No matter how strong an enterprise is, it will also be accompanied by doubts.
According to official data, in the first 11 months of 2023, BYD sold a total of 268 new energy vehicles340,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 648%。Such sales figures have made BYD the world's largest new energy vehicle manufacturer and China's largest auto brand.
Counting 2023, BYD has held the crown of "Global New Energy Vehicle Sales Champion" for 9 consecutive years.
It can be said that it is the persistence of a group of enterprises represented by BYD in the new energy vehicle industry that has made China's new energy vehicle market move rapidly from policy-oriented to market-oriented. At present, more and more consumers in non-restricted cities have begun to choose new energy vehicles.
The super sales performance has also made BYD's strength in three-electric technology well-known to more people.
However, some people began to question again: the three-electric technology is strong, but BYD's charging technology is not good?Major new energy vehicle companies are building charging piles, why doesn't BYD build them?Major car companies are talking about charging technology, why doesn't BYD talk about it?The head companies have released the 800V platform in a high-profile manner, why doesn't BYD?
Is that really the case?One statistic may be enough to tell a few questions. In the first 10 months of 2023, BYD's sales in the Northeast region exceeded 150,000 units, nearly doubling year-on-year.
Can be recognized by consumers in the Northeast region, how can BYD's charging not work?It's just that BYD didn't say much about charging technology. In the words of Ling Heping, vice president of BYD's automotive engineering institute, the technology of many years ago was "nothing to say".
In fact, we have been leading the development of new energy vehicle charging technology for 20 years. Ling Heping said in a recent exchange with Youjia and others.
As the first company in China to bring new energy vehicles to the market, BYD released the first pure electric vehicle F3E equipped with lithium iron phosphate batteries as early as 2006, and released the world's first plug-in hybrid car F3 DM in 2008.
However, since there are basically no new energy vehicles on the market, there are no standards for charging technology and charging infrastructure. There is no standard, and it becomes very inconvenient to charge new energy vehicles.
Based on the current market situation at that time, BYD's first new energy model to the private car market was a plug-in hybrid vehicle that did not rely on professional charging stations.
Even if a plug-in hybrid vehicle cannot be charged, it is meaningless to consumers. After all, plug-in hybrid models at that time had much higher fuel consumption than traditional fuel vehicles of the same class if they were driven by fuel alone.
In order to make plug-in hybrid models as convenient as possible to charge under the conditions at that time, BYD designed a relatively simple charging head, borrowing the design of household sockets, which can better adapt to the charging conditions of household electricity.
The charging current of household sockets is generally in the range of 10 to 16 amps. However, due to the mixed socket industry, for safety reasons, BYD limited the charging current of the car to 10 amps with an output power of 2000W. Under such charging conditions, the battery pack of the BYD F3 DM can be fully charged in 1 night.
In 2010, BYD launched its first pure electric model, the E6, for the passenger car market. Due to the larger battery pack of the pure electric model, it takes a lot of time to complete the energy replenishment through only 10 amps. To this end, BYD has designed a 30kw 8-core DC charging interface, which can be fully charged in only 2 hours under fast charging conditions.
Fast charging is obviously not something that can be achieved by home charging systems. In order to meet the fast charging needs of pure electric vehicles, BYD has developed 50kw and 60kw DC charging piles, each charging pile can hang two charging guns, which can charge two vehicles at the same time, so as to solve the problem of pure electric vehicle energy replenishment in the field of public travel.
Due to BYD's exploration in AC charging and DC charging, it also provides important practical experience in the drafting, formulation and verification of standards for the entire industry. BYD is also one of the first batch of Chinese EV charging standards to be drafted.
However, when BYD promoted electric vehicles, it faced a new problem, that is, the construction of charging infrastructure in various places was quite slow at that time. As the industry is in the early stage of development, many people are still struggling with "chicken or egg" for new energy vehicles and charging piles.
If there is an unlimited debate about the "chicken or egg" issue, there is no way for advanced technology to be implemented quickly. Based on this thinking, BYD decisively began to build its own charging pile layout.
Although the energy replenishment efficiency of DC charging piles is higher, because the conditions and costs of pile construction are too high, BYD still chooses to give priority to the layout of AC charging piles.
In order to quickly increase the volume, BYD has launched a 4kw AC charging pile. Due to the optimization of efficiency and cost, BYD AC charging piles have been built very quickly, which has accelerated the promotion of electric vehicles. As of 2019, BYD still has nearly 20,000 AC charging piles in normal operation
Therefore, BYD is not not not building charging piles, but building earlier than all other car companies.
After that, more social capital, State Grid, China Southern Power Grid and other resources entered the charging pile market. Considering factors such as the unified operation and maintenance efficiency of charging infrastructure, BYD stopped the layout of self-built charging piles.
In the field of public mobility, products such as the E6 have been in operation for several years, and it has been proven that electric vehicles have a quality level of 1 million kilometers. At the same time, the emergence of large-scale charging piles and fast charging technology has also greatly alleviated the problem of energy replenishment for new energy vehicles.
However, the alleviation of these problems is not enough for pure electric models to enter the family. Home users have a new concern, and that is range.
If you just run taxis and online car-hailing, the range of 300 kilometers may be enough. But if you want to travel across the city, such a range is a bit stretched. Especially for municipalities with huge land areas, it is difficult to support the outing needs of urban users even after a range of 300 kilometers.
In order to be able to put more batteries, in addition to increasing the battery capacity, another way is to increase the voltage. Therefore, in 2015, BYD proposed a high-voltage platform of over 800 volts.
Yes, it's not that we wrote it wrong. At present, the 800V platform promoted by major car companies is being loudly promoted, and BYD has launched it 8 years ago and is equipped with it.
BYD's Qin EV, launched in 2015, has achieved a charging voltage of more than 750V, and the charging voltage of the Tang EV at that time reached 820V. At present, BYD Auto's Denza N7, Seal, Song L and other models are also based on the 800V platform.
However, when BYD got the 800V car out, it was found that 95% of the charging piles in China at that time were low-voltage piles below 500V, which were incompatible with high-voltage model charging. If an 800V car is charged on a charging pile below 500 volts, the charging efficiency will undoubtedly be greatly reduced.
In order to give full play to the advantages of the 800V high-voltage platform on ordinary charging piles, BYD has launched an IGBT power device for boosting. The introduction of the new boost technology allows ordinary charging piles with a charging power of only 60kW or 100kW to achieve high-power charging.
After the emergence of more vehicles with 800V platforms, charging pile operators also dare to promote the layout of 750V high-voltage charging piles. It is precisely because of the increase in BYD's high-voltage platform models that there are a large number of 750V charging piles on the current market.
The 800V platform does not mean that the vehicle is stable output of 800V standard voltage as long as the fast charging gun is plugged in, and more technical investment is in how the automotive electrified power device can withstand the high voltage requirements of more than 800V。Higher voltages, in addition to allowing the vehicle to be charged more quickly, can also improve power efficiency and reduce the associated components, thereby increasing the range.
As early as 10 years ago, BYD has begun the research and development of power devices, and continues to seek innovation in battery technology and motor technology. BYD is also the first company to apply silicon carbide technology to automobiles. According to Ling Heping, based on the withstand voltage level of silicon carbide, the development of a 1000V high-voltage platform is only a matter of minutes.
It is precisely because these are technologies from 10 years ago that BYD feels that there is nothing worth saying. Including the 4C and 5C charging rates that are currently being promoted, in Ling Heping's view, it is just a very basic technology for BYD, and it is not worth publicizing.
Perhaps, this is BYD's "Versailles".
The vehicle's charging voltage has gone up, which means that if it can be charged at the supercharger, the vehicle will be able to get a very fast charging speed.
But for now, only 2% of the country's public overcharging piles with currents exceeding 300 amperes are available. At a time when fast charging piles are widespread and supercharging piles are extremely scarce, BYD believes that instead of letting users spend time and energy to find a very small number of supercharging piles, it is better to make full use of the existing resources of more than one million public fast charging piles.
To this end, BYD has launched a lift scheme, which is the world's first "passenger car dual-gun supercharge" technology. To put it simply, it allows the charging ports on both sides of the vehicle to be charged at the same time, so that the public fast charging pile can also achieve short-term multi-energy replenishment. Taking the DENZA N7 as an example, the maximum power of dual-gun overcharging can reach 230kW, and it can achieve a range of 350 kilometers in 15 minutes on a public fast charging pile.
Not only fast charging piles, BYD's dual-gun charging technology is compatible with different types of charging piles such as 500V, 700V, and 1000V, even on non-fast charging piles that have been built for many years. Although the charging efficiency is not as fast as that of the fast charging pile, it is also much more efficient than the single-gun charging.
At this time, someone jumped out and said, isn't it just to add one more charging port, what is there to brag about?
In fact, what is visible to the naked eye is to add a charging port, but in order to ensure the speed and safety of charging two ports at the same time, the work that enterprises need to do in places that cannot be seen by the naked eye is not simple.
Behind the rising current also means rising temperature, and related technologies are extremely strict in battery thermal management. In order to ensure the safety of dual-gun charging, BYD pioneered the world's first composite direct cooling technology. This technology is designed through the design of straight cold plates on both sides of the battery and two sets of independent control systems of refrigerant, and the compensating runner design is carried out, which increases the cooling area of the battery by 100% and the heat exchange capacity by more than 85%, escorting the safety of overcharging for users.
Compared with general coolant, the refrigerant used by BYD is non-conductive. This means that even if there is a leak, the safety of the vehicle will not be compromised.
In the process of daily operation, the thermal management system is automatically adjusted to work with only one set of direct cold plate and one set of refrigerant to ensure that the vehicle can be more efficient during operation. In short,Behind the dual-gun charging technology, there is more of a breakthrough in BYD's thermal management technology of direct cold and direct heating
At the same time, BYD is also communicating with charging pile operators, allowing users to use one account to scan the *** of different charging piles at the same time for charging, so that users can use dual guns to charge more conveniently.
In order to maximize the value of the charging industry, BYD has also opened a complete set of dual-gun charging technology to the industry for free, helping more enterprises solve the problem of dual-gun charging and making the utilization of charging resources more efficient.
In the northern region, especially in the northeast, there is another reason for the slow charging efficiency - cold. In order to achieve fast charging of cold cars at extremely low temperatures, BYD pioneered the full-scene intelligent pulse self-heating technology. Under the -30 extreme cold conditions, the all-scenario intelligent pulse self-heating technology can increase the battery heating rate of DENZA N7 by 230% compared with traditional solutions, and reduce the full battery charging time by 30%.
Not only in charging scenarios, but also in the parking and driving conditions, the DENZA N7 can intelligently activate the self-heating technology to improve the performance of the vehicle in extremely low temperatures.
It can be said that through 800V high-voltage technology, battery cooling technology, dual-gun charging upflow technology, full-scene intelligent pulse self-heating technology and other technologies, BYD has built an all-weather, high-power charging technology solution.
Ling Heping said that BYD will not talk about 800V platform technology alone, nor will it talk about charging power improvement alone, but will think about power devices, motors, electronic controls, batteries and other aspects in a unified way, and pursue all-weather function improvement.
According to Ling Heping, BYD still has a lot of charging technology that has been developed and has not yet been unveiled, and it will be released at the right time in the future, striving to make the charging efficiency of new energy vehicles reach the level of fuel vehicle refueling.
Text丨Zhang Yuzhe.
Editor丨Wang Xin.
Produced 丨 There is a driving report.