Head image source: IC photo
Foreword
Enterprises in the traditional electric vehicle industry / battery industry are shackled by directional thinking, and have always performed mediocre in the development of lithium battery products. Lithium education for C-end users has been done by Internet companies; Grab the lithium outlet in the race for the track. From the first news around 2015, to the momentum in 2020, there are many companies entering the bureau to exchange power like the crucian carp.
Until April 15, 2019, the “new national standard” for electric vehicles was officially implemented, giving the finale to the electric vehicle industry. At this point, new structural opportunities for electric vehicle travel have ushered in, and new hopes have also been ushered in the field of shared motorcycles and charging and replacing, and also attracted the attention of major giants.
The policy dividend of the “new national standard”, the prospect of the 400 billion market, the two rounds of trips with a frequency of 1 billion a day, the charging process of nearly 100 million times a day, the real-time distribution industry and the needs of C-end users have been upgraded simultaneously Attracting large players to enter the market, a commercial movement for two-wheel electric vehicles to share travel and power exchange services is spreading in China.
Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan and other Internet giants have entered the bureau; Ningde Times, China Tower and other big factories have successively set foot in; start-up companies continue to emerge and get continuous capital injection …
“New Three Kingdoms” of shared motorcycles
First, the current status of the motorcycle sharing industry
In the past few years, motorcycles have been tepid in the Chinese market, and one of the most important reasons is the policy impact. As early as 2017, Mobike and ofo tried to do motorcycle business, but because of unclear policies, later Beijing and other first-tier cities have successively issued documents stating that they do not encourage the development of shared motorcycles, and then directly stopped in major cities such as second-tier Shared motorcycles.
Until April 15, 2019, the “new national standard” was officially launched, and the industry ’s standardThe standardization allowed Meituan and Didi to usher in the most suitable chance to play. At that time, Mobike and ofo began to be weak, and Harrow, which has advantages in the third, fourth and fifth tier cities, began to fully counterattack the first and second tier cities. Harrow has ranked first in the current shared bicycle and shared electric vehicle market .
Second, the “new story” of the 200 billion market
China has close to 2.8 billion trips per day, of which 1 billion trips are dependent on two rounds of trips, and the main services in these 1 billion trips depend on electric bicycles, which require about 100 million charging processes per day . Among them, about 300 million trips per day can be converted into shared electric vehicle travel. Based on 2 yuan per trip, the annual market size will exceed 200 billion yuan, which does not include the size of the power exchange market.
And most importantly, the imagination of the future also lies in the two-wheel sharing platform can integrate more services in the future , such as power replacement, battery sales, vehicle maintenance, vehicle insurance, Life services, financial services, data realization, advertising realization, etc. This is the most important reason for attracting giants to enter the game.
Three, existing main players
The main players of shared motorcycles are Hello, Xiaozheng, Mango, Mobike, Bee, Fawn, Snippet, Street Rabbit, Horse Hunting, Yongan Trip, Thunder Wind Trip, etc. Meituan and Didi are fully in the game The prices of each house are basically the same, starting at 1 yuan, and charging according to time, usually in 15-minute units.
Manufacturers with better products and services have reported higher prices. For example, the standard for most cities in Xiaoyan is to charge 1 yuan every 5 minutes. There are also a handful of small and medium-sized cities that start at 2-3 yuan / 30 minutes, and often take the lead within 3-10 kilometers.
Four, “Three Kingdoms Killing” by big players
1. Haro’s long-range plan
In the shared electric vehicle industry, the real boss today is Haro invested by Alibaba. A few years ago, when Mobike and ofo were fighting fiercely, Harrow quietly developed in third-, fourth-, and fifth-tier cities. As early as two years ago, Harrow electric vehicles could be seen in the county town of western Guangdong, and then Mobike After both ofo and ofo disappeared, Harrow, which has an advantage in the third, fourth, and fifth tier cities, began to counterattack the first and second tier cities.In the market of shared electric vehicles, Harrow has ranked first.
2. Didi’s defense
In mid-2019, Didi will travel the bicycle business department (internal code “Haitang Bay”) , motorcycle business department (Internal code “Dark Horse”) Integrated and upgraded to the two-wheeler division (Internal code is “Hippocampus”) .
In March 2020, Didi Chuxing ’s Green Orange Motorcycle announced that Xingheng Power will complete its supporting task of 1 million sets of lithium batteries.
On April 17, 2020, Green Orange Bicycles completed a $ 1 billion Series A round of financing. The investment institutions were Junlian Capital and another large foreign fund; immediately after April 21, 2020, it received another $ 1.5 billion. Financing.
The latest bicycles and electric bicycles of Qingcheng Bicycles are produced and operated exclusively by Shanghai Permanent Bicycle Factory. This year, it is expected that 2 million upgraded Qingju bicycles will be launched nationwide, which will have a huge impact on other brands such as Haro. Orange’s valuation will also skyrocket.
The goal of Didi ’s move is to make up for the travel ecology outside the four-wheel vehicle, and to add a new traffic entrance to achieve the effect of strategic defense and prevent its opponents from borrowing two rounds of travel scenarios to overstep their four-round travel business.
3. The layout of Meituan
In April 2020, Meituan placed an order for more than one million shared motorcycles. Cooperative manufacturers include Fujitec and Xinri. Meituan ’s motorcycles will be launched in cities such as Chengdu first. The cooperation order with Xinri has been confirmed. The model is a shared model exclusively customized by Meituan, which has anti-disassembly functions. In addition, Meituan also exclusively bought a Fujitsu Q8 model.
In terms of the million-dollar motorcycles placed by Meituan this time, the total cost of the body + battery may be several billion yuan.
The battery life of the models ordered by Meituan is between 50 and 60 kilometers. Compared with some small-brand vehicles on the market, it has a notable improvement in battery life. If the vehicle is ridden 3 times a day, a single ride will be about 3 kilometers. One-time power exchange can guarantee normal operation for about a week, and it has more advantages in cost control.
For battery charging, Meituan adopts the power replacement mode, the vehicle chip will predict the battery life, and each city will set up an operation center to perform unified power replacement management.
The main purpose of Meituan ’s power motorcycle business is also to complement its travel scenes, essentially creating shared motorcycles as a commercial weapon to stabilize the moat.
4. Accelerated elimination of “small and medium players”
After the brutal bloody battle of shared bicycles, giants are beginning to find new breakthroughs. Didi and Meituan accelerate their admission to shared motorcycles. Capital giants have injected capital and sent troops to relocate. , Internet giants such as Tencent, Meituan and Didi have all entered the market, and well-known investment institutions such as Innovation Workshop and Meihua Venture Capital have all entered the market. With the clouds over the shared motorcycles, a new “Three Kingdoms Kill” is coming. It can be assured that the large players’ horse racing enclosure will surely become a victim of a large number of small and medium players.
Five, “Yonganxing” with a complicated bottom line
It is no exaggeration to say that Yong Anxing started early in the field of public bicycles, but rushed to a late set in the field of shared bicycles.
Yonganxing Technology Co., Ltd. (former name: Changzhou Yongan Public Bicycle System Co., Ltd.) was established on August 24, 2010 , Headquartered in Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province, the main business is R & D, sales, construction, and operation services of a shared travel system based on the Internet of Things and big data analysis technology. The main representative products include public bicycles, shared cars, shared mopeds, and a new generation of public bicycles. In the field of shared travel business, it has a good technical reserve, has 107 patents, and obtained 48 computer software copyrights, forming certain technical barriers in the industry.
On November 24, 2016, the APP of Yonganhang Technology Co., Ltd. went online and was first operated in Chengdu. This APP can rent Yong’an public bicycles and Yong’an shared bicycles. Yong’an Bank officially entered the field of shared bicycles.
On August 17, 2017, Changan Yongan Public Bicycle System Co., Ltd., the parent company of Wing On Bank, was listed on the A-share main board and became the first share-sharing bicycle. Ant Financial, under Ali, was the largest institutional shareholder.
October 25, 2017, Yang Lei, CEO of Hello Bike, addressed all members in an internal letterGong confirmed that Haruo Bicycle has merged with Changzhou Yonganhang Low Carbon Technology Co., Ltd. (Yonganhang Chairman Sun Jisheng is the largest shareholder) , Kazakhstan Get 100% of Yonganxing Low-Carbon Technology, and form a new company, Jiangsu Yonganxing Low-Carbon Technology Co., Ltd. (Hello Bicycle Operating Company) , and he I will be the CEO of the new company and complete the change on November 30, 2017.
Whether it is Changzhou Yongan Public Bicycle System Co., Ltd. (listed company) or Jiangsu Yonganxing Low Carbon Technology Co., Ltd. (Hello Bike Operating Company) They have a common gold shareholder: Zhejiang Ant Small and Micro Financial Services Group Co., Ltd. (Alipay ’s parent company) , Ant Financial, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Shanghai Yunxin Venture Capital Co., Ltd., holds 13% of the listed companies in Yongan Bank and is the largest institutional shareholder. Shanghai Yunxin Venture Capital Co., Ltd. holds 36.7% of Haruo Bicycle, Shanghai Lingji Enterprise Management Center holds 0.35% of Haroo Bicycle, and holds a total of 37.05% of the shares. It is the largest shareholder and concerted party . Wing On Bank Technology Co., Ltd. holds 8.85% of Haruo Bicycle and is the second largest shareholder.
Why should Ant Financial promote the merger of Hello and Yonganxing? The core business of Wing On Bank is public bicycle management system and operation service. Hello, there is Alipay endorsement, and Yongan Bank does the operation. The main problem of sharing bicycles now is the contradiction with the local government. Everyone in the background of Yongan Bank knows that for public subsidies with piled bicycles, government public relations has always been a strength. Hello ’s two-wheeled business, bicycles, mopeds, and battery cars, needs this management system or paved relationship between government and business . As early as December 2017, Ant Financial increased its capital in Yongan Bank and became its largest shareholder.
Merging two complementary holding companies to achieve better results is undoubtedly the most reasonable explanation for this matter.
Six, current market concerns
1. Production cost
In the early days of the bike-sharing war, brands struggled for speed and scale. The key was to reduce costs, and quality was ranked last, which also led to an extremely high scrap rate.
But the speed of motorcycles is fast, and more attention is paid to the safety of riding and the comfort of the vehicle. This makes it impossible to significantly reduce the cost of car manufacturing in a short period of time under the same technical conditions. In addition, it is also necessary to overcome difficulties in technical iterations. For example, important components such as car bodies, systems, and batteries require a certain amount of technical accumulation. Enterprises do not have the ability to reduce costs systematically.
In addition to the cost of the body, the battery cost and the breakage rate are also high. Generally, the battery price of a battery with an endurance of 70km is around one thousand yuan. The high cost and battery replacement cost require early investment by the enterprise. In the end, it will often become an “unbearable weight.” Car entrepreneurs are eager to solve the problem.
2. Operating costs
Power replacement has always been a problem in this industry. Once the power replacement problem can be easily solved, the operating cost can be reduced.
The earliest launch of the shared motorcycle industry is a pile-type charging station, which returns to the original point and charges after completing a lease. Although there is a pile mode that can make charging a breeze, this mode does not have the advantage of borrowing anywhere.
Currently, shared electric vehicles like Hello, Xiaoyan, Mango, etc. can be borrowed anywhere, but the disadvantage is that The power change requires manual timing operation, which greatly increases the operating cost.
For the scheduling of shared motorcycles, 1,000 vehicles usually need to be equipped with 5 employees. At the same time, the batteries need to be transported to the warehouse for charging. Generally, 1,000 vehicles will be equipped with 8-10 people. That is to say, The cost of dispatching and operating shared bicycles is much higher than that of shared bicycles. Assuming that the daily salary of each operating employee is 200 yuan, it already accounts for more than half of the shared bicycle usage fees . In addition, problems such as theft of electric vehicles, theft and damage of batteries further increase the cost of operation and maintenance.
So overall, there are pros and cons in both the piled mode and the pileless mode. The piled mode will reduce the labor cost, but will increase the site cost, and the user’s travel experience is not good; the pileless mode has no site cost, but will increase the operation and battery costs.
Share the rivers and lakes for power exchange
First, “Big Business” in the power swap market
The Chinese market has 500 million two-wheeled electric vehicle travel users, as well as 7 million take-out personnel and 3.1 million courier personnel. The annual production and sales of two-wheeled electric vehicles are 35 million. The average daily charging times of electric vehicle users are nearly 100 million.
At present, the two-wheel electric vehicle exchange business on the market is mainly to place an exchange cabinet offline. Each exchange cabinet can place 2 to 7 batteries, and the battery charging time is from zero to full. About 1 hour, under normal circumstances, the battery replaced by the user can be fully charged in about 45 minutes.
According to the battery on the cabinet 24 hours a day, it can be circulated about 220 times, and according to the frequency of users changing the battery once every 2 days, a power exchange cabinet can serve nearly 450 people.
According to the algorithm of the power exchange company, the user spends an average of 600 yuan per year on the power exchange trip (month card 50 yuan / month calculation) >, C-end demand market exceeds 180 billion yuan. In the small B market, there are currently more than 10 million takeaway riders and couriers in China, and their demand for power replacement is more vigorous. If the current monthly rent is 299 yuan, this part of the market will reach 36 billion yuan. In this way, without considering the penetration rate, the C-end and the B-end may add up to another 200 billion market scale.
Even if the water inside is huge, according to the lead-acid battery consumer market in the electric vehicle industry, at present, the sales of lead-acid batteries in the electric vehicle market by two listed companies, Chaowei and Tianneng, are each at 30 billion yuan. Around / year, the two together accounted for more than 60% of the country’s market share, which can be inferred that the market size of electric vehicle batteries is probably at the level of 100 billion, about 200 million sets / year of battery sales.
The future market structure will change from mainly lead-acid batteries to lithium batteries. For capital, the 200 million group / year battery market is an extremely imaginative market for power exchange companies and capital.
Second, players in the power exchange market
There are many players in the current power exchange market, and the relatively long cultivation period includes e power exchange, easy ride power exchange, Zhang Fei travel, honey walk power exchange, Yongyou Zhixing, smart rental travel, Hello exchange, magic change Electricity etc. Smell the policy dividend, the giants also began to enterThe field, including the exchange of electricity from Haro and the energy from the tower, are also being fully deployed.
Of course, even a 100 billion market cannot guarantee that every player can get a considerable share. For the power replacement mode, the initial battery and replacement cabinet investment, and the later manual operation and maintenance investment are three large costs.
Three, the main player mode
1. Hello change the power
On June 12, 2019, Hello, Ant Financial, and Ningde Times jointly established a joint venture company, with Yang Lei as the CEO of the joint venture company. The three companies invested RMB 1 billion in the first phase and launched the “Hello Power Exchange Service” that positions the basic energy network of two-wheel electric vehicles. On April 8, 2020, the “Hello Power Exchange” project received another 200 million yuan investment from Zhongheng Electric.
Hello has refined terrestrial network operation capabilities. Alipay has opened online channels. Ningde Times has the world ’s leading lithium battery technology solution. One Skynet + Groundnet + Lithium battery can seamlessly supply 500 million on the Chinese land. People travel by two rounds of electricity exchange, and will expand to solve their own electricity exchange problem in the future.
For Hello, Alipay and Ali economies, if Hello Travel can transform the power exchange service into a new era of infrastructure, it also means that the puzzle of Ali economies in the field of travel has been completed piece.
Hello, the layout of the field of power replacement is not just about looking at this hundreds of billions of power exchange markets.
In terms of power exchange business, old players such as e-change and e-change are more focused on closed-loop services such as takeaway riders and courier brothers. As ordinary users, they will not be able to start using them because their own vehicles do not match. Hello Travel’s definition of the power exchange business is a new era of social basic services that will serve hundreds of millions of electric vehicle users including more than 10 million takeaway riders and courier brothers.
However, taking ordinary users as the service object, it is necessary to unify the battery specifications. This unification of standards will be a systematic large-scale project, from the development and production of batteries, to the construction, operation and maintenance of replacement power stations, to For the marketing and promotion of products and services, Hello Travel chose to work with Alipay and Ningde Times to build a new infrastructure. This also means that Hello Travel has entered another stage of the “two rounds” of war- upgraded from overlay services to building infrastructure.
2.e Change the power
Shenzhen Easy Motor e-Exchange was formally established in 2016, and its core team comes from the mobile smart device and accessories designer and manufacturer Mophie team. Huang Jiaxi, the founder and CEO of e-Exchange, resigned in 2006 as the CEO of Guoguang North America for 10 years, and founded the mobile power brand mophie. In 2016, mophie was sold to a NASDAQ listed company.
The main product of e-replacement is the replacement cabinet with smart lithium battery, which has been put in more than 2,600 units in 24 cities nationwide, and the daily electricity exchange exceeds 300,000.
e The main users of power exchanges are takeaway and express riders from Meituan, Hungry, Dada and other platforms. They use two-wheeled electric vehicles as transportation vehicles and have high requirements for charging timeliness. They usually pay monthly The mode varies from 199 yuan / month to 499 yuan / month depending on the region.
According to the description of CEO Huang Jiaxi, the typical future scenario of e-motor e-changing is this: when the user is about to run out of power, the e-changing background automatically pushes reminders and helps users plan routes and guide users to nearby The power exchange cabinet performs power exchange, so as to ensure that users will not encounter the trouble of running out of power in the middle.
At present, in addition to cooperating with B-end customers such as takeout and express delivery, e-Exchange is also planning to use a lithium battery rental model to serve C-end users. e-Exchange mainly puts exchange cabinets in shopping malls in first- and second-tier cities, Near office buildings and residences.
It is reported that if users need to use e to exchange power, they need to send the electric car to their cooperative outlets for simple modification and use.
3. Easy to change battery
Suzhou Yichangqi Network Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2015 as an innovative technology company focused on providing energy services for electric two-wheelers. The core team of Yiqi Power Exchange comes from well-known Internet companies such as BYD, Didi, 360, Huawei, etc. The founder and CEO of Sun Zhuo is from Northeast China. He started from wholesale lead-acid batteries and later built his own lead-acid battery production plant. The pollution was too great, stopped, and turned around to do wholesale sales of two-wheel electric vehicles. Having been revolving around electric cars and batteries, Sun Zhuo is well aware of the various pain points inside.
The customers in the early stage of Yiqi’s battery replacement are mainly regional takeaway riders, but its ultimate goal is to cover the whole country and a wider C-end group.
500 million users across the country is a huge project. The model of Yiqi Battery Replacement is to choose to cooperate with OEMs in the electric vehicle industry, and to promote their products and services through the mature channels of OEMs.
When a user buys an electric car, the battery will naturally match with the power exchange cabinet, and they will be informed that they can choose the service of power exchange. The power exchange service can greatly reduce the user’s first car purchase cost. For OEMs and dealers, this is a huge selling point. OEMs and dealers are concerned about how much sales can be helped by power exchange.
In terms of layout, Yiqi is mainly based on the user’s location. There are two types of users, one is a user who buys a car, and the second is a user who exchanges electricity.
The first step is to understand where the car buyer is. Yiqi first distributes points in two-wheeler dealers’ stores, and builds a basic network from the points of offline agents.
The second step, when you have the data to buy a car, the users who change the power will also follow, and use the power replacement service in these stores. Through data analysis, we can find out where the exchange users are concentrated.
Then go back to the first step and continue to expand the power station.
After the channel outlets reach a certain level, Yiqi begins a new style of play. With the growth of users, the service time of the power exchange point can be lengthened. Originally, it was only possible to change the power during working hours, and then the power was changed within 24 hours.
There are two ways to expand the service time, transforming the existing channel into 24 hours, similar to the bank ATM. On the other hand, we talk about some 24-hour convenience stores, such as the convenience store that Suning and Yiqi strategically cooperated with, and this is also the convenience of convenience. The power exchange is an expansion of its convenience.
At present, there are nearly 2,000 points for Yiqi to change batteries. Shanghai and Chengdu are its main positions, running through the city model and waiting for large-scale replication.
This is just the beginning. What I want to do is to operate and manage the entire life cycle of the battery.
The power exchange scenario is scalable, from two-wheelers to three-wheelers, four-wheelers and even robotic services, factory automation production lines, and so on. Because the supply of energy has changed, the development of fossil energy towards clean energy such as wind energy and water energy will eventually be transformed into electricity, which will become the most important energy source in the future.
4. Zhang Fei travels
Zhang Fei Travel (Zhang Fei Charging) was established in June 2016 and is located in Beijing. It is a company focused on the field of two-wheel electric travel Energy storage application and power operation service company. It mainly provides self-built artificial service outlets, supplemented by intelligent power exchange cabinets, and provides lithium battery and two-wheel electric vehicle rental and freeLimited service. It has operated more than 150 physical power exchanges in 19 cities, and has accumulated more than 100,000 riders for takeout and instant delivery, and more than 40 million power exchanges.
The main service target of Zhang Fei in the early stage of charging is takeaway riders, and the power supply station chooses to be in the city center and the takeout center.
Zhang Fei Travel has developed a systemic package solution for renting and selling stores to recycle and build an integrated service platform. Store manual service, with temperature control, humidity control, etc., can better store lithium batteries, become the front storehouse of the battery factory, and solve the safe storage of batteries; multi-level financial price solutions for leasing and financial solutions, large The use cost of lithium batteries is reduced to a large extent, and the user benefits are naturally willing to replace. Because of the storefront model, the battery assets can be well kept and the asset management efficiency can be improved.
Based on the blessing of investment institutions, Zhang Fei travels firmly on the industry positioning of channels + services, and will expand rapidly through the layout of stores + charging cabinets in a point-and-band manner. The offline stores are set up, and the power exchange stations set by Zhang Fei travel are about 3 kilometers apart, mainly covering: meal pick-ups, take-out stations and key business districts, which are its so-called “three-point coverage circles.” As a supplement to the store, Zhang Fei travel also arranged an intelligent charging and replacement integrated cabinet, which can provide 24-hour continuous power replacement service.