Ten years of drinking ice, the inflection point has appeared.
With the addition of Huawei, the charging pile industry, which has been struggling for nearly ten years, has ushered in a strong blessing, and it is getting closer and closer to the dawn of dawn.
Nine deaths, one life
Like power batteries, photovoltaics, etc., charging piles are also an industry that is highly concerned and guided by policies.
In 2014, the State Grid Corporation of China held a press conference in Beijing on the newly opened distributed power grid-connected project and electric vehicle charging and swapping station facilities, officially announcing the opening of these two fields to social capital, and the supporting policies were issued shortly after.
In 2015, the National Energy Administration, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development jointly issued the "Guidelines for the Development of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure (2015-2020)" within the system, requiring that by 2020, the ratio of new energy vehicles to piles in China will reach a level close to 1:1.
What is more positive than the top-level design is always the place**.
Taking Zhuhai as an example, it clarified the extremely generous subsidy standards in the "Implementation Rules for the Use of Special Funds for the Promotion and Application of Provincial New Energy Vehicle Charging and Swapping Facilities in Zhuhai in 2015".
DC charging pile (machine) 550 yuan kilowatt, AC charging pile (machine) 100 yuan kilowatt, battery swap station station 500,000 yuan station.
On the industrial side, at that time, the domestic Internet was making great progress, and the business model of horse racing became popular, which became the mainstream trend of social investment, and people hoped to replicate this path in their respective fields. As a result, a large amount of capital poured into the charging pile industry under the noise of the policy, according to relevant statistics at that time, in 2017, the number of domestic charging pile manufacturers and operators has reached more than 300.
The early investors of the charging pile revealed that the idea at that time was to circle the users first, and then realize them based on these existing users, but there was an insurmountable gap between reality and ideals.
By the end of 2019, the country's charging pile enterprises have plummeted from more than 300 to more than 100, and more than 50% of charging pile operators have closed down or withdrawn in this year.
Even if he survives, he will be covered in bruises.
According to data from the China Charging Alliance, in 2022, the number of public charging piles will be 3630,000, the number of public charging piles, the number of DC charging piles, and the annual charging volume are the first in the industry, with a market share of %. But even if you do it first, you still don't see any possibility of making money.
Yu Dexiang, chairman of Teruide, once said frankly that Telai had invested about 5 billion yuan in the past few years, of which it lost more than 800 million yuan in the first four years, and almost lost the parent company Teruide, which made him very scared for a while.
In 2018, Yu Dexiang, who was overwhelmed, could only send a letter for help, and he called on the shareholders of Truide to participate in the ecological construction of the special call charging network in a letter to the shareholders of Telide.
The situation of special calls is a microcosm of the overall development of the charging pile industry, and the fundamental reason for this long-term predicament is not a bad policy, not to mention that the enterprise does not work hard, but a serious disconnect between the ideal and the reality.
Economies of scale
In the eyes of many people, the charging pile is the replacement of gas stations in the new energy era, but in fact, this is not the case at all.
Like gas stations, charging piles also have heavy assets, high investment, and low yield attributes, essentially making money on scale and turnover rate, especially before 2020, the state has requirements for the upper limit of charging pile service fees, and it is impossible to expand profits by increasing the unit price.
The charging pile has the disease of the gas station, but there is no life of the gas station.
There are about 120,000 gas stations in China, and according to the average of 6 machines in a gas station, a total of 720,000 machines, corresponding to almost 300 million stock fuel vehicles, and an average of more than 400 vehicles can be distributed to one machine.
According to the data of the Ministry of Public Security, as of the end of 2022, the number of new energy vehicles in the country is 13.1 million, and as of August 2023, the total number of public charging piles in China is 227160,000 units, roughly calculated that a charging pile is less than 6 vehicles.
The bigger problem is the speed of energy replenishment, which can be done in two minutes when refueling a fuel vehicle, while the charging time of an electric vehicle takes several hours, which is a fatal blow to the turnover rate. This also leads to another problem, it seems that a lot of charging piles have been built, but because the energy replenishment speed is too slow, many charging piles that deviate from the city center are not cared for at all, so you can't drive the car over to charge the night before, and then take a taxi back the next day, right?
A direct consequence of this situation is that some charging piles are hard to find, and the other part is not cared for, in short, the resources are simply not fully utilized.
According to the 2023 "Monitoring Report on Charging Infrastructure in Major Cities in China", the average time utilization rate, average pile number utilization rate and average turnover rate of public piles in 36 major cities in China are respectively8% and 32%, and the average charging time is 528 minutes.
Charging pile operators are not only unable to increase efficiency downstream, but also unable to reduce costs upstream.
The national team enterprises such as the State Grid and the Southern Power Grid still have a certain right to speak, while private enterprises like special calls are completely disadvantaged groups in the negotiation of power resources and land resources, which can be described as surviving in the cracks.
In 2020, the charging pile was included in the country's new infrastructure, and the industry entered the second period of development acceleration.
According to the data disclosed in the financial report of Teruide, from 2020 to 2022, the revenue of Telai will be 157.7 billion yuan, 310.4 billion and 457 billion yuan, with a loss of 3786 in the same period490,000 yuan, 5132080,000 yuan, 2600020,000 yuan.
Tellide wanted to spin off Telide and go public separately a long time ago, but it never succeeded. Until now, the domestic charging pile leader is still "gnawing at the old".
As of 2022, the company and its subsidiaries are guaranteed by Telide, and the total amount of borrowings from banks is approximately 150.8 billion yuan. By the end of last year, the total liabilities of the special call were 623.5 billion yuan, with an asset-liability ratio of 7604%。
The only thing that can save the charging pile industry is the acceleration of the industrial process and technological progress.
The inflection point has arrived
It is a very clear fact that the key to the profitability of charging piles lies in the utilization rate.
According to iResearch's previous calculations, a typical 60kw DC pile and a 7kw AC pile have an average service fee of 0 in the countryIn the case of 6 yuan, if the utilization rate of the charging pile is increased from 87% to 106%, the payback period will be shortened from 6 years to 4 years.
To increase utilization, it is necessary to increase the number of electric vehicles and the speed at which they can be recharged, and this is exactly what is happening today.
According to the data of the China Automobile Association, from January to October this year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles were 73520,000 and 7.28 million units, an increase of 339% and 378%, with a market share of 304%。With the continuous high-density release of new models by major car companies, the popularity of domestic new energy vehicles is accelerating at a rapid pace, and the accumulated number of electric vehicles is getting bigger and bigger.
Compared with the penetration rate, the increase in energy replenishment speed is of greater significance to the charging pile.
According to w=p t, p=u i, in the case of a certain charging power, the main factor affecting the charging time is the charging power. In order to shorten the time, it is necessary to increase the power, and to increase the power, it is necessary to increase the current and voltage. In the long run, more than 400kW of charging power is required to achieve 5-10min fast charging, and the corresponding voltage platform needs to be increased to more than 800V.
It is worth noting that the 800V fast charging model has dropped to 200,000 ** band this year, and the typical representative is Xiaopeng G6, with an official guide price of 2099-27.690,000 units. In addition, the 800V platform models that have been launched recently and are to be listed include the ZEEKR CS1E, Haobo HT, Weilai Alps, etc., most of which are high-volume models starting at 200,000 yuan.
It is estimated that the 800V fast charging platform will soon be in the B-class car and the C-class and above models at the same time, and this ** belt is the largest market segment, and the large-scale popularity of fast charging is just around the corner.
On November 28, Yu Chengdong announced that Hongmeng Zhixing's charging service has covered more than 340 cities, 4,500 high-speed charging stations, and 700,000 public charging guns across the country, and it is expected to deploy more than 100,000 Huawei fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging by the end of next year.
Huawei's all-liquid-cooled supercharging solution uses a 600 720 kW host with a single-gun supercharging terminal with a maximum power of 600 kW and a single-gun fast charging terminal with a maximum power of 250 kW, with a maximum current of 600 A and a 5-minute energy replenishment of 200 km.
According to the information disclosed by Huawei Digital Power***, the company's all-liquid-cooled supercharging solution can not only improve the system efficiency by 1%+ but also reduce the operating cost of the whole life cycle by 46% through self-developed topology, liquid cooling and heat dissipation, and intelligent optimization. In terms of model compatibility, Huawei has conducted long-term docking tests with car manufacturers, and the solution can now be adapted to different brands of models, with a one-time charging success rate of more than 99%.
Obviously, Huawei has once again played the role of handing over the key, and its entry into the game is bound to push the charging pile industry forward by a big step, whether it is to reduce costs or increase efficiency.
At the same time, charging pile operators have significantly increased service fees this year, and it has recently been reported that the service fees of public charging piles in some cities have even increased by 50%.
All of this suggests that charging pile operators are fast approaching an inflection point for profitability.