In the eyes of new energy vehicle owners, "energy replenishment anxiety" has always been a lingering heart disease.

This piece of heart disease is hidden on the highway of "charging for one hour and queuing for 4 hours", hidden next to the "zombie piles" of the city, and hidden in the repeated refusal of the property when the charging pile enters the community. The sense of uncertainty and insecurity it brings is like the "low battery anxiety" of smartphones when charging treasures are not popular, making car owners want to vomit and swallow.

For the new energy vehicle industry, "energy replenishment anxiety" is replacing "endurance anxiety" and becoming the "Achilles' heel" of industrial development.

According to the "2021 China Users' New Energy Vehicle Consumption Decision and Attitude Survey Report", in some key regional cities, "inconvenient charging" has become the biggest concern of 64% of users when purchasing new energy vehicles, which even exceeds the cruising range, safety, value retention rate, etc., ranking first among all influencing factors.

In order to solve the "energy replenishment anxiety", in 2015, the concept of the car pile ratio was introduced to the public eye.

The so-called vehicle pile ratio, as the name implies, refers to the ratio of new energy vehicles and the number of charging piles. In 2015, the Guidelines for the Development of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure (2015-2020) were released. The Guidelines require that by 2020, China's new energy vehicle pile ratio should reach a level close to 1:1, which means that a new energy vehicle must be equipped with a charging pile.

How beautiful the ideal is, how skinny the reality is. By the end of 2021, the vehicle pile ratio of domestic new energy vehicles was 3:1, far from reaching the 1:1 level. At the same time, many new energy vehicle owners suddenly found that the vehicle pile ratio is not the only measure to solve the "energy replenishment anxiety", and the application of this "last mile" of new energy vehicles is far more complicated than 1:1.

What we are concerned about is, can the 1:1 ratio of vehicle piles be achieved? If it cannot be realized, how should the "replenishment anxiety" of new energy vehicles be solved?

1 Savage growth

In 2006, Shenzhen Business Daily published a short message of less than 350 words in the corner: BYD piloted electric vehicle charging stations.

The charging station is located outside BYD's headquarters in Kwai Chung, Longgang, Shenzhen, and is also the country's first electric vehicle charging station. In this building, which resembles a gas station, there are 4 charging cabinets. The charging cabinet adopts digital display and touch screen intelligent control of charging, and has functions such as charging card swiping and charging printing.

Shortly before the establishment of this charging station, BYD had just produced the first F3e electric vehicle equipped with lithium iron phosphate batteries, and this charging station naturally undertook the task of providing "food and grass" for F3e.

At that time, in the Chinese auto market, where fuel vehicles were booming, this news did not stir up much splash. In that year, the top ten sales models were Jetta, Kaiyue, Elantra, Santana, Xiali, QQ, Accord, Lingyue, Cowin and Corolla. The launch of Tesla's first mass-produced product, the Tesla Roadster, was 2 years later.

Therefore, when Wang Chuanfu threw out the bold statement that "2020 will be the world of electric vehicles" in 2007, many people scoffed and voted no confidence.

Although it was not optimistic at first, under Wang Chuanfu's almost paranoid insistence, the charging pile and the new energy vehicle industry still stumbled and opened their own development story.

From 2006 to 2014, new energy vehicles were in the popularization stage, and the construction of charging stations was mainly undertaken by the State Grid, which had not yet opened its doors to social capital.

In 2014, State Grid changed its previous strategy of power exchange as the lead, and proposed that the charging and replacement service network planning should follow the principle of "leading fast charging, taking into account slow charging, guiding power replacement, and economic and practical".

This also means that after experiencing the route dispute with the battery exchange mode, the charging pile finally "locked CP" with new energy vehicles with the advantages of "less investment, fast construction, and easy unification of standards".

2 Break through pain points

If divided according to the charging method, the charging pile can be divided into DC charging pile (fast charging), AC charging pile (slow charging); According to the installation location, it can be divided into public piles and private charging piles. Public charging piles are mainly fast charging, and their construction is mainly carried out by various large charging service operators. Private charging piles are mainly slow charging, which are mainly sold or given away by new energy vehicle manufacturers, commonly known as "on-board power distribution".

An industry consensus is that if the goal of the 1:1 ratio of vehicle piles is disassembled, private charging piles will be the first choice for layout.

Specifically, private charging piles are convenient to use, and the charging price is charged according to the civil electricity price standard of "metered users", which is relatively favorable; At the same time, with the advancement of intelligent and orderly charging technology, car owners can use the grid valley time to charge, avoid the occupation of transformer load, and help the power grid optimize operation.

However, "on-board power distribution" is easier said than done. According to data released by the Boston Consulting Group, less than 15% of car owners in China have private fixed parking spaces in terms of household caliber. Considering the limitation of the electricity capacity of the community, the arrangement and wiring of the meter room, and the requirements of property management, the proportion of charging piles that can be installed in actual households is only 5%-10%.

Property rights problems of parking spaces, insufficient electricity capacity in the community, charging piles or potential safety hazards... The "fancy refusal" of the property caught some new energy vehicle owners off guard. The rising demand for private charging piles and the limited number of parking spaces form a huge contradiction. If some old communities that do not meet the installation needs of charging piles are renovated, a large investment is required. This has also become the biggest constraint for charging piles to enter the community.

Shen Hui, CEO of WM Motor, publicly stated that among the more than 40,000 vehicles delivered in 2021, nearly 20,000 charging piles attached to the vehicles could not be sent. In his words, "Every time I hear the owner complain to me about the difficulty of installing the charging pile, my heart is heavy. ”

For those car owners who cannot install private charging piles, public charging piles become their only choice. However, in terms of use experience, public charging piles are also unsatisfactory.

On the one hand, the battle for pile positions that broke out in the early stage of the charging pile industry has derived the barbaric launch and extensive operation. However, the wind receded, small and medium-sized enterprises began to withdraw one after another, did not get enough later operation and maintenance, and "zombie charging piles" appeared in large numbers.

At the 4th Global New Energy and Intelligent Vehicle Supply Chain Innovation Conference held recently, Chebai Think Tank learned such a set of data.

Wang Lei, chief operating officer of CAMAX New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., revealed that since June last year, CAMAX has tested nearly 80,000 charging piles and more than 6,000 charging stations in 6 core highways and 33 core new energy vehicle development cities across the country.

The test results are embarrassing: about 40% of the charging piles are unusable. Of these 40%, 12.7% are hardware problems, that is, the charging pile cannot charge normally, or the charging is terminated; About 27% are operational issues, with multiple slots preventing users from charging.

The data in another dimension is equally thought-provoking. According to the 2021 "Charging Infrastructure Monitoring Report of Major Cities in China", 22 of the 25 large cities in the country have an average time utilization rate of less than 10% of a single public charging pile.

When growth and scale become weapons held by unicorns, and users become chips to cash in on huge valuations, "user experience" becomes worthless. Problems such as "difficult to find piles, many bad piles, and slow charging" gradually erode the trust of consumers, which in turn restricts the development of related enterprises, and finally forms a vicious circle.

On the other hand, due to insufficient overall planning, charging pile companies give priority to seizing high-quality market resources and strategic commanding heights, but selectively ignore highways, townships and other areas that are difficult to make profits in the short term, resulting in uneven distribution of public charging pile areas.

Taking the high-speed scenario as an example, according to data released by the Charging Alliance, as of July 2022, the number of charging piles built on China's expressways is less than 1% of the total number of public charging piles in the country. Relevant data show that during this year's National Day holiday, 409 charging stations were queued, accounting for 18% of all highway stations.

"The charging pile industry has not really achieved unified construction and unified planning, especially without a clear access standard, and there is no quantifiable assessment of quality." At the 4th Global New Energy and Intelligent Vehicle Supply Chain Innovation Conference, Liang Yan, General Manager of Huawei's Digital Energy Technology Co., Ltd.'s charging network, made a comment that hit the nail on the head.

The installation rate of private charging piles is low, and the experience of using public charging piles is not good... In order to make the charging pile both "installed" and "well used", the entire industry needs to work together.

3 Change has come

This year, a series of policy changes quietly arrived.

At the beginning of the year, the National Development and Reform Commission and other 10 departments jointly issued the "Implementation Opinions on Further Improving the Service Guarantee Capacity of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure" to further improve the service guarantee capacity of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

A noteworthy detail is that the opinion does not mention the goal of 1:1 vehicle pile ratio, but clarifies that by the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan", China will form a moderately advanced, balanced layout, intelligent and efficient charging infrastructure system, which can meet the charging needs of more than 20 million electric vehicles.

On August 25, the Ministry of Transport issued the Action Plan for Accelerating the Construction of Charging Infrastructure along Highways, giving financial support for the construction of charging infrastructure along highways, exploring the establishment of operating subsidy standards linked to service quality, and strengthening subsidies for demonstration facilities such as high-power charging.

Some keen practitioners have smelled the change in the direction of the wind: get rid of the blind pursuit of the goal of 1:1 vehicle pile ratio, the national policy has begun to change from quantitative development to quality improvement "rudder", and the second half of the competition in the charging pile industry has begun.

Among them, whether the layout of the charging pile is reasonable and whether the operational efficiency can meet the needs of users are the two key points that affect the experience of charging pile.

First, the layout of charging piles often requires comprehensive consideration of many factors. Unlike some commodities, charging piles have both commercial interests and public service attributes. Therefore, while giving full play to the role of the market in allocating resources, the government should do a good job in overall planning and top-level planning to maintain the public attributes of charging piles.

Taking Liuzhou City, Guangxi as an example, in the face of the problem of difficulty in entering the community of charging piles, Liuzhou has established a "three-level linkage working mechanism between government and enterprises", with the government providing policy and public resource support, and enterprises providing product and technical support to carry out joint research.

In the three major courtyards of Liuzhou municipal organs, the Liuzhou government and Baojun New Energy joined hands to open up the "corners" where traditional fuel vehicles cannot be parked into an "exclusive parking space" for smaller new energy products. In this way, 35 new energy parking spaces have been added to the community, effectively alleviating the problem of "too many cars and few parking spaces".

Second, in the daily operation of charging piles, strengthening the research and development of new charging technologies and improving the digital and intelligent level of charging services have also proved to be a sharp weapon to improve consumers' energy replenishment experience and strengthen the profitability of enterprises.

For example, through the application of the "Public Charging Facilities Data Information Service Platform", Beijing has realized pile construction planning based on big data technology, combined with the willingness of new energy vehicle owners, property owners, parking lot management units and other multi-subject pile construction operation intentions and the distribution of electric vehicles in the region and vehicle operation data, etc., to model and speculate the regional rational construction layout, providing strong planning support for construction and management units and scientific and effective guidance for investment and station construction.

4 Epilogue

If new energy vehicles want to drive comfortably, as a key part of the energy replenishment system, the charging pile industry cannot be delayed.

At present, the difficulty of charging is not entirely due to the shortage of charging piles. More important than one car per pile, so that charging resources can be efficiently and reasonably distributed. Therefore, after experiencing the "temptation" of the blue ocean and the "test" of the red ocean, charging pile players should also squeeze out the "moisture" as soon as possible, get rid of the theory of scale and speed, and transform to high-quality operation services.