The competition in the field of new energy charging has entered the era of efficiency competition from the era of "enclosure".
Huaxia Energy Network (**hxny3060) noticed that since Huawei's high-profile bet on "ultra-fast charging" last year, the heat of product upgrades in the charging pile industry has increased significantly. Especially since the beginning of 2024, stimulated by the multi-point flowering of Huawei's "all-liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging station", the industry's attention to "ultra-fast charging" represented by the "all-liquid-cooled" route has been greatly increased.
Capital is also sensitive enough to the ups and downs of the charging pile market. As early as October last year, with the industry's attention to the full liquid-cooled supercharging technology, the liquid-cooled concept stocks in the secondary market have become hot and have issued abnormal announcements one after another.
Supercharging technology is aimed at the market space that is far from saturated in the charging pile market. Judging from the data in 2023, the production and sales of new energy vehicles in China are booming, and the incremental ratio of vehicle piles is 28:1, although there is a downward trend, the overall supply is still insufficient, and there is huge room for growth. In this regard, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has put forward a clear plan that China will achieve a vehicle-to-pile ratio of 2:1 by 2025 and a vehicle-to-pile ratio of 1:1 by 2030.
On the other hand, the industry defines charging efficiency by the power of charging piles, and chasing "higher power" is the industry trend, and the demand for "ultra-fast charging" by new energy vehicle owners has become more urgent. According to Guotai Junan data, as many as 74% of new energy vehicle owners tend to choose "ultra-fast charging" for charging, but the reality is that this clear market demand has not yet been met, and the number of charging piles with power greater than 120kW on the market accounts for only 56%.
With the "coordinated upgrade of vehicle pile network end" in the industry on the agenda, the original pattern of the charging pile industry is also expected to be broken.
The market is highly concentrated, and the giants are betting on "ultra-fast charging".
China's new energy vehicle production and sales have ranked first in the world for 9 consecutive years, with the production and sales volume exceeding 9 million units in 2023, and the sales of new energy passenger vehicles accounting for 34% of the total passenger car sales in 20237%, which can be said to be "for every three cars sold, there is a new energy", and the demand for charging services in the travel market has also exploded.
On the other hand, the scale of charging piles is still insufficient.
According to data from the China Charging Alliance, the increase in China's charging infrastructure in 2023 will be 33860,000 units, up 30 percent year-on-year6%, and the increment ratio of the pile is 28：1。According to Guotai Junan data, as of September 2023, the number of charging piles in China is 76420,000, the ratio of vehicles to piles is about 24：1。This is still far from the goal of "2:1 in 2025 and 1:1 in 2030" proposed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
In terms of market size, by 2025, the market space of "China, America and Europe" charging piles will reach 100 billion yuan. Among them, China will reach 72.4 billion yuan, Europe and the United States will reach 22.4 billion yuan and 11.2 billion yuan respectively.
In recent years, the charging pile market has become a hot spot for capital investment. Among the players, the concentration of operation links is the highest, but the competition is also the most fierce, showing a trend of "three points in the world", including third-party enterprise special calls, cloud fast charging, etc.; energy companies China Southern Power Grid, Three Barrels of Oil, etc.; Car companies NIO (SH: 09866), Tesla, etc. In the first echelon are special calls, star charging, cloud fast charging, State Grid, and China Southern Power Grid, with CR5 approaching 70%.
In the industrial chain, the pattern of midstream enterprises is extremely scattered, but the module manufacturers of the core components of upstream charging piles are relatively concentrated, and power supply or communication power supply companies such as Infineon, Huawei, and ZTE (SZ:000063) are the main manufacturers.
The existing pattern of the industry is difficult to break, and the head manufacturers are not only fighting for scale, but also for technology.
The existing charging piles do not fully match the needs of users (data**: China Charging Alliance, Guotai Junan).
According to Guotai Junan data, at present, the charging supply and demand are not fully matched, and the demand for supercharging is growing. As many as 74% of users choose to charge at charging piles of 120kW and above, but the number of charging piles with power greater than 120kW accounts for only 56%.
Generally speaking, the power above 120kW is fast charging, and higher than 300kW can be called overcharging, and 300kW is also the mainstream supercharging pile on the market. If classified by time, when the charging time is more than 2 hours, it is ordinary slow charging technology, less than 2 hours to half an hour is fast charging, and charging time less than 10 minutes is super fast charging.
"Ultra-fast charging" represents the development trend of the charging service market, which not only has a huge incremental demand, but also the direction of upgrading and iteration after the slow charging reaches the end of the year. More importantly, ultra-fast charging can effectively solve the charging anxiety of new energy vehicle owners, and is one of the means for new energy vehicles to make up for their shortcomings.
At present, the main bottleneck of "ultra-fast charging" application lies in technology iteration.
To achieve ultra-fast charging, it is necessary to increase the voltage or current, but a single increase in the charging current will release a lot of heat, challenging the thermal management system. There are two main ways to deal with it, one is air-cooled, but there are pain points such as large volume and high noise; The other is liquid cooling, which is technically difficult, but has the characteristics of low volume and noise, and high safety.
"Liquid cooling" is regarded by the industry as the mainstream of the development of supercharging piles in the next few years, and there is even a saying that "the importance of liquid-cooled supercharging for the new energy vehicle industry is comparable to that of 5G networks in the Internet industry". However, the previous application of liquid cooling in the industry was mostly limited to "air-cooled module + liquid-cooled charging gun", and the application of full liquid cooling was not applied on a large scale.
Since last year, Huawei has taken the lead in launching a large-scale construction of "600kW fully liquid-cooled supercharging piles" in the market, and has announced in a high-profile official announcement that it plans to take the lead in deploying more than 100,000 Huawei fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging piles in more than 340 cities and major highways across the country in 2024, so as to achieve "high-quality charging where there are roads".
This kind of supercharging pile is suitable for a wide range of models, higher reliability, the maximum output voltage is 1000V, the current is 600A, the power of a single gun can reach up to 600KW, and the battery life is 200 kilometers in 5 minutes, and it can be charged at a speed of "one kilometer per second" at the fastest time in an ideal state.
A set of data that can be compared is that by the end of 2023, NIO has built a total of 20,455 charging piles, of which only 9,300 are supercharging piles; The joint venture between BMW and Mercedes-Benz plans to build about 7,000 supercharging piles in China by 2026. Tesla, the world's No. 1 company, has a total of 550,000 supercharging piles.
In the actual implementation, Huawei, as a leading equipment supplier, adopts a cooperative approach, and the actual investment cost is not high. But this "forward-looking" plan has caused an uproar in the industry.
A serial entrepreneur in the charging pile industry said in an interview with Huaxia Energy Network that "at present, charging piles have entered the era of standard products". Among them, the development of slow charging piles has been a long time, and various charging equipment manufacturers are equally divided in technology; Although the application scale of fast charging piles and supercharging piles is limited, especially the large-scale application of the latter has just begun, there is no obvious generation gap between mainstream manufacturers in the industry.
In terms of technical strength, Huawei's all-liquid-cooled supercharging piles are not unique in the industry, "Some companies have broken through to a higher limit power on the all-liquid-cooled route. ”
So, what role does Huawei play in driving the trend of liquid-cooled supercharging? The person believes that, objectively, the concept of "supercharging" has been proposed in the commercial field around 2019, and at that time, some 120kw charging piles can be labeled as "supercharging". However, due to the lack of adaptable models and the shortcomings of the power grid, the development of higher power "supercharging" has been slow in recent years.
Huawei took the lead in implementing supercharging on a large scale, which not only played a positive role in popularizing the concept of liquid-cooled supercharging, but also set off a marketing wave of the topic of supercharging piles with its brand appeal, and promoted the popularization of the concept of liquid-cooled supercharging to the industry and the new energy consumer market. The entrepreneur said.
To increase investment, the "vehicle pile network end" collaboration is the key
The hot trend of "ultra-fast charging" is attracting a large number of companies to increase investment.
Oil giant Sinopec (SH:600028) is also on the investment list in the supercharging sector. Since the beginning of 2024, Sinopec Capital has completed the company's first investment in the field of charging piles in Xi'an, and then Sinopec Jiangsu has joined hands with Wanbang Digital Energy to establish a joint venture. Star Charging, one of the latter's core brands, is the second largest public charging pile operator in the country.
In Sinopec's future planning, high-power DC fast charging is its key business.
Tonghe Technology (SZ:300491) also recently announced its intention to re-plan the issuance of ** to specific objects, and the fundraising will not exceed 7500 million yuan, all of which will be used for high-power charging module industrialization construction projects and replenishment of working capital.
GCL-ET (SZ:002015) announced in 2023 that the company is vigorously deploying the charging pile business across the country, including the development, construction and operation of charging piles. At present, 20 charging pile stations are in operation.
New energy vehicle companies are not far behind. Li Auto (HK:02015) officially announced that as of January 19, it and its partner Shudao New Energy have jointly built and put into operation 22 Ideal 5C super charging stations in Sichuan Province.
The construction of supercharging stations has also become a hot spot for industrial investment in various places. Wuhan, for example, has set a clear target of building 80 new supercharging stations. Shenzhen also released the latest data, as of January 5, the city has built 161 supercharging stations.
*Please indicate the source, article**: Huaxia Energy Network, **hxny3060).