a trend.
Battery Swapping History
In 2007, a company named Better Place in California, USA, first proposed the concept of battery swapping.
As the name implies, battery swapping is a process that centrally stores, charges, and uniformly distributes a large number of batteries through centralized charging stations, and replaces the batteries of electric vehicles at battery swapping stations, integrating battery charging, logistics deployment, and battery swapping services.
This company partnered with Renault to propose a battery swapping solution of “vehicle and battery separation + mileage charging.” However, Better Place took 6 years to expand its business to four countries, but still could not avoid bankruptcy in 2013, due to high operating costs.
# Development and Failure of Battery Swap Technology in Electric Vehicles
In 2010, State Grid developed standard battery swap technology and piloted it in some major cities, which eventually failed.
In 2013, Tesla also attempted to launch the battery swap technology, but soon encountered problems such as high swapping costs, the inability to share irregularly shaped batteries across vehicle models, low compatibility of swapping stations, and low operational efficiency. Within just two years, Tesla strategically abandoned this operation mode and shifted its focus to supercharging technology.
Since then, the battery swap model has been dormant. Objectively speaking, the failure of battery swap was inevitable at the early stage of the electric vehicle industry with extremely low market penetration due to immature business models and technology iterations. Even Carlos Ghosn, the former chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, asserted that “the electric vehicle industry adopting battery swap is a dead end”.
Until 2019, the battery swap model began to make a comeback.
According to the national development plan, the cumulative production and sales of new energy vehicles in China will reach 5 million by 2025. However, even by 2020, new energy vehicle sales were only 1.25 million, and although sales have been increasing, the gap is still significant from the target. The obvious lag in basic supporting infrastructure construction has had a significant impact on the development of the new energy vehicle industry.
As a result, policies began to be continuously introduced. In June 2019, in the Implementation Plan for Promoting the Upgrading and Renovation of Key Consumer Goods and Ensuring the Circulation of Resource Utilization (2019-2020) jointly issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and three other ministries, it was explicitly proposed to encourage enterprises to develop new energy vehicle products that combine charging and battery swap and have flexible battery configurations.
In April 2020, four ministries issued the Notice on Improving the Fiscal Subsidy Policy for Promoting the Application and Development of New Energy Vehicles, which specifically did not set a subsidy threshold of less than 300,000 yuan for battery swap models.
On January 18, 2021, the State Council issued the “Fourteenth Five-Year Plan” for the Development of Modern Comprehensive Transportation Systems, proposing to “improve the layout of public charging and battery swap networks in urban and rural areas.”
During the period of precipitation from 2014 to 2019, industry participants also refreshed their understanding of battery swap stations, realizing that, after separating the battery from the car, if they could open up the situation of battery swapping, they could become a new energy asset company. The concept of the “battery bank” was born.
In short, in addition to energy supplementation, the battery swap station is also a huge asset that can operate as an independent energy asset. This is the battery bank.
Aodi claims that the battery swap station is a natural energy storage carrier and, as a main force of urban energy storage, 5,000 swap stations can contribute to achieving carbon peaking targets. In addition, as a stable energy storage carrier, the battery swap station serves as a bridge and all stored electricity is returned to the grid, thus ensuring the stable operation of the grid.### Translation
Chairman Zhang Jianping of Ouman New Energy discussed with some German experts and they believed that batteries should be treated as a social resource rather than individual resources. Rechargeable batteries have a certain number of cycles and calendar periods. If used properly, the created value would be far beyond the current value.
“Managing battery assets is definitely a good business, but it is definitely more capital-intensive. Funds and risks are always linked. Lower risks mean lower returns, while higher risks may bring higher returns. Different investors may have different judgments,” said Li Bin, founder of Nio.
He believes that the electric vehicle industry’s battery asset management is the biggest business. If a user’s annual battery rental cost is 10,000 yuan and the future Chinese market’s electric vehicle ownership reaches 200 million vehicles, the size of the battery leasing market alone will reach 2 trillion yuan.
Although Li Bin’s estimates are too rough and optimistic, battery management can indeed be considered a good business. Taking battery swap stations as an entry point, Nio sees that the layout and vision of worry-free power have a very large potential.
A battery disassembly report from UBS shows that the battery cost is about 25% to 40% of the total cost of an electric vehicle and is the most expensive electric vehicle component. The battery swap mode of operation, which can conduct the separation of the car and the electricity, can lower consumer purchase costs and also enables electric vehicles to avoid the problem of secondary-car market value decrease due to battery decay.
At the same time, the battery swap model is beneficial for extending the life of power batteries, improving the safety of the battery, and facilitating the subsequent restructuring of the value of gradation utilization.
A power battery expert said that batteries managed and maintained by swap stations could increase the lifespan of batteries from 30% to 60%. “In addition, the speed of battery upgrades and replacements is extremely fast. Companies that adopt the battery swap route can upgrade batteries at any time. Batteries that can only run for 300 kilometers previously can now be replaced with those that can run for 600 kilometers.”
In 2021, China’s new energy vehicle sales volume of vehicles using battery swapping was about 160,000, a year-on-year increase of 162%, and the ownership was about 250,000.
Founder Securities predicts that by 2025, the sales volume of passenger cars with battery swapping will exceed 2.8 million, and the sales volume of commercial vehicles with battery swapping will reach 500,000. Analyses by iResearch Consulting shows that a conservative estimate of demand is that by 2025, the number of battery swapping stations in China will be around 8,000 and the overall market scale will be nearly 100 billion yuan.”I’ve been in the battery swap industry for 20 years, and spring is coming,” Zhang Jianping publicly stated at the end of 2020.
From testing the waters, to being dormant, to riding the wave of passenger cars, a hundred-billion-yuan market is activated, and the battery swap mode is reignited.
A Piece of the Cake
Since the beginning of this year, industry giants represented by CATL, Geely, and SAIC have successively announced their entry into the battery swap arena.
On January 18th, CATL launched the battery swap brand EVOGO, and it specifically released the “Chocolate Battery Swap Block” for shared battery swap. The single block can provide about 200 kilometers of range and is compatible with 80% of the pure electric platforms already on the market and those to be launched in the next three years worldwide.
As early as 2017, Geely began researching battery swap technology, and it achieved commercialization in 2020. In January of this year, it officially launched the battery swap brand Ruilin Auto.
On June 21st, at the Chongqing Auto Show, Ruilin Auto officially announced its entry into the new energy battery swap arena. This was the first appearance of the brand targeting C-end consumers, and it brought three new models with battery swap versions simultaneously: Ruilin 7, Ruilin 9, and 80V PRO.
According to Ruilin Auto, in the first five months of this year, there were more than 200 channel partners joining nationwide, and it is estimated that there will be more than 200 battery swap stations in 23 cities by the end of the year.
Cai Jianjun, Vice President of Ruilin Auto and General Manager of Sales Company, revealed, “In the next phase, to achieve a more intensive layout of battery swap stations, Ruilin Auto will gradually introduce mini battery swap stations, occupying an area of about 1-2 parking spaces, which can be flexibly assembled, movable, and easy to relocate.”
In May of this year, SAIC Group revealed at its 2021 Annual Shareholders Meeting that it was accelerating the exploration of innovative business models for vehicle and electric separation and enhancing the power supplement ecology of battery swap. At the same time, the Starry Sky Platform was officially introduced as one of SAIC Group’s seven “technical bases.” It is China’s earliest landing pure electric exclusive systematic platform, and new models developed can all choose the battery swap mode.
On June 13th, SAIC Motor officially released its global model MULAN, which is powered by the “Star Cloud Platform”. Zhang Liang, Deputy General Manager of SAIC Data Business Division, Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of Passenger Car Company, and CEO of MG Brand, said that “SAIC Star Cloud pure electric exclusive systematic platform also maximizes the improvement of space efficiency. That is to say, through the 110mm thick battery, the possibility of replacing the battery is stronger in the case of the maximum space utilization efficiency.”
It is worth mentioning that SAIC has introduced the universal standard for Rubik’s Cube battery. Zhang Liang believes that the biggest feature of the Rubik’s Cube battery is the ONE PACK of the battery architecture characteristics.
In order to achieve fast replacement, the fast exchange mechanism, high and low voltage interfaces, and fast exchange cooling interfaces of the Rubik’s Cube battery module are all unified. In this part of the top-level design, in addition to the conventional advantages of energy supplement speed, mileage choice diversity, battery maintenance, etc., SAIC also tries to create a battery base that can be used in any battery swap station.
In addition to Geely Blue, SAIC, and other companies, GAC Aion has also taken action in the battery swap business. In April of this year, GAC Aion completed the construction of a super charging and swapping center as an important commercial layout of its energy supplement system. It is understood that GAC Aion will soon launch a new generation of pure electric exclusive platform AEP 3.0, all new cars under the platform can achieve fast charging and fast swapping, realizing platform-based operation.
Obviously, all parties hope to open up the battery swap market in the private car field.
However, the current main market for battery swap models is still the B-side market, mainly for commercial vehicles and taxis. In the private battery swap field, besides NIO, which has worked hard for many years, there is no second one.
Zhang Jianping revealed that “so far, the models that Aodong has for battery swapping have not exceeded 200,000 yuan, even reaching 130,000 yuan, mainly for the To B market and future unmanned travel market.”
“The Secretary-General of the Shanghai Taxi Association believes that the battery swap model is very friendly to the taxi industry. Taxis are suitable for battery swapping. If taxis need to be charged, they cannot run,” said Huang Chunhua, General Manager of Aodong New Energy Marketing Center. It is true that in the construction of battery swap stations in Shanghai, driver gathering places for taxis will be chosen.
In addition to high-profile players such as Ningde Times, Geely, and SAIC this year, many players have already smelled the battery swap trend and are laying out their own strategies.In July 2020, Southern Power Grid Electric Vehicle Service Co., Ltd. reached a strategic cooperation agreement with CATL, focusing on heavy-duty truck battery swap. In the same month, Changan New Energy established a battery swap alliance.
On March 14, 2021, Fuan Co., a subsidiary of FAW Group, jointly established a joint venture with Oudong New Energy, FAW Travel, and Nanjing Automotive Innovation Fund to provide battery swap services mainly for FAW Group’s brand vehicles. At the same time, BAIC Blue Valley announced on the investor communication platform that it had built more than 50 new battery swap stations in 2020 based on more than 100 existing ones.
At 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, Oudong announced the launch of the “Red Oudong Strategy Plan” with the aim of building a network of more than 100 city-level battery swap service centers, constructing more than 5,000 20-second rapid battery swap stations, and building a shared battery swap platform for multiple brands with a capacity of over 2 million vehicles.
In addition, Dongfeng Motor, NIO, Yutong Bus, Shenwo Bus, Huali Motors, Wanxiang Group, etc. have successively developed and promoted battery swap models.
According to data from the China Charging Alliance, as of January 2022, there were 1,386 battery swap stations nationwide, with Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Jiangsu having more than 100 each.
Currently, automakers/ancillary manufacturers and third-party platform companies are the main battery swap operators. In the future, with the entry of charging pile production/operation enterprises, battery production/utilization enterprises, dealers, and urban operators, the players and the types of services will certainly increase further.
According to the latest data from Tianyancha, there are more than 80,000 companies related to battery swap in China as of the beginning of this year, with over 55% of the companies established within one year.
Industry insiders generally believe that solving the standardization problem is particularly important for breaking through the battery swap model from B end to C end. At this year’s Two Sessions, Li Shufu, Chairman of Geely Holding Group, proposed to promote the standardization of battery packs for battery swap, so that they can truly be exchanged between different automakers, battery swap stations, and users.
Lu Yong, Executive Deputy Director of SAIC Innovation Research and Development Institute, told “AutocarMax” that it would be difficult to promote battery swap if it is limited to a single brand. It’s hard to imagine that Sinopec and Sinochem only fill up a certain brand of gasoline. This also inevitably brings up the issue of standardization. At present, even the battery specifications and standards for different vehicle models within the same automaker are not the same, let alone different automakers.
Will Car Companies Become IBM?
Industry insiders generally believe that solving the standardization problem is particularly important for breaking through the battery swap model from B end to C end.
At this year’s Two Sessions, Li Shufu, Chairman of Geely Holding Group, proposed to promote the standardization of battery packs for battery swap, so that they can truly be exchanged between different automakers, battery swap stations, and users.
Lu Yong, Executive Deputy Director of SAIC Innovation Research and Development Institute, told “AutocarMax” that it would be difficult to promote battery swap if it is limited to a single brand. It’s hard to imagine that Sinopec and Sinochem only fill up a certain brand of gasoline. This also inevitably brings up the issue of standardization. At present, even the battery specifications and standards for different vehicle models within the same automaker are not the same, let alone different automakers.According to Zhang Jianping, “the country will issue a group standard in the next two years, and then promulgate a non-mandatory national standard. Next, the country will determine a physical size standard between Class A and Class B vehicles, so that our batteries can be compatible with more cars in the future.”
However, the situation may not be as optimistic as imagined. In fact, the “standardization of battery swapping” has been called for many years in the industry, but the progress is still not too fast.
So, what is the root cause of the slow progress?
Xia Yang, Vice President and CTO of Yidong New Energy Technology, believes that it is difficult to unify one or two standards. Because standardization is not a technical problem, but a commercial problem.
At the China Automobile Blue Book Forum, Yin Chengliang, Professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Chairman and General Manager of the Shanghai Intelligent Networked Automotive Technology Center, clearly pointed out in a keynote speech that the core pain point of the difficulty in promoting battery swapping standards in the passenger car field.
He believes that in order for the battery pack to support the car to run for a certain distance, it cannot be small, which means that a large opening needs to be made on the chassis to remove the battery pack. What does it mean to remove the passenger car battery from the chassis? It means that the design of the entire car must be different from the design of the traditional car chassis.
“In the past, car design had to consider the overall structure of the car, including damping, operability, stability, braking, and safety. But when you remove it, you need to balance these issues through a design that involves reshaping.” Yin Chengliang believes that when you consider the braking stability, operational stability, balance of front and rear loads, and all the performance of the car at this time, the space left for the automaker to play is basically small.
This also leads to the fact that if battery pack standardization is implemented, the chassis will tend to be standardized, and there will be no room for imagination. Because the chassis platform is the core competitiveness of an automaker, this may further lead to a significant decline in the brand power of the automaker.
In summary, if different models, brands, and types need to move towards a large-scale commercial model, battery standardization will ultimately lead to chassis standardization, which will bring about the convergence of mechanical structures, control structures, and communication protocols, and finally all different brands will inevitably move towards convergence.
Yin Chengliang said that there is a comparable case in the electronic computing industry. The relationship between Microsoft, Intel, and IBM is like that between battery manufacturers, chassis component suppliers, and vehicle manufacturers.
In the early 1980s, IBM chose to use the power of ecological cooperation to fully open up its own microcomputer industry ecology, and seize Apple’s market share in an alliance manner. Unified CPU, unified software platform, unified motherboard format, and then opened to the world.It is unlikely that everyone involved in the decision at the time could have predicted that an industry standard would be born. IBM established the basic form and industrial regulations of the PC market in one fell swoop.
However, IBM did not anticipate that it would ultimately withdraw from the PC market ten years later. Chips made Intel great, software made Microsoft great, motherboards made Taiwan great, cases made Shenzhen great, and IBM made the entire industry great, but also dug a big hole for itself.
If the trend of interchangeable electric vehicle platforms becoming more and more homogeneous and standardized continues, and as control and information gradually converge after platform-ization, a “Intel of the automotive industry” centered around batteries and a “Microsoft of the automotive industry” on intelligent platforms may emerge, and the OEMs may give up their influence.
Undoubtedly, this approach will break the logic of “the whole car is king.”
Could car companies become the IBM of the automotive industry? This is the biggest concern deep in the hearts of car companies, and they dare not gamble.
Li Yujun, Technical Director of BAIC New Energy and Executive Vice Dean of the Engineering R&D Institute and General Manager of Blue Valley Smart Energy, once said, “The battery is the core component of electric vehicles, and battery management is also the core technology and advantage of car companies. If the car companies are standardized, they will lose their technological advantage.”
An unnamed senior SAIC Group executive also stated bluntly, “We will not share other car companies’ battery swapping stations. If we do, the standards for battery packs will have to meet their requirements, which will be unfavorable for the future upgrading and iteration of battery technology, and the distribution of benefits will be in their hands. This is clearly unacceptable, and at least top-tier car companies will not do this.”
Since announcing the BaaS model, NIO has been releasing cooperation signals to the outside world, and its sincerity is considerable. Regrettably, Wuhan Guoneng, a subsidiary of NIO, has not yet successfully opened up to external car companies.
“We have never quoted prices to other brands and told them how much they need to pay to use our technology. They just don’t understand,” said Qin Lihong candidly. “Over the past few years, we have talked seriously with several industry experts and leaders. We are very willing to be utilized, which can also share the costs.”
However, an internal employee revealed that “previously, AIWAYS sought cooperation with NIO on battery swapping, but the high entry fee of RMB 10 million is not affordable for every car company. The negotiations ultimately fell through, and AIWAYS turned to BAIC Blue Valley.”### Translation
It is no coincidence that Ningde era’s high-profile launch of the EVOGO brand earlier this year did not attract widespread allies. For example, SAIC and Ningde era, although strategic partners, have not joined the Ningde era’s battery swapping alliance.
According to Chen Weifeng, General Manager of Time-Serv (a Ningde era wholly-owned subsidiary), “At present, each automaker has its own customized platform, so the requirements for battery packs are different. The chocolate-swapping model launched earlier this year is also an exploration of whether users can accept this mode, and the business has just been launched and piloted in one or two cities.”
Although the battery swapping track has been activated, the situation of everyone working independently is difficult to break.
Final Note
According to CITIC Securities’ calculations, the investment per single passenger-car-swapping station is about RMB 4.9 million, with battery swapping equipment investment accounting for about half of the total cost. The break-even point of a swapping station corresponds to a utilization rate of around 20%. In other words, the break-even point will be reached when serving 60 vehicles per day, and when servicing 100 vehicles, the net profit of a single station will be about 18%.
Based on the operational experience of Oudong, Huang Chunhua believes that with the support of favorable policies in a city, a reasonable match of cars and stations, and effective operations, the break-even point can be reached and a virtuous cycle can be established within three to four years. “If I build a station and have 100 cars, I can make a profit, even if there are more than 60 cars, and it will reach the break-even point in 3 to 4 years, and will be profitable thereafter.”
How to reach the break-even point or even profitability? Practitioners do not seem to intend to wait until the business model is fully mature. In their view, as long as the “standardization” of a certain stage is achieved, profitability can be achieved with effort.
Oudong divides “standardization” into two stages: first, standardizing specifications, and second, standardizing sizes. At present, in the scale of 16 automakers, more than 30 models, and 40,000 vehicles that Oudong cooperates with, the battery pack specifications are uniform, and the goal is to achieve shareability among all battery swapping stations while size is completely not standardized.
Yang Xia, deputy general manager of Yidong, pointed out that it is difficult to establish a standard in any industry. For example, the charging cables for mobile phones have not been standardized yet. In his view, standardizing the battery specifications for swapping is a long-term effort; a common specification can be unified in a single city first, and an efficient marketable demand can be met thereby achieving profitability.
At the end of the round-table discussion entitled “How to Achieve the Battery Swapping Alliance”, Yin Chengliang, as the moderator, asked the attending guests, “How long does it take for ordinary people to widely accept a commercial model?” To his surprise, all five guests answered almost the same way, thinking that it can be achieved within five years, and even optimistically within two to three years.
In the next two years, will you accept a battery-swapping car?
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.