A few days ago, Ningde Times (300750.SZ)'s Times Electric Service officially released the power exchange brand EVOGO, and provided a combined power exchange solution that integrates power exchange blocks, quick exchange stations, and APP.
Before this online conference was held, the official public account of Ningde Times had pushed the countdown to the brand release for three consecutive days. It is not difficult to see that Ningde Times attaches great importance to EVOGO.
In the official promotional video, Zeng Yuqun, the founder and chairman of Ningde Times, also personally endorsed the "Chocolate for Electricity Bar", which was regarded as an "Easter Egg" by Ningde Times.
It is said that this combined battery replacement program will target all car companies, and the release of the EVOGO brand means that CATL has officially entered the battery replacement market.
Reasonable power exchange
In fact, the Ningde era has already revealed its ambition to enter the power exchange market.
In July 2020, Ningde Times joined hands with Futian Zhilan New Energy to take the lead in testing the water replacement of heavy trucks, becoming the first commercial application scenario of battery replacement heavy trucks. In August, NIO, which insisted on battery swapping from the very beginning, jointly invested and established Wuhan Weineng Battery Assets Co., Ltd., and launched a battery rental service on this basis.
By 2021, CATL will go a step further. In the strategic cooperation agreement with Foton Motor's new energy brand, in addition to new energy commercial vehicle products and the application of the leasing model, battery banks and power stations are also included in the scope of cooperation. In August, Ningde Times established the Times Electric Service subsidiary as the main body of the power exchange business, and later established a regional power exchange business company in Jilin Province, whose business scope includes the sales of power exchange facilities and battery leasing.
Zeng Yuqun once said, "Battery replacement and fast charging are better than hydrogen energy in terms of economy and maturity." This statement, coupled with a series of layouts, can prove that the cake of the power exchange market is to be eaten in the Ningde era, and it is bound to be won.
For the time being, regardless of the reason why the Ningde era changed the battery in the first place, choosing to release the battery replacement brand at this time, the easiest association in front of me is related to the weather.
Since the beginning of winter, ridicule about the "electric dad" has been incessant, and the electric car owners in the north are miserable. The battery life of electric vehicles in winter is 50% off. In order to run a few more kilometers, the owner of the car sits in the car without heating in the cold weather, and all he thinks about is the charging pile. However, charging at low temperature will cause irreversible damage to the battery, and even induce problems such as short circuit and spontaneous combustion.
At the press conference, Chen Weifeng, general manager of Times Electric Service, said that the Ningde Times battery replacement program is to solve these pain points. According to its introduction, a single "chocolate battery swap block" can provide 200 kilometers of battery life, and it only takes 1 minute to replace a single battery block. The owner can also choose one or more batteries according to different mileage requirements.
For car companies, the unification of battery replacement standards is conducive to reducing the cost of vehicle development and adaptation; for consumers, battery replacement combined with battery banking, battery rental services, etc., will help reduce the cost of personal car purchase and use .
At a time when the drawbacks of charging are exposed and the anxiety about battery life is swept away, the emergence of the Ningde era battery replacement scheme can be described as timely, and it seems that all participants benefit from it.
Weather, geography, people and people
As a new energy supplement scheme for electric vehicles, the battery swap mode is not new. In fact, the power exchange was once encouraged by the policy, but because the market has not been opened for a long time, it is a short-lived after all, and it has become the current energy supplement mode mainly based on charging.
In 2013, Tesla optimized the chassis power exchange technology and shortened the power exchange time to 90 seconds, but in the end, due to the low operating efficiency of the power exchange station, the special-shaped battery could not be shared across models and vehicles and other fatal flaws, it chose to give up, and turned to the development of supercars. Charging pile technology.
NIO, which chose to face difficulties, has accumulated 777 battery swap stations since the battery swap service entered actual operation in 2018 to the end of 2021. It is said that more than 70,000 users have unlocked the battery swap experience. However, Weilai is still in the stage of using power exchange as a value-added service in exchange for operational efficiency, and the return is difficult to cover the cost, and it is far from being profitable.
Change comes from the market. From 2013 to the end of 2021, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in my country has increased from 0.08% to 22.6%. At the same time, the ratio of vehicle piles has declined, and the speed of new charging piles is slightly slower than the sales of new energy vehicles, resulting in an imbalance between supply and demand.
Under such circumstances, the policy is again tilted towards power exchange. In 2020, the power exchange was written into the government work report for the first time, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology listed the power exchange as an important part of the "new infrastructure".
Founder Securities estimates that by 2025, the sales volume of battery-swapped passenger vehicles will exceed 2.8 million, the demand for supporting swap stations will be about 28,000, the demand for supporting batteries will be about 55GWh, and the total industrial chain scale will be about 332.1 billion. As industry standards become more standardized, lithium iron phosphate is expected to become the main battery route in the future, which undoubtedly matches the technical advantages of the CATL era.
In addition, there are so many car companies in the Ningde era, which makes it easy to solve the problem of difficult integration of car companies' resources for battery swapping.
From January to June 2021, among the more than 2,400 models in the effective catalogue of new energy vehicles announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, more than 1,200 models were equipped with power batteries from CATL, accounting for about 50%, making it the battery manufacturer with the most models. Among the cooperative car companies, Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng and other leading new power brands are at the forefront of the installed capacity of the CATL era.
From this point of view, it seems that the time, the right place, the people and the Ningde era have all been occupied.
Successful car companies, failure car companies
Everything is so logical, as if the Ningde era just needs to wait for the harvest, but in the real market competition, business logic is often changing rapidly, and there is never a shortage of "unexpected".
Some people point out that the rapid development of the battery swap industry will first benefit from power battery manufacturers. The separation of vehicle and electricity means that one vehicle and one battery will become one vehicle with multiple batteries, and power batteries will usher in incremental demand on top of the original demand.
According to data from the China Automotive Power Battery Industry Innovation Alliance, in 2021, the installed capacity of power batteries in China will total 154.5GWh, a year-on-year increase of 142.8%, of which the installed capacity of CATL is 80.51GWh, with a market share of 52.1%.
However, in the face of fierce market competition, even in the Ningde era, which occupies half of the domestic power battery market, it does not dare to take it lightly. What's more, this pressure comes not only from domestic and foreign counterparts, but also from the auto OEMs that cooperate with them.
Whether it is out of consideration of production capacity or bargaining power, in the face of the strong Ningde era, car companies have adopted the B plan of cooperating with multiple battery suppliers at the same time, such as the introduction of AVIC Lithium Power's Xiaopeng; what's more, It has already laid out its own power battery industry, such as Honeycomb Energy, a subsidiary of Great Wall Motors, whose battery production capacity is expected to reach 600GWh in 2025, which is comparable to the Ningde era.
Today, CATL has launched an electronic replacement brand. Optimistically, the bundled combination of battery and battery replacement solutions may "recover" the hearts of some car companies and consolidate their "first brother" status.
Lin Shi, deputy secretary general of the Intelligent Networking Professional Committee of the China Communications Industry Association, told Yinshi Finance, "The layout of the battery swap market can further consolidate the monopoly of the Ningde era in the battery market." Lin Shi pointed out, "The Ningde era has standardization of battery replacement batteries. ability."
It is reported that there are as many as 145 battery models specified in the "Specifications and Dimensions of Power Battery Products for Electric Vehicles". Different models and different power exchange methods will also cause differences in battery modules and specifications.
At present, the batteries provided by CATL to car companies are mainly 811 ternary batteries and 523 lithium iron phosphate batteries. With its market share and the boost of partners, it is very likely to contribute to the establishment of the standard.
Lin Shi said that if CATL has determined a set of battery replacement standards, all car companies will purchase its batteries according to its standards, and a system will naturally be formed. "The biggest challenge now depends on whether car companies are willing to buy it." .
Regardless of the fact that some models do not support battery swapping from the very beginning of their design, even car companies that support battery swapping are mostly "separate." Take Weilai, which is currently developing well in power exchange, as an example. It has both sales and reputation. Why give up its hard-fought country and join the power exchange system of the Ningde era?
In the previous battery game with the Ningde era, some car companies have noticed that the excessive sharpness of the Ningde era will be detrimental to their own development. Batteries, which account for 40% of the vehicle cost, also force car companies to rush to get rid of the constraints of suppliers and try to master the core technology in their own hands.
Since you want to "escape", why go back.
At present, there is only one member of the "Little Green Ring Family" officially announced by the Ningde era. How many new energy vehicles can be covered by the adaptation of 80% in his mouth, and whether the Ningde era, which has entered the game strongly, can sweep the army as expected? Unify the rivers and lakes? The results are still unknown.
