The "Wild Hope" of changing electricity in Ningde Era

The "aspirant" power change mode of Ningde era returned to the track, bringing new ideas for the field of new energy vehicles.Just, the idea has, should go to where the "child" can be invincible?

In the beginning of 2023, Ningde Times increased the capital of its wholly-owned subsidiary Times, the registered capital increased from 200 million yuan to 1.5 billion yuan, an increase of 650%.

And in the beginning of 2022, Ningde Times' wholly-owned subsidiary -- Time Electronics held its first press conference, officially releasing its power changing service brand EVOGO and integrated power changing solution.

It is reported that the power change solution of time service includes power change block, quick change station and APP three products.Among them, chocolate converter block is a mass-produced battery developed by the company specifically for the realization of shared converter, which can be adapted to 80% of the models developed by pure level stations that have been listed in the world and will be listed in the next 3 years.At the same time, the first batch of electricity replacement services was launched in 10 cities.

Battery giant next "change electricity", gourd in the end to sell what medicine?Can electric passenger cars break through previous barriers and usher in a new stage of development?We may be able to find the answer from the information of the electricity change mode published by Ningde Times.

01

King Ning has "everything ready"

In fact, even if Ningde times into the bureau to change the electricity this news is surprising, but combined with a series of actions before Ningde times, Ningde times such a choice is not "whim".

As early as 2019, Ningde Times, together with Hallo Chuxing and Ant Financial Services Co., LTD., launched an electric vehicle electric replacement brand -- Xiaha Electric Replacement, which takes electric two-wheelers as its service object. This is also its first exploration and attempt of electric replacement service.

One year later, in 2020, as the third largest shareholder, Ningde Times and Nextev, a leading electric vehicle company, jointly established Nextev Battery Asset Company.Through this cooperation, Ningde Times began to accumulate useful experience in the operation of battery bank and power change mode.

Entering 2021, Ningde Times has accelerated its own power change strategy.Not only has it completed the establishment of "Time Power Service", the business operation subject of EVOGO power exchange brand, but it has also reached business cooperation related to power exchange with several partners such as Guizhou Provincial Government and Sichuan Development.

And in the commercial vehicle electric replacement market, Ningde times has also had a "place", the cooperation object includes Beiqi Foton, Shaanxi Automobile, FAW, Dongfeng, Yutong and many other well-known commercial vehicle head enterprises.Data show: in the field of commercial vehicles, Ningde times has occupied more than 80% of the market share.

Under the appearance of the high share of commercial vehicles, the "big cake" of China's new energy passenger car market becomes more attractive.After all, China's new energy passenger car market is clearly stronger in both size and potential.

Data show that the sales volume of passenger vehicles in China reached 26.864 million in 2022, with a year-on-year growth of 3.8%, among which the sales volume of new energy vehicles reached 6.887 million, with a year-on-year growth of 93.4%, and the market share reached 25.6%.

Therefore, under the continuous benefit of policies, on the basis of the huge development potential of the new energy vehicle market, as well as the accumulation of previous experience and deep technical cultivation, Ningde era is bound to continue to expand the application scenarios of electric replacement mode in the field of passenger vehicles, and this can also achieve the ultimate goal of "selling batteries and selling more" in Ningde era to a certain extent.

02

King Ning's "Aspiration"

However, Sutu car Cool research Institute believes that: Ningde times into the electric market is not the purpose of "simple battery sales", from a larger perspective, its real purpose is: want to become a unified standard creator.

As is known to all, the current market of various car enterprises power battery pack specifications, models, interfaces, parameters and other aspects of the "shape and color".At the same time, due to the diversity of standards, it is difficult for existing changing stations to serve different brands, resulting in the single automobile brand and automobile changing service.For example, Nio power changing station only supports Nio cars, while Aodong New Energy also mainly provides electric changing services for the operating vehicles of BAIC.

The "chocolate power exchange block" launched by Ningde Times is trying to break the barriers between batteries and models. Through the promotion and implementation of unified standards, it reduces the impact of customized research and development of vehicle enterprises on the cost, so as to save a lot of costs for the development of new vehicles.

At the same time, because power changing involves the whole industrial chain layout such as decommissioned battery processing, which belongs to the typical asset-heavy mode of "big investment, long cycle and slow return", the vast majority of automobile enterprises often do not have the financial strength to build their own power changing stations, nor can they promote the power changing mode.

Take the example of Nio, which holds high that "Nio does not fail and insists on changing electricity".Excluding operating costs, the construction cost of a single power station is 1.5 million to 2 million yuan (second generation power station).As of January 31 this year, Nio had 1,313 power stations.Considering that the construction cost of the first generation of power changing station is about 3 million yuan per unit, calculated, Nio will invest nearly 3 billion yuan in the construction of power changing station.

Scale, as this era worthy of the "Ning king", Ning De era into the bureau for electricity obviously has more advantages.In 2022, the total number of power batteries installed in domestic vehicles reached 294.6GWh, an increase of 90.7% year-on-year.In 2022, China's cumulative output of power batteries was 545.9GWh, up 148.5% year on year.The loading volume was 294.6GWh, up 90.7% year on year.Among them, Ningde Times ranked first among domestic power battery companies with the loading capacity of 142.02GWh, accounting for 48.2%.

Of course, the advantages of Ningde era also have hidden, in the power battery is difficult to achieve technical breakthrough at present, its so-called "king of Ning" position is not indestructible.Because of the lack of technical uniqueness, it is unclear how long the scale advantage of Ningde can be maintained when many auto companies are looking for new outsourcing battery suppliers or even building their own battery plants.

In this case, to expand the power change business is not only the best way for Ningde Times to gradually transform from a battery supplier to an energy service provider, but also the layout in advance to deal with the bottleneck of future business development.With the help of the promotion of the power exchange mode, Ningde Times has the opportunity to form a closed loop of the battery life cycle value chain from research and development, manufacturing, use to recycling, which is conducive to increasing the added value.

03

Limitations of the power change mode

However, every coin has its pros and cons.Even from the surface, Ningde era of the road to change electricity seems bright, but there are still several problems can not be ignored to restrict its development.

On the one hand, it is still unknown whether auto companies can pay for the unified standards set by Ningde era.From the perspective of FAW Pentium, the first cooperative object of EVOGO in Ningde era, those willing to attach themselves to its side are often relatively "backward" enterprises in battery technology.

At the same time, as power battery related technology is still the core selling point of many electric vehicles, relatively advantageous car companies will not easily give up their own core technology and sunk costs already invested.

In addition, the current technology, including battery performance, is still the core competitiveness of a new energy vehicle, which is often linked to the positioning, price and brand of automotive products.Once battery technology and standards are unified, car companies are bound to face the huge problem of product differentiation.

On the other hand, if the "aspiration" of Ningde era can be realized, how to ensure the experience of electricity change is also one of the problems.Different from the choice of Nio only for its own models and other level changer stations for the public travel market, Ningde Times EVOGO wants to target a larger number of individual users who pay more attention to experience. Considering that Ningde Times' "chocolate power changer block" can be adapted to passenger cars from A00, B and C class,The tolerance of users of different models to the convenience of electric change is also very different. How to ensure the electric change experience is not divided will be a big problem in front of EVOGO.

The line of sight will be full to the whole new energy vehicle electricity market.We can intuitively find that at present, there are still no enterprises to realize the profit of electricity change business, not to mention, with the development of fast charging technology, the time gap between charging and electricity change is also shortening.

As for the present, although it is not clear whether Ningde Times can achieve another breakthrough in corporate performance by virtue of entering the power exchange field, whether it is policy-oriented market trend or swarming enterprises -- since 2022,Including SAIC Motor, Geely Automobile, GaC Group, Ningde Times, GCL and other Oems and new energy industry chain giants have joined the tide of electricity replacement.

This all seems to confirm the fact that:

Behind the electric model, is a new blue ocean market, waiting for many car enterprises to dig.