The speed of construction of car companies and pile companies has slowed down, and resource exchange has become a new choice for car companies to resolve mileage anxiety and serve car owners.
Although electric cars have not yet set off waves, car companies have already aimed at the outlet of charging piles. In 2015, SAIC Group first established Anyue Charging to enter the charging pile industry. In 2015, BYD also announced the launch of charging pile business. After Tesla, the new car power rose, and Xiaopeng and Weilai at the head also started their own charging pile business.
Foresighting in the colosseum of charging piles, Foreign car company giants have never been absent. BMW launched its charging service platform “chargenow” in China in 2015. It first used the method of building charging piles with Putian New Energy, Ewe New Energy, and Xingxing to serve car owners, and required exclusive services to reflect the brand image.
In order to concentrate on laying piles, after 2016, car companies began to seek clues on the issue of pile construction. Volkswagen previously established a charging pile operation joint venture called Ionity with Audi, BMW, Daimler, Ford and Porsche, and plans to build 400 fast charging stations along 23 national highways and expressways in Europe by 2020. In December 2018, Volkswagen also established a joint venture company, Kaimais New Energy, with JAC, FAW, and Xingxing Charging to engage in the development, design, production, sales, and operation of charging pile products.
Charging piles are the infrastructure of electric vehicles. When electric cars were growing in the car market in reverse, the charging piles became the tuyere, and car companies are undoubtedly among the many players. In addition to the construction of charging piles in the midstream of the industrial chain, the route of the downstream charging platform scheme has also been valued by car companies. In 2012, BMW, Volkswagen, and Daimler joined forces with Siemens, Bosch, EnBW, and Innogy to set up Hubject, a charging infrastructure service provider, to provide B2B electric vehicle charging transaction services for charging equipment operators, energy providers, and OEMs. .
Now, the charging pile industry has begun to enter a stable period. The speed of building piles of car companies and pile companies has slowed down. As the scale of head pile companies has grown, interconnection with mature pile companies has become a solution for car companies. Mileage anxiety, new options for service owners.
The enthusiasm of car construction piles has diminished
Of the car companies, the only ones still insisting on self-operated charging piles are Tesla and Weilai. In order to meet the different needs of users, the two have developed different charging pile products. Tesla’s charging products include destination charging piles, super charging stations and home charging piles. Following the idea of power replacement, in addition to the super charging pile, NIO Power also has products for charging cars, one-button power-up, and power station replacement.
The usage rate of charging pile directly determinesIn return, the car companies that firmly grasp the owners and car resources occupy favorable conditions. In addition to closed service of car owners, brand exposure, and ease of mileage anxiety for car owners Considering that the ultimate motivation for car companies to enter the charging market is still rising rapidly with the sweeping electrification In the charging market, Weilai also had the intention to spin off the NIO Power plan to go public independently.
Electric vehicles have entered the post-subsidy era, and subsidies for car purchases have shifted to infrastructure. However, the construction of charging piles is not as “scamming” as before, and a large amount of capital has quickly poured into the industry in a short time. The important factor to get the subsidy is the operating capacity of the pile station, and the cycle of subsidy settlement is also relatively long. This puts forward higher operating requirements for the entrenched car companies.
In the later stages of the operation of charging piles, car companies also realized that the self-built pile and single-oriented car owner model is difficult to resolve the contradiction between the cost of building piles and car owner services. Expenditures for building piles include piles and later maintenance, while income is mainly the difference in electricity costs and service charges. The investment of a public charging station is close to one million, which is only open to car owners, and it is difficult to achieve the utilization rate of the profit line. It is necessary to cooperate with each other to promote a charging discount. Businesses with long payback periods.
Continuous investment without seeing profitability has always been a taboo for car companies , therefore, Early built car companies quietly let go Slowed the pace of self-built public charging piles, changed their thinking, chose to cooperate with pile enterprises to build piles, or retired from the second line to act as a charging pile information aggregation platform / charging service provider.
Xiaopeng Automobile announced in 2018 that it will land 200 self-operated charging stations in 30 cities by 2019. From the second half of this year, it will choose to build charging piles with special calls and connect to Weilai. NIO Power, National Grid, Xingxing Charging, and many other brands of charging stations, and Weimar has also been in the beginning and cooperated with special calls to build piles for car owners.
Even Tesla, who is most active in building piles and always insists on self-support, has changed. Tesla’s commitment in the construction of charging piles has been bouncing in recent years. As of now, it has not completed its stated goal of installing 18,000 super charging piles at the end of 2018. As China’s most important market, Tesla plans to increase the number of supercharging stations by 39% in the next few months, but it is difficult to say whether it will be completed as scheduled.
In the US domestic market, in order to alleviate the contradiction between the increasing number of cars and the speed of laying of charging piles, Tesla has recently started to seek external cooperation in charging in the United States.The charging station of EVgo, the largest charging network operator, deploys connectors that can be used to charge Tesla models.
Data display Among the top ten companies this year, the only one with a car company background is SAIC Anyue, and BYD, which entered the charging pile market with SAIC in the same year, the number of Denso In 2016, there were 4,640 charging piles, which fell to 1,240 in 2018, which is likely to shrink.
BMW’s chargenow has also started to transform very early, from building stakes with exclusive partners to access to different charging pile brands, and Wei Like NIO Power, which has opened charging piles to other car companies, Hubject, a joint venture between BMW, Volkswagen and Daimler, has established the largest multinational charging network “intercharge” through information aggregation.
An industry expert in the field of charging told the company that under the premise of the increasing concentration of the charging pile industry, car companies are struggling with new car sales difficulties, and it is a good choice to bind directly to mature pile companies. The method will become more and more common, and the division of labor will become more and more clear. “The essence of society is division of labor, and different roles make different money.” “But there may be further pursuit by brands.”