Charging pile is an indispensable part of the development of new energy vehicle industry. However, compared with vehicle companies, power battery industry chain and other sectors, the market attention and heat have been relatively limited. There are practical reasons why it has become a "forgotten" domain.

We can quote a group of research data from snowball user "Red Leaf Home is Autumn Wind" to get a glimpse into the leopard: the complete construction cost of the State Grid 150kw charging pile is 130000 yuan, and the capacity enhancement fee accounts for 50%, while the complete construction cost of the German 380kw charging pile is US $600000, charged at 0.89 euro electricity price, which can not recover the cost for 30 years. Therefore, at present, apart from the government, no one in the market wants to "do good deeds" in heavy asset investment to invest in power grid charging pile infrastructure.

Although there are practical problems, from a medium-and long-term perspective, driven by industrial laws, China's charging pile industry is bound to have considerable development and give birth to promising investment opportunities.

Based on the reality, this paper comprehensively combs the eight major problems related to the charging pile and tries to study them thoroughly, including:

1. Is the charging pile worthy of the "new infrastructure"?

Second, what kind of past life and this life has the charging pile experienced?

Third, how much room is there in the charging pile market?

Fourth, what is the participation pattern of the charging pile industry?

What are the pain points in the industry at present?

6. What kind of charging piles will become the key direction?

What kind of development trend and business model will emerge in the future?

Which companies deserve the most attention from the charging pile?

In view of the long length, we would like to put the eighth issue involved in this article into a separate article, specifically see our second article "bottom charging pile": Tred vs Star charging vs Guodian Nanrui ".

01 Are charging piles worthy of "new infrastructure"?

As sorted out in the table above, relevant ministries and commissions have continued to pay attention to and strengthen the construction of charging infrastructure for new energy vehicles, namely charging piles, in recent years, and even this year, the central government has incorporated it into the "new infrastructure"-- including 5G base station construction, UHV, high-speed rail and urban rail transit, artificial intelligence, big data Center, industrial Internet, and new energy vehicle charging piles.

Automobile is the largest industry in China's manufacturing industry. replacing traditional fuel vehicles with new energy vehicles is a major trend with high certainty and wide market space, and it is also the only way for our country to move from a big automobile country to an automobile power.

The charging pile is the supporting infrastructure of new energy vehicles, including charging module, main controller, detection module, lightning protection module, communication module and so on. The directly connected power grid is responsible for charging the car. Promoting the construction of charging piles is a necessary condition for the construction of new energy vehicle industry. If the construction is weak, it will become the primary problem restricting the promotion of new energy vehicles. And the planning of charging pile construction is to reach the ratio of car to pile at 1:1, and there is planning and construction of a charging pile for the sale of a new energy vehicle.

The charging piles and new energy vehicles in the growing stage have great related interests and are easily affected by policy fluctuations, while in the case of the transformation of new energy vehicles to marketization and subsidy, it is only natural that the focus of national policy support should be shifted to charging piles. it is also reasonable for this extremely huge project to be selected as a "new infrastructure" to open a new round of development.

02 What kind of past life and this life has the charging pile experienced?

The development of charging pile can be divided into four stages:

[1] the budding period before 2010

At this time, the charging pile industry is still in the exploratory stage. BYD established its first electric vehicle charging station in 2006; in 2008, it built a centralized charging station to meet the needs of 50 electric buses; and in 2009, Shanghai first built a charging station for commercial operation and management. Generally speaking, before 2010, it was a small fuss, dominated by formalism.

[2] the preliminary development period of 2011-2014

During this period, the charging pile market is dominated by the state, and the main participants include the State Grid, Southern Power Grid and Putian New Energy, and mainly buses or vehicles within the government, with less than a few thousand new charging piles a year, and the market scale is still very small. Mainly to industry exploration.

[3] the outbreak period and reshuffle period of 2015-2018

In November 2014, the notice on incentives for the Construction of charging facilities for New Energy vehicles was issued, linking the purchase of new energy vehicles with subsidies for charging facilities for the first time, and private capital such as special calls and star charging joined the market. The 2015 guidelines for the Development of Electric vehicle charging Infrastructure (2015-2020) by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology put forward the development goal of achieving a vehicle-to-pile ratio of 1:1 by 2020. Large-scale investment construction began, the industry broke out, and enterprises enclosed land for horse racing. The growth rate of charging piles in 2015 and 2016 reached 743% and 23.3% respectively.

Due to the rapid expansion and blindness, a series of problems have emerged in the construction standards, and the growth rate of charging pile construction has also plummeted to 57% and 62% in 2017 and 2018. The intensification of competition has led to a widening gap between enterprises, some players are out, and the industry reshuffle is accelerated.

[4] the current period of new infrastructure

In 2019, the total number of public charging piles in China has reached 516000, the policy subsidy has been tilted from new energy vehicles to charging facilities, the industry has gradually matured, some enterprises have also begun to make profits, and the direction of the industry has shifted from the construction end to the higher-quality operator. there will be changes in technology, market and profit model. In March 2020, the rechargeable pile was formally incorporated into the new infrastructure, the state attaches more importance to it, and the window period will be shortened. Under the new business model exploration and a new round of policy guidance, a new channel for the development of rechargeable pile will be opened and new opportunities will be ushered in.

03 How much room is there in the charging pile market?

The construction goal mentioned in the Guide to the Development of charging Infrastructure for Electric vehicles issued in 2015 is to build 4.8 million charging piles by 2020 to meet the charging needs of 5 million new energy vehicles, including 500000 public charging piles and 4.3 million private charging piles, with a vehicle-to-pile ratio of 1 ∶ 1.

However, at present, the construction of charging network lags far behind the plan. by the end of 2019, there are more than 3.8 million new energy vehicles in China, and the number of charging piles is more than 1.2 million. Compared with 3:1, the construction speed of charging piles needs to be faster than the sales of new energy vehicles in the future.

From the perspective of the new energy vehicle industry, the permeability of new energy vehicles is expected to reach 18% in 2025 and 30% in 2030, then the number of new energy vehicles in China will reach 16 million in 2025 and 52 million in 2030. In order to achieve a more reasonable vehicle-to-pile ratio of 1 ∶ 1 in the future, the number of charging piles is about the same, and there is great potential for development.

[1] the size of the domestic market exceeds 100 billion in 5 years.

At present, the ratio of vehicles to piles in China is about 3:1, which will basically be maintained in a short period of time. The incremental speed of charging piles will gradually catch up with the increment of new energy vehicles, and the increment will be reversed by around 2025. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology plans to build 2 million public piles and 10 million private piles by 2025, but it is estimated that it will be difficult to achieve. It is estimated that the vehicle-to-pile ratio will be between 2:1 and 3:1 by 2025.

In terms of the ratio of DC piles to AC piles, the private charging piles are mainly low-cost AC piles with a single investment of about 3000 yuan; the DC / AC ratio of public charging piles will be maintained at 4:6 in 2019, and with the increase in charging efficiency, the proportion of DC charging piles will continue to rise, as will be detailed later, so the ratio will develop towards 1:1 by 2025, with an investment of about 80, 000 and 8000 per pile.

Therefore, according to the sensitivity analysis, assuming that the vehicle-to-pile ratio ranges from 2 to 3 in 2025, and the DC charging pile ratio is 45% to 60%, then we expect the domestic charging pile market to exceed 100 billion yuan in the five years from 2020 to 2025, between 1186 and 236.5 billion.

[2] the size of the domestic market is nearly trillion in 10 years.

It is estimated that the vehicle-to-pile ratio will approach the reasonable value of 1:1 by 2030, when the number of new energy vehicles in China will reach 52 million, and the incremental space of charging piles will be about 50 million in 10 years, which is 5-9 times that in 5 years, and the construction scale will exceed 500 billion. And after the nearby operation mode is perfect and the industry pattern is basically stable in 2025, the charging pile service fee will also grow at a high speed, bringing new space, which can reach nearly trillion markets.

In addition, according to the "Global EV Outlook 2019" report issued by the IEA of the International Energy Agency in 2019 and the research of Evergrande Research Institute Ren Zeping, the global number of private charging piles is expected to reach 12800-245 million by 2030, with a total charging power of 1000-1800GW and a total charging capacity of 480-820TWh.

The number of public charging piles is expected to reach 1000-20 million, with a total charging power of 1000-215GW and a total charging capacity of 70-124TWh.

According to the global average, the average price of public piles, private charging piles, electricity charges and service charges in 2030 is 4000 yuan / kWh and 0.70 yuan / kWh, respectively. Therefore, the scale of global charging piles is 0.81-1.58 trillion yuan in 2030, and the charging cost is 0.66-1.13 trillion yuan, totaling about 1.5-2.7 trillion yuan.

The domestic market is already the largest automobile market in the world, and because of different national conditions, the ratio of public piles to private piles is much higher than that in Europe and the United States, so the value of charging piles is higher and is expected to account for 40% of the global market share of charging piles. Then the domestic market for charging pile equipment and services will reach 600 billion-1.08 trillion.

04 What is the participation pattern of the charging pile industry?

[1] Private charging piles are dominated by BYD.

Private charging piles are generally shipped or purchased with new energy vehicles, so the share is basically car companies. As of February 2020, BYD has operated 419000 private charging piles, with a market share of nearly 60%. BAIC and SAIC ranked second and third, accounting for 15.9% and 13.1%, respectively.

[2] Tripod of public charging piles

The charging pile industry chain is divided into equipment manufacturers, power suppliers and other suppliers, operators, new energy vehicle companies and other operators, as well as map navigation, payment functions and other support. Among them, the core link is the operation end, which is responsible for the investment construction and operation management of the charging pile. At present, the main operators of Chinese-funded enterprises, private capital, vehicle enterprises are involved.

In terms of share, private enterprises special calls, star charging and state-owned leading national network companies ranked in the top three. By 2019, the shares of the three companies were 28.7%, 23.3% and 17% respectively, with a total of 69%, with a total of 356000 units. The industry concentration is high.

The number of other small and medium-sized operators is very large, the number of local operators is almost more than 50, but most of them need to entrust the hosting operation of mainstream operators, such as the number of small and medium-sized operators with special call access is 2175. Therefore, the construction and operation of public charging piles is basically in a competitive pattern of tripod.

At present, Tracy, the parent company with the highest market share, has completed the layout of the whole industry chain of "equipment manufacturing-charging operation-solution solution" in the field of charging piles, and the company said in 2018 that it had achieved a break-even in the charging business, but its expansion rate has slowed down significantly.

Star charging is a key link in the layout of the new energy field of its parent company Wanbang Group. Together with Wanbang de, a charging equipment production subsidiary of Jiangsu Wanbang, Wanbang New Energy, a 4S store for new energy vehicles, and cloud installation, a supporting service for private users, Star charging also benefits from the industry and expands rapidly, with a year-on-year growth rate of more than 100% in 2019. Then it surpassed the State Grid Corporation in the number of public charging piles.

The State Grid Company, the only state-owned enterprise in the top three, has extremely strong capital strength and developed resource network, relying on the extensive power grid infrastructure of the State Grid, focusing on highway construction, so it is mainly DC piles with large charging power and high cost. although the share of public charging piles has declined, the advantage in fast charging is still very obvious.

It can be seen that because the payback period of the construction of public charging piles is very long, there will be a lot of capital expenditure in the early stage, so the industry leaders rely on the companies behind to provide continuous capital chain and equipment, resources, etc., in order to expand the scale to occupy the market.

Some new energy vehicle companies are also involved in public piles, such as BYD, Tesla, Inc., BAIC and so on. Compared with other capital, the public piles of vehicle manufacturers are mainly not for profit, but to cooperate with the sales of new energy vehicles and attract car owners to buy cars.

However, the charging pile construction is still in its infancy, the industry pattern is not yet fully finalized, there are many variables. How to improve the operational service model to bring profits, or rely on traffic data to carry out value-added services also need to be explored later.

In addition, the upstream equipment manufacturers of charging piles are more involved in A-share listed companies. We will ask the last question in this article, "which companies are worthy of attention?" It focuses on the discussion in the. The service platform downstream of the charging pile is mainly composed of charging pile operators, online maps and online car-hailing.

The first category, such as e-charging, is the charging service platform of the State Grid, which also covers other large third-party charging piles, such as special calls, star charging, and so on, and since March this year, private pile users and various charging pile manufacturers can join the national network e-charging management platform to strive for further development with an open attitude, as well as an interesting and intimate small function. E charging can estimate the cost of 100 kilometers according to the model and compare it with the fuel consumption price of fuel vehicles.

The second kind of online map platform, such as Amap, relies on the support of BABA's big data and the flow of more than 400 million monthly active users and does not compete with operators. Access to the real-time information of the vast majority of charging pile operators, including the State Grid, special calls, star charging, fast power, including the coverage of more than 96%, more than 60 million users, great potential for development

The third category is the online car-hailing represented by DiDi Global Inc., which started relatively late and mainly covered large cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Originally, it was only specially for DiDi Global Inc. drivers, but later it was transformed into a comprehensive platform open to the outside world, and it cooperated with Baidu, Inc. Map, but the development was still not good. In April 1919, the three operators of Special call, Star charging and Wanma withdrew from the Xiaomu charging platform to seek other cooperation.

05 What are the pain points in the industry at present?

[1] the pain point of industry development: operators' profit difficulties caused by unbalanced development in the early stage.

In 2014 and 2015, due to the introduction of powerful documents on charging piles such as the notice on incentives for the Construction of charging facilities for New Energy vehicles and the Guide to the Development of charging Infrastructure for Electric vehicles (2015-2020), a large amount of capital and enterprises were afraid of missing opportunities and swarmed in, but the direction of the industry was not clear at that time, so many enterprises, such as headless flies, developed extremely unevenly.

First of all, due to the bias of subsidies, over-investment in low-cost and slow-charging exchange piles, and too much consideration of power costs and site resources, ignoring market demand, resulting in low utilization of charging piles and continuous losses by operators. As can be seen in the following utilization rate of public piles in Shanghai, the utilization rate of public piles except public transport is basically between 1% and 3% in recent years. However, the charge utilization rate generally needs to be higher than 5% in order to break even.

At that time, the construction standards were also uneven, the quality was different, and the sense of user experience was poor; in addition, the emphasis on construction was light on operation, almost earning meagre service fees, and the value-added services of a large number of user traffic were not well excavated.

Several major reasons have jointly caused the bottleneck of cluttered industries and difficult profits, but the leading operators have been aware of these problems and are becoming more stable in development, paying more attention to light assets such as fine operation and the value of flow data. charging pile construction has also changed from subsidy-oriented to its own profit, and take user demand as the core to improve the utilization rate of charging piles and enhance profitability.

[2] pain points of public charging piles: small quantity, slow charging, poor quality

(1) in fact, in terms of absolute number, compared with private piles, public piles basically reached the planned number in 2015, but there are still few users, so it is difficult to find suitable charging piles. There may be several reasons:

One is that the layout of charging facilities caused by heavy construction and light operation and maintenance in the early stage is unreasonable, and some of the pile positions are remote, which do not actually meet many common charging points of car owners.

One is that the charging sites are unattended, causing fuel vehicles to occupy the charging spaces. According to the 2019 New Energy vehicle consumption Market Research report released by the China Automobile Circulation Association, 35.94% of the public charging pile parking spaces are occupied by fuel vehicles.

There is also the closeness of the city and the incompatibility of the brand. An average of 5.82% of the public charging piles in the city are not open to the public, compared with 19.22% in Beijing. 13.33% of the domestic charging pile brands are not compatible with each other because of the inconsistency of pre-construction standards.

(2) in terms of charging speed, because there are differences between standard and new energy vehicle power battery types, there is still room for development in technology. there are too many AC piles with low cost and slow charging in the early stage. as a result, the charging speed, which extremely affects the experience of the car owner's charging process, has become another major pain point, and the DC pile with fast charging speed has a high cost, and there are also hidden dangers in safety.

(3) the technical threshold of charging pile equipment is low, so there will inevitably be a large number of quality problems. According to the above report, 20.65% of the public charging piles in ten popular cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have broken down, bringing a lot of complaints.

[3] pain points of private charging piles: residence restrictions

The Guide to the Development of Electric vehicle charging Infrastructure (2015-2020) puts forward the expected goal of adding more than 12000 centralized charging stations and more than 4.8 million decentralized charging piles by 2020, including 500000 public piles and 4.3 million private piles. By the end of 2019, the number of public rechargeable piles had achieved the target, with a total of 516400 units, but the completion rate of private piles was only 16.3%, and the progress was slow, which was even more disparate than nearly 80% of private piles in the United States.

The main reason is the limitation of residence. At present, new energy vehicles are mainly concentrated in large and medium-sized cities in China, with high population density and residential commercial housing, which is different from the large number of single-family houses in the United States, and the distribution of new energy vehicles is also relatively scattered.

Therefore, in the construction of private piles, property restrictions, insufficient parking spaces and power grid impact have become obstacles. On the one hand, the establishment of private charging piles involves circuit laying, so it is not easy to convince the property; on the other hand, there are fewer parking spaces in the residential areas. some car owners do not have fixed parking spaces; and the power grid in some old areas is close to full load, so a large number of charging piles will have an impact on the power grid capacity and bring security risks.

06 What kind of charging piles will be the key direction?

[1] DC fast charging is the inevitable development direction of public charging piles.

(1) the proportion of public piles in China is relatively high, and the number of public piles is growing steadily.

As mentioned earlier, China is different from the national conditions of Europe and the United States, where many families live alone and have sufficient parking spaces, the construction of private piles is relatively convenient, and the system is mature, so the demand for public piles is weak, and the proportion of private piles is high. the ratio of electric vehicles to public piles is also higher.

The situation in China is similar to that in Japan, which is dominated by residential areas, complex property conditions, shortage of parking spaces, and lagging behind in private pile construction, so it focuses on the development of public charging piles, accounting for 56% of the global public charging piles in 2019. And the increasing trend does not decrease year by year.

Under the trend of key construction of public piles in recent years, after 15 or 16 years of advanced construction and blind development, the construction model has gradually matured since 17 years, and the growth rate has slowed down. entering a period of benign strategic adjustment, the growth rate has dropped sharply to 33.3% in 19 years, with an absolute increment of 129000 units, which is also lower than the 18-year increment of 147000 units.

(2) the difference between AC pile and DC pile.

Our watchmaking will make it more intuitive.

To sum up, AC charging pile has the advantages of convenient layout, low cost and harmless to the battery, while DC charging pile has the advantages of high charging efficiency and short charging time.

(3) DC pile is the inevitable choice of public pile in the future.

At present, the proportion of public AC and DC charging piles is maintained at about 6:4, and the proportion of AC piles is more, mainly because in the early stage of the development of the industry, slow-charging AC piles rely on the characteristics of simple structure, mature technology and low cost. it is very suitable for manufacturers to race horse enclosure, so it is widely put in to seize the market, but after the charging pile technology and market are becoming more and more mature, DC piles are the inevitable choice for public charging piles in the future.

There are three main reasons.

First of all, the demand of electric car owners for fast charging is very strong.

When Ai Rui and QQ Survey surveyed 1034 first-and second-line electric private car users across the country, among the decisive factors in choosing charging piles, charging speed became the most direct reason to attract car owners, and 60.8 percent of private car owners were very concerned about charging speed and efficiency.

The average charging time of DC charging posts is 1 hour and 54 minutes, 85% of users can finish charging within 2.5 hours, while the average charging time of AC charging posts is 5 hours and 45 minutes, and 66.2% of users need more than 5 hours of long charging time. The difference between the two nearly 4 hours directly determines the most obvious usage bias of car owners.

Combined with the distance of the second and third major factors and the charging price, the DC fast charging piles operated with low price strategy around the core location and traffic trunk lines will become the first choice for electric vehicle owners.

Moreover, the above survey is aimed at private car owners, for taxis, ride-hailing and other special vehicles that are particularly sensitive to time costs, long daily mileage and high charging frequency have higher requirements for charging efficiency.

B. the increase of DC pile power and the decrease of cost

In terms of fast filling ratio of public piles, the proportion of DC fast filling piles whose global power exceeds 43kW is 23% in 2019. China has made a great contribution to this, and domestically, this proportion has reached 35%.

The reason has been repeatedly emphasized, that is, the demand for fast-filling DC piles is high in our country. Therefore, the increase in power can meet the market demand, but also enhance the competitiveness of DC piles.

The average power of DC pile added in 2019 is 115.76kW. Due to the improvement of battery capacity of new energy vehicles and the development of high-power DC charging technology, the power of DC pile is expected to continue to increase in a reasonable range.

In terms of cost, it also decreases with technological progress and the expansion of the industry scale. The charging module is the core equipment of DC piles, accounting for 50% of the cost. The lowest cost of DC charging modules in 2019 is 0.4 yuan / W, which is 1/3 of 16 years and 1/5 of 14 years, which greatly alleviates the financial difficulties of charging pile operators in the construction of DC piles. it also promotes their enthusiasm to build more DC piles.

C. the increase of power battery capacity of new energy vehicles

The fast charging performance of the power battery determines the ceiling of the fast charging pile. If the DC quick charging pile wants to develop, it is necessary to cooperate with the power battery. Now Ningde era, BYD and other power manufacturers are trying to improve the battery energy density to enhance battery life. In 2019, the energy density of new all-electric passenger cars has basically exceeded 120Wh/kg, with an average mileage exceeding 300km.

The improvement of the mileage of new energy vehicles improves the practicality of high-power DC public piles, and accelerates the owners' preference for DC piles, which is the key reason why DC piles become the choice direction of public piles in the future.

[2] Private pile will become the main force of lifting vehicle pile ratio.

Although there is a big gap between the construction of private piles and expectations, and the proportion is also quite different from that of the United States and other European and American countries, the demand is still strong, and the owners of new energy vehicles do not need to charge faster at night. What matters more is that there are charging sites, low-cost and safe charging, fast-charging DC piles are more suitable for daily supplementary emergency charging needs.

Therefore, in the future, with the promotion of community transformation, private pile sharing and other measures, as well as the construction planning of charging pile equipment in new residential areas, the allocation rate of private piles will gradually increase, and the absolute number will far exceed that of public piles. it has become the main force to improve the ratio of vehicles to piles in our country.

Private piles are basically AC piles which are suitable for long-time charging at night, so they have a strong crowding-out effect on public slow-charging AC piles. According to the 2019-20 Annual report on the Development of China's charging Infrastructure, the number of public charging piles in China has increased from 57800 in 2015 to 516400 in 2019, with a compound annual growth rate of 72.89%, while that of private charging piles has increased from 8000 in 2015 to 703000 in 2019. The annual compound growth rate is 206.17%, three times that of public piles, and the proportion has also increased significantly from 12.16% in 2015 to 57.67% in 2019. Beyond public piles.

When buying cars, most owners of new energy vehicles will receive free gifts with private charging piles, the cost is only a few thousand, and they will also be given along with the car charging, which can be directly connected to household 220V sockets for charging, but the charging time is too long. More than 20 or 30 hours, it is a helpless move and will not impact the construction of private communication piles to a great extent.

[3] negative electrode material is the core point for the breakthrough of fast charge performance of power battery.

It was mentioned earlier that the fast charging performance of the power battery determines the ceiling of the DC quick charging pile. Here is a little more about how to improve the fast charging performance of the battery.

If you want to achieve the efficiency and duration of fuel refueling, you need to complete 80% charging in 5min. According to the current average carrying capacity 50kWh of pure electric vehicles, it can only be achieved by DC piles with 480kW power. At present, most DC charging piles on the market have only 60kW power, and even the new fast charging DC piles in 2020 only have the average power of 120kW. If you take into account that the actual charging power is often much lower than the design power of the charging pile, then the charging efficiency of electric vehicles is still similar to that of fuel vehicles.

In fact, it is not difficult to improve the power of the charging pile, and the maximum power of the leading enterprises above can reach more than 300kW, but if the power battery withstands high power charging for a long time, its life will be shortened and its safety will be greatly reduced, while the increase of electric vehicle charge is the general trend, which needs more fast charging power.

Therefore, the key to realize the fast charging of the battery is to improve the fast charging performance of the battery and make it adapt to high-power charging.

The negative electrode material of power lithium battery is the core point of whether it can break through the fast charge performance.

The negative electrode reacts with the electrolyte to form a passivation layer, which is close to the surface of the negative electrode, and Li ions can be embedded and removed freely, so this passive film is called "solid electrolyte interface film", or SEI film. SEI membrane is insoluble in organic solvent, can stably exist in organic electrolyte solution, and can prevent solvent molecules from passing through, avoiding the damage to electrode materials caused by co-embedding of solvent molecules, thus greatly improving the cycle performance and service life of the electrode.

However, when the SEI film becomes thicker, the ionic conductivity becomes worse, and the performance and life of the battery will decrease sharply. According to the research of Argonne National Laboratory in the United States, when the charging rate is between 0.7C and 4C (1C refers to the current intensity of continuous discharge of the rechargeable battery for one hour based on the nominal capacity of the battery), the decline of battery performance is mainly related to the increase of the thickness of the SEI film, while the composition of SEI does not change significantly, but it is charged at the rate of 6C. The significant change in the composition of SEI film leads to a sharp increase in the internal resistance of lithium-ion battery.

At present, when the fast charging time of some listed models is less than 1 hour, the corresponding charging speed is 1C-7C, which will aggravate the reduction of battery life and value preservation rate.

How to solve this problem, the technical direction mainly depends on the change of anode materials.

On the one hand, it can carry out secondary granulation and carbonization of artificial graphite to make the particles smaller, which is conducive to the rapid embedding of lithium ions from all directions to ensure the full infiltration of the electrolyte, which is also the most widely used method at present.

On the one hand, graphene, which is greatly improved relative to graphite conductivity and durability, can be used, but the technology still needs to be improved. In May this year, GAC announced that its graphene battery had entered the stage of commercial production. It only took 8 minutes to charge the battery to 85%. The battery will be the first to be installed in the Aion model.

The third method can also use silicon-carbon negative electrodes with higher specific capacity and longer life than graphite materials. Beitri is the first company in China to realize the commercial use of silicon-carbon anode materials, has the first-mover advantage, and has been successfully applied to Tesla Model 3 through the supply of Panasonic.

07 What kind of development trend and business model will emerge in the future?

[1] improving the utilization rate of charging piles is the core condition for profit under the current operation mode.

The weak profitability of charging pile operators has become an industry consensus, only special calls, star charging two leaders claim to cross the break-even line to make a profit. The reason is that the business model is single, and the service fee is the main revenue channel, so the profitability of the public charging pile also depends on the utilization rate of the single pile and the price of the service charge.

In the current fierce competition in the industry and users are extremely sensitive to charging costs, the price of charging services is difficult to increase in a short period of time. When formulating the regulations on the management of charging piles, many cities will stipulate the upper limit of charging service fees, and the national average charging service fee ceiling is 0.8 yuan / kWh.

However, in the pattern of competition among hundreds of charging pile operators, manufacturers continue to depress service fees for users, carrying out vicious competition, resulting in the actual price per degree far lower than the upper limit standard, the average is about 0.5-0.6 yuan / kWh, the most outrageous actual charge price in Taiyuan was once as low as 0.1 yuan / kWh.

Therefore, improving the utilization rate of single charging pile is the focus of all operators at present, and it is feasible.

According to the IRR calculation of the service charge and utilization rate of public DC piles, in the case of a service charge of 0.5-0.6 yuan / kWh, the utilization rate of a single pile needs to reach 5% or more in order to achieve a level of internal rate of return higher than 8% and outperform currency depreciation.

Moreover, if the price of 0.60 yuan per kilowatt-hour is selected, take 60kW DC pile as an example, the discount rate is 7%, and the utilization rate of single pile is from 8.7% to 10.6%, which is about 2% higher, it can shorten the two-year dynamic investment return cycle, greatly reduce the problem of long investment recovery cycle in the charging pile industry, and improve the profitability of enterprises.

How to improve the utilization rate of charging piles, in addition to increasing the construction of DC piles mentioned above, a more reasonable location layout, more intelligent and meticulous guidance of operators, and policy design are all very important. therefore, we can study the future trend along the goal of improving utilization and enhancing the profitability of the industry.

In addition, in fact, the business model of operators also has a lot of room for improvement, only charging service fees is a waste of resources, the food is boring, and the imagination space is not good to talk about. Later, we will also discuss how to change the business model.

[2] the industry develops more deeply and intelligently

(1) Intelligent layout direct current quick filling pile, using data to improve security

The expressway is the place where car owners have a hard demand for fast charging piles, while the State Grid is the main participant in the construction of charging piles on expressways in China. The density of charging piles in the operating area reaches 16 / 100km, while the European highway has an average of 33 charging piles / 100km, of which Norway even reaches 780 / 100km, which is the necessary reason why its new energy vehicles account for more than 50%. Therefore, the layout of direct current fast filling piles on trunk roads will become a major trend.

Similarly, how to reasonably layout fast filling piles in key places such as shopping malls and scenic spots, operators can make intelligent planning by monitoring electric vehicles in the platform and making use of data and information such as the number of electric vehicles in the region, daily charging, mileage and so on, so as to build them more efficiently.

From the perspective of urban trend, the replacement of new energy vehicles is gradually infiltrating from first-tier cities to second-and third-tier cities, the market share of Beijing and Shanghai is declining, and the construction of charging piles in second-and third-tier cities is accelerated. In medium-sized cities with less population density, intelligent and reasonable layout of public quick-filling piles is more important, otherwise the utilization rate will be even lower. Various companies are also developing in the direction of intelligent and meticulous operation, such as the "box variable intelligent group charging" of special calls, the monitoring system of easy task, the intelligent selection of 66 fast charging stations, and so on.

The quick charging pile also has hidden worries in terms of safety. through the monitoring and analysis of the changes of voltage, current and temperature of the battery system during the charging process, the intelligent safety early warning of charging can be realized. The incoming call data platform shows that by the end of 2018, the TVU data cloud platform has safety monitoring and protection against more than 37.8 million charging processes, triggering 258000 active protection, and is expected to prevent 20,25 major accidents, the proportion seems small, but every major accident that may occur is a desecration of life and will cause inestimable reputation losses to the enterprise.

(2) C-terminal private pile: intelligent orderly charging

There is a great demand for public fast charging piles in B-end areas, such as buses and taxis, which can bring cash flow in the short term and considerable profits in the long term, but in the sinking process of new energy vehicles, it is no surprise that the larger market is C-end private passenger cars, private piles are mainly accompanied by cars, and the operation is mainly by car companies.

The utilization rate is very stable because it is for your own use, and there is no need to consider the utilization service fee; in terms of security, because the charging time at home is low, almost all of them are slow charging piles, so there is no risk. What needs to be considered more in terms of operation is the charging cost and the impact on the power grid.

Most private car owners recharge immediately after coming home from work, and the peak hours are concentrated from 6 p.m. to 12:00, the peak load is from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., and the load rate is between 40 percent and 50 percent, which coincides with the peak period of domestic electricity consumption. The impact of the power grid is greater in the electricity-intensive areas, especially in the old communities, and then there is a trough of about 8 hours in the early morning, with the load rate lower than 20 percent.

Because there is little difference between peak and low electricity charges in many places, car owners just want to be convenient and charge as soon as they get off work, so it is difficult to change this habit.

In the future, can car companies operate private piles in combination with local electricity consumption, electricity trough prices, car owners can actually charge at night and other actual conditions to intelligently and orderly guide car owners to make the best choice? just like iphone will slowly trickle down after users are used to charging 80% of their mobile phones at night, and will not be full until they get up in the morning, and the user experience will gradually improve. This is worthy of new energy private pile operation thinking and learning.

(3) Construction of exchange power station and its advantages and disadvantages.

The construction speed of the replacement power station is very astonishing. In the six months from August 2019 to February 2020, the number of replacement power stations increased by 63.3% from 245 to 400. the top three operators are 183,123,94 of Aug, NIO Inc. and Bertan, respectively. By September 2020, the China Electric vehicle charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance updated the number to 525, an increase of 325% from February.

The construction cost of the power exchange mode is very high, and it is difficult to unify the battery specifications, but it has high operational efficiency, can quickly replenish energy, and there are no safety risks and battery life decay problems, so it is suitable for use in buses and operating vehicles. Because of the strong customization of private cars, they generally need to find their own car companies. NIO Inc. is in the forefront of electric car sales in China, which is also an important reason why NIO Inc. can sit in the second place in the power station.

[3] conjecture of policy design

Reviewing the past policies, due to the uncoordinated development of vehicles and piles, the support of electric vehicles has gradually weakened, and the focus has shifted to the supporting service facilities of charging piles, but the overall subsidy pattern is still "state subsidy to car, land subsidy to pile". Under the opportunity of the new infrastructure, how to implement the central top-level design and local policies plays a reassuring role in the operation and development of charging piles.

In fact, in the draft of "Development Plan of New Energy vehicle Industry (2021-2035)" issued in December 2019, the direction has been pointed out, that is, high power, intelligence and network platform.

The sixth chapter of the draft clearly proposes to improve infrastructure construction, and high-power this also means that the focus is on the construction of DC fast charging facilities, and subsidies will gather in this respect, especially in large and medium-sized cities with more new energy buses and operating vehicles. However, because the construction objectives will continue to be set from the two dimensions of absolute quantity and vehicle-pile ratio, private piles are indispensable as the main force, and the general trend of promoting the construction of charging piles in residential areas and encouraging the coordinated construction of private charging piles and public charging stations still exists.

Different from the previous blind development and paying too much attention to the amount of subsidies, the second point of intelligence has new requirements for the direction of subsidies, and the direction of policy support will also shift from encouraging investment to investment, operation, platform, users and other perspectives. Operation subsidies will be linked to the quality of operation, and truly provide precise support to enterprises that adapt measures to local conditions, rational layout, intelligent operation and user first.

The third point is the network platform, which shows that the network traffic data utilization of various operators and the interconnection between platforms are beginning to receive attention, and the innovation of new business models will be encouraged.

At present, more than 20 provinces and cities have started the construction of local government charging information monitoring platform, and Shanghai even began to subsidize according to the mode of information interconnection and time-sharing in 2020. It is also conceivable that because public charging piles are valued by the state and have a wide range of investment, it is difficult to show their role if they cannot be interconnected, so the government will also support the cooperation between the upstream and downstream parties of the charging pile industry and coordinate the interests of all parties, so as to maximize the interests of the development of the industry.

Generally speaking, it is a reasonable and inevitable choice for the policy to comply with the trend of the charging pile industry and help operators to develop healthily.

[4] the business model has changed from simple charging pile operation to integrated travel service operation.

Charging pile operators currently rely almost entirely on service fees, which in most cities are subject to local policy restrictions to ensure that the cost of electric vehicles is lower than that of fuel vehicles. Moreover, under the current fierce competition, the charging pile service fee is as low as 0.5-0.6 yuan / degree, the operator's profit is single, meagre, and the investment payback period is too long.

In the future, the intelligence of electric vehicles is also the trend of the times, and the charging pile, a super-large flow entrance, is bound to produce a new profit direction. Therefore, charging pile operators to create a "charging pile +" profit model, the transformation to the operation of integrated travel services is the future.

(1) it is easier for integrated travel service operators to obtain financing.

Not only the policy subsidy pays more and more attention to the operation quality, but also the current market funds are more inclined to invest in the profitable operators with excellent operation. The enterprises that take the lead in carrying out integrated travel services will cause huge siphon effect under the blessing of the new infrastructure. In addition, the transformation of the business model requires a strong ability to integrate resources, and enterprises that get a large amount of financing are also easy to open the gap with their competitors, complement each other, and the strong are always strong.

(2) make use of the advantage of traffic entrance to carry out travel value-added services.

Car owners need to find public charging piles through mobile phone app, such as special call, e-charging, Amap and so on. As a large entrance to traffic, charging pile head enterprises can accumulate a large number of users depending on their own scale, and organically integrate with communications, cloud computing, smart grid, car networking and other technologies. It can not only use big data of user information to optimize the layout of charging piles to improve utilization, but also tap more data value. Launch more business models and application scenarios, such as cooperation with business entities such as shopping malls, gymnasiums, cinemas, restaurants, scenic spots, etc., to carry out "charging pile +" value-added services, which not only improve the travel service quality of users, but also bring diversified income for operators.

In the United States, the location of public charging piles is smarter and more diverse. Operators work with commercial giants such as Best Buy, Safeway, whole Foods and Ikea to install charging piles in the parking lots of their chain stores. This makes the average time for new energy car owners to stay in the store three times as long as in the past, driving more consumption, which is worth learning from.

In addition, China's C-end private users for public charging pile use frequency is low, brand awareness is not yet fixed, to enhance user stickiness, we can also promote more services in the app. Such as car sales, leasing, financial lending, the sale of peripheral products, the cultivation of community functions, etc., can increase profit points, deepen the connection between operators and users, and deepen traffic barriers.

For example, special call app brings traffic through the basic function of querying the location of charging piles, then attracts users by issuing some discount coupons, and then cooperates with JD.com and China Merchants Bank to carry out financial services. It is also gradually selling some products, increasing profit diversity, as well as community functions, and using social networking to enhance car owners' loyalty.

Big data, who can make good use of the flow of charging piles, do a good job in intelligent operation, develop multiple service modes, and transform into integrated travel service providers, then the business cycle of charging pile operators will be significantly prolonged.

(3) platform operation of light assets

At present, most of the major leaders of charging piles are in the state of heavy asset operation, which involves many links, and is fully responsible for the investment, supply, construction and operation of charging piles. They are not only equipment manufacturers, construction operators, but also overall solution providers. This model will have a relatively negative impact on profitability and debt ratio.

In the case of operators' emphasis on operation and professional division of labor has become two major trends, operators will also develop in the direction of light assets, focusing on their advantages in the fields of construction, operation and maintenance, and services, to achieve platform development.

Domestic public piles have been connected to various charging pile platforms, but there is still a long way to go for private pile charging and data sharing. American car companies often choose to cooperate with professional operators in the construction of private charging piles, and make a reasonable division of labor to maximize benefits.

ChargePoint has a market share of more than 75% in the United States and has 112800 charging stations around the world. It adopts the light asset model and does not hold charging pile assets. Its business income mainly adopts cooperation with car companies to sell charging pile products and networking charging piles to collect network fees, transaction fees and maintenance service fees. It also sets up different management systems for dedicated, private, social public and other application scenarios. It is convenient for the owners to choose the charging mode independently, and the operation is very detailed and in-depth.

[5] the sand table exercise of multi-participating forces

The charging pile market is far from mature, but it has attracted too much attention, and the gap in the number of charging piles and clear policy guidelines also attract more new players who are not limited to traditional operators.

Moreover, it is easy for new players to see the detours taken by the industry before, learn to reverse the required resources from the application scene, and then combine their own advantages to enter each subdivision field, promoting continuous changes in the operation pattern and industry ecology, and optimizing the industrial structure to produce catfish effect, which is expected to promote the healthy development of the industry. We sort out the advantages of all forces, and then deduce and explore the possible cooperation and confrontation.

Private enterprises:For example, Ted and Xing Xing have formed a certain scale advantage, relatively flexible operation and strong service capacity, but have great financial pressure.

State-owned enterprises:State Grid, Southern Power Grid, etc., have strong power grid resources and strong financial strength, but the market-oriented mechanism is relatively backward.

New energy car companies:Tesla, Inc., BYD, NIO Inc., etc., have their own models and have strong customer stickiness, but because they are not the main business, their comprehensive strength is slightly weaker.

Real estate developers:Vanke, Evergrande, etc., master important site resources, but need to seek cooperation with operators

Internet enterprises:DiDi Global Inc., Gaode, etc., have advantages in terms of flow and capital, but they belong to light asset operation, without core technology and experience in asset operation.

(1) Competition and cooperation among operators

The operator is the core role of the charging pile industry sand table. Operator-led is also the main operation mode of the charging pile industry at this stage.

In the competition, the concentration of the charging pile industry is relatively high, and the leading enterprises lead the general direction, but in recent years, the special calls, star charging and Sanlongtou market share of the State Grid have declined slightly, on the one hand, the company has no longer blindly invested in construction and slowed down the speed. on the one hand, it is also because of the addition of more competitive new players.

The major operators have gradually established their own SaaS software service platform, which can be oriented to both users and merchants, but they are not willing to share data, which leads to low interoperability of vehicles and piles and forces enterprises with weak operating ability to quit.

Among the new competitors, Huawei's DC charging module and Kuaibu New Energy, a joint venture charging pile construction and operation company established in Ningde era, need to be paid attention to. The two companies' strong technology, manufacturing capacity and cost advantages are expected to accelerate the breakthrough of battery and charging technology, and may also reduce the price of charging facilities through market competition.

In terms of cooperation, at present, the coordination of various charging pile operators is mainly manifested in regularly reporting data to the China charging Alliance every month in order to connect to the national electric vehicle charging infrastructure monitoring platform and promote interconnection between industries. avoid weakening profitability due to further price reductions as a result of competition.

(2) the coexistence of self-built pile and cooperative pile construction mode in automobile enterprises.

Tesla, Inc. is a representative of auto companies who build their own charging piles. As of the first quarter of 2020, Tesla, Inc. had built 1917 supercharging stations and more than 17000 charging piles worldwide, while the cumulative sales of Model S/X/3 electric vehicles was 986000, compared with 58:1, there is still a lot of room. Tesla, Inc. 's valuation is so high that there is also this logic.

In China, with the rise of factory capacity in Shanghai, the importance of Tesla, Inc. 's global layout is becoming more and more obvious. Tesla, Inc. officially released Weibo Corp on November 6, 2020, saying that nearly 650 super charging stations will be built in China by the end of this year, with a total of more than 7000 super charging piles and AC charging piles, covering major cities and inter-city connections across the country. Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta have high distribution density.

More new energy car companies can not do as large as Tesla, Inc., so it is a wise choice to build piles in cooperation with operators. For example, car companies install private charging piles for users with private charging pile installation conditions, and provide 1-2 years of operation and maintenance and quality assurance period, professional people to do professional things, so it is easy to provide car owners with a better charging experience.

The development of operators in public charging piles also needs the cooperation of automobile enterprises, first of all, the interworking of physical interfaces, and the unified standard of electric vehicle manufacturers and charging pile manufacturers. The vehicle behavior data of car companies, including owners' driving habits, driving tracks, vehicle duration and surrounding environment, can also be communicated with operators to break the shackles of information. achieve full coverage of charging data, vehicle data, power grid data, environmental data and user data to promote a more reasonable layout of charging piles, finer operation and more professional services. However, the distribution of benefits will become a key link in whether cooperation can be promoted.

(3) Industry integration and conflict of interest of third-party platforms.

Third-party charging platforms generally do not directly participate in the investment and construction of charging piles, but connect the charging piles of major operators to their own SaaS platforms, such as Amap and DiDi Global Inc., through their own flow advantages, resource integration capabilities and business model innovation capabilities.

The purpose of the third-party platform is to grasp this future demand flow, increase its own links, and provide users with a more convenient one-stop charging experience, while for operators, they can also bring themselves short-term high traffic and increase the utilization rate of single piles.

The difficulty of this model also lies in the division of interests. Because the revenue comes from the sharing of service fees with operators and value-added services based on big data mining, the boundary of interests is blurred, and it is difficult for both sides to compromise on the division. For example, in April 1919, the three operators, such as Special call, Star charging and Wanma, withdrew from the Xiaogu charging platform under DiDi Global Inc..

There is also the payment side, the interconnection of payment methods has connected the charging pile information and payment plans of different operators into the same APP, but at this stage, no one is willing to disclose their business and pipelining, and there are also interests behind it.

(4) the possibility of partner model.

The partnership model means that the resource collector puts forward the demand and recruits the groups or individuals with the required resources to carry out the construction and operation of decentralized charging piles and public charging stations, so as to achieve the rational distribution of resources and benefit sharing. In order to achieve such a model, first of all, there must be a big brother, such as the strong power resources and background of the State Grid, to have the ability to invigorate the industrial resources upstream and downstream of the charging piles, so as to improve the operation status of operators with heavy assets.

Vanke, Evergrande, Sunchuang and other real estate developers can enter through this model, because they have the scarce space resources and can also help solve the problem of community power consumption, but it is estimated that policies and local governments are needed to pull strings behind it.

(5) Foreign enterprises have not really entered the market yet.

Foreign enterprise operators have not really entered the market yet. It is expected that after opening up the market, foreign brands will accelerate their entry, which will have a greater impact on domestic products, especially small and medium-sized operators with uneven quality and low operating ability. the advantage is the possible new model innovation and the upgrading of user services.