On April 18, CATL officially launched its EVOGO battery swap services in Xiamen, southeast China’s Fujian Province, making it the world’s first EVOGO city. The first four fast battery swap stations that have started operation are located in Siming District, Huli District, and Haicang District of Xiamen. The number of fast battery swap stations in Xiamen is expected to increase to 30 by the end of this year when drivers at any place on Xiamen Island can find one such station within a radius of 3 kilometers. The EVOGO battery swap solution will enable EV consumers to bid farewell to the inconvenience of refueling and allows consumers with no charging parking spaces to enjoy the fun of EV driving as well.
This is yet another achievement after NIO’s charging and swapping station, located on the left side of RT-Mart Parking Plant in Xingtang, Suzhou, Jiangsu, went online on March 24. It was the 866th battery-swapping station of NIO Automobile. As the country clearly encourages the promotion and application of the battery swap model, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has launched pilot applications of the battery swap model for new energy vehicles in 11 cities, and industry giants such as CATL and Geely have entered the market. back to people’s sight. Some institutions said that this year will be the first year of rapid development of my country’s power exchange industry.
Re-understanding the advantages of battery swapping
The whole process of “warehousing, battery swapping, and leaving the warehouse” is fully automated. The whole process takes less than 5 minutes, and a new energy vehicle can be fully charged again. For many NIO car owners, this is already a regular scene in replenishing their batteries.
“Compared with charging, the advantage of battery swapping is that it can achieve rapid energy replenishment, battery upgrade, battery health detection, rapid recycling of battery packs, and flexible battery swapping on demand.” Talking about the advantages of battery swapping, NIO Energy Senior Vice President Shen Fei explained that this is not only the only power-up method currently comparable to the refueling speed of gasoline vehicles but also the cost of battery upgrades based on the battery swap network is much lower than that based on conventional car maintenance systems.
At the same time, users can choose appropriate batteries according to their needs in different stages and different car usage scenarios. “This not only improves the user experience but also improves the efficiency of battery use. It is not necessary to carry large batteries that cost a lot of money all the time.” Shen Fei calculated an account for the reporter. Among the initial purchase cost of electric vehicles, the battery accounts for about 40%. The “vehicle-battery integration” charging mode greatly increases the cost of the entire vehicle, while in the vehicle-battery separation mode, the purchase price of an electric vehicle can be reduced by up to half. Especially in the fields of heavy trucks, taxis, and online car-hailing, it can improve operational efficiency and bring more obvious economic benefits. In addition, battery materials can also be incorporated into the circular economy to further improve environmental efficiency.
In fact, as early as 2011, the State Grid identified the basic business operation model of electric vehicles as battery swapping, plugging, and charging as a supplement, centralized charging, and unified distribution. For example, building a charging and swapping station near the substation can avoid impacting the distribution network; the central area of the city can rely on the substation in the suburbs to build a centralized battery charging station. It is a pity that this idea failed to usher in the response of the industry.
NIO’s layout of power stations was once considered a money-losing business. But on October 20, 2020, the General Office of the State Council issued the “New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)”, which clearly encouraged the promotion and application of the battery swap mode; after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology launched the pilot application of the battery swap mode for new energy vehicles, everything started to change.
On January 18 this year, CATL officially entered the electric vehicle battery swap track and launched a combined battery swap solution of the battery swap service brand EVOGO and the “chocolate battery swap block”. Six days later, Geely and Lifan announced the establishment of Chongqing Ruilan Automotive Technology Co., Ltd. and also entered the battery swap market.
“The joining of the giant CATL not only did not limit the space of the power exchange market but instead widened the track and gave power exchange companies more room for development.” The relevant person in charge of Aulton New Energy said, “After CATL has entered the power exchange market, our business has progressed more smoothly, and many partners such as FAW and GAC took the initiative to discuss the development of the battery swap model.”
CITIC Securities believes that 2022 is expected to be the first year of rapid development of the power exchange industry, with more than 3,000 new power exchange stations expected to be added throughout the year, and more than 10,000 in 2025. CICC estimates in relevant research reports that by 2025, the number of battery swap stations will be about 12,500 to 51,900. In the long run, the country needs 550,000 passenger car swap stations and 60,000 heavy-duty truck swap stations, corresponding to a total of 1.8 trillion yuan for swap station equipment and grid-side equipment.
Three major difficulties need to be overcome urgently
With the rapid growth in the number and usage of new energy vehicles, the demand for charging and battery swapping services is also increasing. However, it is undeniable that some supporting policies and measures need to be broken through in the entire life cycle of vehicle-battery separation and ecological construction. Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Group, said that, first of all, in the related links of power station construction and management, the power station is an asset-heavy investment, and the land is mostly leased. There are very few options for land, and there are many restrictions on land approval. At the same time, limited by the versatility of cross-brand, multi-model, power-swap platform and device technology, power-swap battery pack communication protocol, electrical connector technology, etc., a power-swap station can only serve a single-vehicle brand or even a single model, resulting in the contradiction between the increasing demand for station construction and the limited land and power resources is further highlighted.
Secondly, in terms of national standards, in addition to the three mandatory national standards, “Safety Requirements for Electric Vehicles”, “Safety Requirements for Electric Buses” and “Safety Requirements for Power Batteries for Electric Vehicles” issued by the National Standards Committee and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in May 2020, most of the other ones are recommended standards and industry standards released in previous years. Today, with the rapid development of new technologies and new situations, they all need to be revised and improved.
Taking the current car announcement mode as an example, all announcements are made on the whole vehicle (including the battery). However, in the vehicle-electricity separation mode, one battery-swapped model will match multiple batteries, and one battery will also match multiple models. If 3 cars can correspond to 3 batteries, then these 3 cars need to be announced 9 times, and if new batteries are developed, they need to be announced again. If you are going to develop a new model, you need to announce all the batteries that can be matched.
In addition, the research and development direction and progress of each battery manufacturer are different, and the energy density, battery structure, size, and specifications of power battery products cannot be unified, which makes it difficult for the battery swap mode to form a scale effect. The low degree of standardization of battery swaps also restricts multiple brands of models from sharing the same swap station, which delays the development process of swap stations. The adaptation of the battery swap mode needs to be jointly promoted by car companies and battery companies. If there is no standard advancement, each car company brand will still use different battery swap interfaces and cannot complete the adaptation.
Increase the efficiency of resource utilization
Any business model can only be sustainable if it achieves profitability. Compared with charging, due to the larger initial investment, the most troubled charging company at present is undoubtedly how to achieve profitability. In this regard, Chen Weifeng, general manager of CATL Electric Services, said: “From CATL’s business plan, if there are more cars changing batteries at the power station, there will be opportunities to make profits. There will be more models to replace batteries under standardization. We are more confident.”
Shen Fei mentioned that the electric capacity demand of NIO’s second-generation power station is similar to that of about 10 supercharged piles, but it only occupies 4 parking spaces, while 10 supercharged piles require 10 parking spaces. In the same area, the service capacity of the second-generation power exchange station is about twice that of the supercharger station. In addition to quick energy replenishment, the battery swap station can also achieve battery upgrades, battery health detection, rapid battery pack recycling, and flexible battery swaps on demand. On the whole, as long as there is certain user demand for electricity replacement, the cost per kilowatt-hour of electricity, charging and electricity replacement are basically the same. If you consider battery upgrades, battery testing, rapid recycling, etc., the economics of swapping stations will be better.
“Accelerating the standardization and generalization of the battery replacement mode is the prerequisite for profitability.” Li Shufu believes that the current need to promote the standardization of the software and hardware protocols of the battery replacement interface and the standardization of battery replacement battery packs, so that battery replacement battery packs can truly Interchange between different car companies, different swap stations, and different users to improve resource utilization efficiency.
Xu Yanhua, Secretary-General of China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance, believes that promoting the standardization of battery packs from battery swapping models can not only avoid the incompatibility of battery swap stations and the embarrassment of consumers seeing the station not be able to use them, but also help companies increase battery swap frequency, achieve scalability and make the business model work.
