As an important part of the energy revolution, new energy vehicles, in addition to subverting the traditional fuel vehicle industry, have also spawned the development of a series of related industrial chains, including the one with a bumpy fate - battery swapping.
When it comes to battery replacement, we have to mention a company, Better Place. As early as 2007, Better Place was established in California, the United States, becoming the world's first power exchange operation company. Because of the innovative creation of electric vehicle battery replacement and energy supplement solutions, Better Place once became a trend-setter in the field of new energy, with a total financing of 850 million US dollars and a valuation of 2.25 billion US dollars.
In 2010, Better Place came to China, and first reached a cooperation with Chery Automobile to develop an application plan for mass-produced battery swap models; in April of the following year, it signed a strategic cooperation agreement with China Southern Power Grid on the battery swap model, and set up a swap station in Guangzhou and experience center. During this period, Better Place was in the limelight, and its power exchange business has covered Israel, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Japan and other countries.
However, after several years of operation, on May 26, 2013, Better Place faded out of the public eye by going into bankruptcy and liquidation.
However, the enthusiasm of the new energy vehicle market for the battery swap model has not been extinguished. Less than a month later, the "successor" of Better Place came, that is, Tesla, the star electric car company at the time.
On June 20, 2013, at the battery replacement conference, Musk personally explained the newly developed battery replacement mode, "Tesla owners can only "refuel" by charging, and the super charging station takes 30 minutes , and the ordinary charging method takes several hours. But today's battery swapping mode can make the electric car fully revive in 90 seconds." In just over 90 seconds, a Model S completed the entire battery swapping process, much faster than Refueling time for petrol vehicles.
When it comes to the future of battery swapping, Musk is confident, saying: the battery swapping system will be put into use first on the I-5 highway in California, and a swapping station will be built next to the road from Boston to Washington.
But what is dramatic is that two years after Tesla launched the battery swap mode, it was abandoned due to business model and other issues. Since then, Musk and the team have devoted themselves to super fast charging technology.
For a long time after that, the battery swap mode has been stuck in a trough, while the charging mode has been making great strides to become the mainstream. After 2020, the battery swap mode ushered in a new round of dawn.
From being highly sought after by the market in the early days, to being silent for a while, and then to the dawn of dawn, what happened to the battery swap mode? Can it open up room for growth as scheduled?
Battery swap vs fast charge
1. What is power exchange?
As the name suggests, electric vehicles do not need to be charged, but are directly replaced by the battery to meet the battery life. This mode of separating the vehicle and the battery for energy supplementation is called battery replacement.
According to different application scenarios, the battery replacement technology is initially divided into chassis battery replacement, sub-box battery replacement, and side battery replacement. After more than ten years of technological changes, chassis power exchange has become the mainstream form of power exchange for passenger cars; commercial vehicles mainly use end and side power exchange.
2. Advantages of battery swap
As the saying goes, the best martial arts in the world is fast. The biggest advantage of the battery swap mode is that it takes only a few minutes to complete the whole process. In addition, compared to charging, the battery swap mode is superior in extending battery life, maintaining and managing safety, and reducing grid load.
Specifically, the battery swap mode has the following five advantages:
1) For car owners, in addition to realizing rapid energy replenishment, the battery swap mode can better solve the problems that make every car owner’s head such as the depreciation of power batteries and the depreciation of used cars. In addition, most of the battery spontaneous combustion occurs during the charging process, and the battery swap mode avoids the most dangerous link for the owner, making the electric vehicle owner feel more at ease;
2) For car companies, because the battery alone accounts for 30%-40% of the cost of an electric vehicle, the overall cost of an electric vehicle has been greatly increased, making it difficult to compare the cost-effectiveness with a fuel vehicle; The separation of vehicle and electricity significantly reduces the initial purchase cost of consumers and lowers the purchase threshold of consumers, which is a bit like housing mortgage;
3) For battery companies, the power battery is controlled and managed by professionals at the power exchange station. Compared with the management of individual consumers, the battery life of the former can be extended by 30%-60%; Significantly reduce battery failures;
4) For the power grid, since the fast charging is a large current, it will bring a certain impact to the power grid, so generally, a special transformer is required for the fast charging point to isolate the impact on the low-voltage power grid. In the battery swap mode, the battery is generally charged slowly with low power, which not only reduces the load on the power grid, but also avoids the peak of electricity consumption to a certain extent and balances the peak and valley;
5) For the society, the power exchange station is like a gas station. Except for the queuing time, the vehicle basically does not spend extra time to stay after driving in. In the same space, the power exchange has a higher utilization rate. Especially in the modern society where time is money, the time saved by swapping power stations for everyone is to improve social efficiency.
Since you have said so well about battery swapping, why has this model both at home and abroad experienced a long period of trough?
The reasons for the rapid failure of power exchange mainly include high investment costs, few power exchange vehicles, imperfect standards, and immature business models.
1) The investment cost is high. Compared with the investment of thousands to tens of thousands of charging piles, the construction cost of a single power exchange station is more than 2 million yuan. This does not include backup batteries. The investment of each power exchange station is millions of yuan. What is even more difficult is that, in order to support the normal operation of battery-swapped vehicles, it is often necessary to establish multiple swap stations in a pilot area to form a battery-swap network;
2) The battery standardization is not uniform. Different brands and models of electric vehicle battery packs have a low degree of standardization and large differences in size, making it difficult to share swap stations, just like the mobile phone charging ports of the past;
3) The popularity of changing trams is low. First of all, there were few vehicles for battery swapping. At that time, the overall base of electric vehicles was still relatively small, not to mention the low utilization efficiency of battery swapping stations when two trams were replaced, which increased the payback period; secondly, there were few battery replacement models, and we wanted to promote battery swapping on a large scale. The model needs to be developed in the battery swap mode from the time of the whole vehicle design, and a certain scale of vehicle ownership is required, so a certain number of OEMs are essential to participate in support;
4) The business model is not perfect. In the early days, the third parties represented by Better Place and State Grid proposed the commercialization model of battery replacement by purchasing power batteries by themselves and playing the role of "battery operator". Although there is no need for consumers to pay for the purchase of batteries, which can greatly reduce the purchase cost, for OEMs, once accepting this plan, it is equivalent to losing control over the core part of new energy vehicles, and production Electric vehicles are only wedding dresses for third parties, and naturally not many car companies are willing to respond.
To sum up, the "failure" of the battery replacement model is never a simple technical and investment issue, but a comprehensive result of business models, industrial policies, industry ecology, and market recognition.
Dawn reappears
Since 2020, with the release of the power exchange policy and the outbreak of the new energy market, capital from all parties who have been waiting for a long time has poured into the field of power exchange.
In August 2020, NIO officially launched the BaaS car-electric separation battery rental solution;
In April 2021, Sinopec and NIO signed a strategic cooperation agreement to carry out the construction and operation of power swap stations;
In October 2021, Geely Auto launched a new battery-swap travel brand - Ruilan;
In January 2022, CATL released the EVOGO power exchange brand and the overall solution and service for combined power exchange. In the future, EVOGO will select ten cities to start the battery swap service and release more brands of battery swap models.
In addition, Aodong, Bertan, GCL Nengke and other power exchange station operators are also accelerating the construction of power exchange stations and actively cooperate with OEMs.
As the so-called "military and horses do not move, food and grass go first", in the future, only by establishing a complete and mature charging and power exchange network, the automobile industry may fission from 1 to 10.
Looking back on history, the battery swap model has always faced difficulties, that is, consumers are reluctant to buy battery swap models when the battery swap station is not perfect, and OEMs are reluctant to promote electric vehicles on a large scale without the support of a complete battery swap station. Electric operators are more reluctant to invest on a large scale without a large market demand for electric vehicles. As a result, the parties are caught in an endless loop.
With the deepening of electrification transformation and the increasing acceptance of end consumers, this vicious circle has gradually been broken. Nowadays, mainstream car manufacturers have launched battery-swap models, and the number of battery-swap models is increasing, the most typical of which is NIO.
At the same time, we found a new weakness of electric vehicles - charging anxiety. Battery life is no longer the core selling point of electric vehicles. The new contradiction in industrial development has been switched to the speed of energy supplementation. As one of the solutions, battery swapping will theoretically be a useful supplement to fast charging.
With the subsequent increase in the sales of new energy battery swap models and the catalysis of the battery swap policy, the construction of swap stations is expected to accelerate, and its role in infrastructure construction is comparable to that of traditional gas stations. There is no doubt that the battery swap mode has become another big outlet after energy storage and fast charging, and the 100 billion space may just be the starting point.
It is undeniable that in the field of new energy vehicles today, there is still a debate about whether to use the charging mode or the battery swapping mode for passenger cars. After all, the advantages and disadvantages of the two routes are very prominent, including the fact that we also changed the battery once in the early stage of the industry. almost doubt. But at present, with the rapid development of the industry, from the perspective of the energy revolution, we believe that sustainable electric vehicles will eventually evolve into a pattern of complementary charging and swapping in the future, and excessive debate has become an obstacle to the development of the new energy industry. .
As the starting gun of this battery swap sounded again, the 100 billion track was full of people at once, passing through the fog of the route battle. The focus of the future is to see who is leading and who is on the battery swap track. Overtaking on a curve.
