The recent rain and snow that has swept many places have caused many highways to be closed. After a long road closure, many vehicles have insufficient battery life due to long-term use of air conditioning, and need to go to the next service area to replenish energy. The oil car is okay, and the pure electric model will have an embarrassing situation of queuing for an hour and charging for an hour at this time.
Although the battery life of pure electric vehicles has been hitting new highs, and various intelligent technologies are also emerging, energy replenishment anxiety has always been a major concern for new energy vehicle owners. How to solve this sticking point? At present, there are two main schools: overcharging and battery swapping.
*Continued decline.
Is the 800V high-voltage platform the positive solution?
Unlike previous years, the range of pure electric vehicles has become longer and longer, at least reaching the range of many fuel vehicles with a tank of fuel. But as we mentioned earlier, the biggest problem with BEVs is the speed of refueling. Therefore, in recent times, the 800V high-voltage platform that can solve the charging speed has become one of the main technologies promoted by many new products.
The first production model equipped with the 800V high-voltage platform was the Taycan from Porsche, but the million-dollar price at the time made the 800V high-voltage platform an extremely high-end technology. However, in the past two years, there has been a significant decline in this technology, and even many 200,000-level models have been equipped with 800V high-voltage platforms, such as Galaxy E8, Polar Fox Alpha T5 and other models, and even this year there may be A-class models equipped with 800V high-voltage platforms.
The reason why it has become so popular so quickly is naturally because this technology is so good at improving the speed of charging. Take the Porsche Taycan as an example, at that time, the official claim was that the use of 800V charging cable can charge the battery from 5% to 80% in 30 minutes, and theoretically 30 minutes can replenish 583km.
The so-called 800V high-voltage platform mainly refers to three aspects, the first is 800V high-voltage fast charging, which requires the power battery to support high-voltage charging and discharging; The second is that the electric drive system adopts 800V high voltage; Finally, the whole vehicle is 800V high-voltage, that is, the electric drive, electronic control, and battery all support 800V high-voltage operation. At present, the 800V high-voltage platform of most car companies only meets the first one.
The principle of the 800V high-voltage platform is actually not complicated, which is to increase the charging power by increasing the charging voltage. According to the principle of DC charging power p = i (current) v (voltage), it can be found that in addition to increasing the charging speed through high voltage, there is also a technical direction to increase the current. Among them, the most representative high-current overcharge is Tesla, and only Tesla is building on a large scale.
However, after increasing the current, it will cause the charging interface and charging cable to heat up severely, where the heat = i (current) r, in short, the current is increased by 1 times, and the heat will increase by 4 times. Since the resistance value of the resistance is inversely proportional to the cross-sectional area, in order to control the heating, the high-current overcharge needs to increase the cross-sectional area of the cable and reduce the resistance, and the double-gun charging is actually a way to reduce the resistance of a single cable. In contrast, the technical route for increasing the voltage is much simpler, and it is only necessary to add high-voltage resistant charging modules and other operations.
There is actually a common misunderstanding about the 800V high-voltage platform, many people think that the 800V high-voltage platform can always be maintained at 800V, but in fact, this is only an average. For example, the current mainstream pure electric vehicle electrical system voltage range is usually 230-450V, but we usually call it a 400V system. In the same way, the voltage range of the vehicle high-voltage electrical system of the 800V high-voltage platform reaches 550-930V.
However, like high-current overcharging, the number of high-voltage overcharging piles that can reach 800V is not much, and there are two main reasons why the development will be relatively slow, one is that the voltage of the electrical system should be upgraded from 400V to 800V, and the dependence on silicon carbide material is high, which is a relatively scarce material; Second, because the distribution network is difficult to afford a large number of 800V high-voltage charging piles, especially in the summer electricity peak, it will make the whole city "trip".
The charging speed of the 800V high-voltage platform is indeed fast, and the transformation of the vehicle is not difficult, but the problem lies in the infrastructure, which is still difficult to popularize on a large scale. On the opposite side of overcharging, there is also a quick way to replenish energy: battery swapping.
Policy support. Open and cooperative battery swapping is about to rise?
When it comes to battery swapping, most people's first reaction must be NIO. As the only car company on the C-end that vigorously promotes battery swapping, NIO's battery swap station is absolutely excellent in terms of user experience. The energy replenishment speed of about 5 minutes can indeed be similar to that of fuel vehicles, and there is no need to worry about battery loss and attenuation.
However, the battery swap mode also has a huge demand for infrastructure, but it is not easy for the battery swap station to achieve the density of gas stations. One of the most critical aspects is cost. In 2023, Li Bin's "Thousand Station Plan" will bring the number of battery swap stations for NIO to 2,300, but you must know that the cost of building a battery swap station for NIO is as high as more than 2 million, and then counting the operating costs such as personnel and batteries, the battery swap station alone will make NIO's financial situation worse.
However, the advantages of the battery swap mode have already become the brand moat of NIO, and it is difficult to make a profit from it, and the direct brand is not guaranteed if it is abandoned. But at this time, the turning point came.
In the second half of 2023, Changan and Geely have successively announced cooperation with NIO in battery swapping, and Li Bin is also calling on more car companies to join the battery swap alliance. The reason why more and more car companies are willing to join the battery swap mode is closely related to the support of national policies. The National Conference on Industry and Information Technology held on December 21 emphasized that in 2024, it is necessary to support the development of the battery swap mode of new energy vehicles and do a good job in the pilot area of comprehensive electrification of vehicles in the public domain.
With a broader circle of friends, has NIO's road to battery swapping become better? Judging from the current situation, the road has become wider at most, but the distance to be walked is still very long. In addition to the cost issues mentioned earlier, there are greater constraints on the battery swap mode. We all know that battery swapping is to replace a fully charged new battery directly at the battery swapping station, just like when we changed the battery of a mobile phone in the "Nokia" era. This requires that the models that come to replace the battery need to have the same interface and the same package size, but the standard is always the most difficult, not to mention such a core power battery. This alone makes it difficult for the battery swap alliance to do so. If the battery standard cannot be unified, then the battery swap station can only support the use of a small number of models, and it will not be popularized at all.
The focus of the next battery swap mode is the launch of new models corresponding to Changan and Geely. Can you give a sample for other car companies that want to join the battery swap, and in which form of cooperation, maybe it can really decide that the road of battery swap cannot go on.
Uncle Che concluded. There are a lot of debates on the Internet about overcharging and battery swapping. However, judging from the current actual situation, these two technical routes to solve the speed of energy replenishment are far from popularization. The energy replenishment speed of the battery swap mode is fast, but the construction and operating costs of the battery swap station are extremely high, and the battery standards are difficult to unify. The 800V high-voltage platform is a good solution to the problem of unification of standards, and the construction cost is not high, but there are still problems in stability and safety. In fact, overcharging and battery swapping is not a two-choice relationship, but the need to "two legs" to walk, such as solid-state batteries before the popularization of black technology, the two are more like a complementary relationship, coordinated development, to explore a most cost-effective road, is the key to the sustainable growth of the current new energy market.
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