Our reporter Ge Mengchao
●Flash charging and fast charging enter the minute-level replenishment stage
●Mainstream power swapping stations only take a few minutes to swap power
●In the first eight months of this year, approximately 11,000 high-power charging facilities were added to the service area
Chen Lihui, who is from Shenzhen, Guangdong, spent the National Day holiday in Hunan. On the morning of October 7, he drove a new energy vehicle back from Changsha. Around 10 o'clock, the vehicle showed that the battery power was less than 30%. Chen Lihui immediately drove into the Chenzhou service area, parked the car in a supercharged parking space, skillfully opened the mobile app, plugged in the gun, scanned the code, and charged. It only took 10 minutes to get the battery to 85%. "It's almost enough time to go to the bathroom to recharge the battery," Chen Lihui said.
During the National Day return rush hour, there was constant traffic on the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway heading towards Beijing. In the service area in Hebi, Henan, there are 6 charging and swapping stations and 80 charging guns from Henan Communications New Energy, State Grid, NIO and other companies. The newly built flash charging station in September this year has a maximum power of 1,500 kilowatts. “The holiday service area has sent additional personnel to guide the vehicles, so that vehicles can basically be charged and driven upon arrival without long queues,” said Wang Yulei, manager of the Hebi service area.
As of the end of June this year, the number of new energy vehicles in my country has reached 48.97 million, and new registrations in the first half of the year accounted for nearly half. During the National Day holiday, car owners became more enthusiastic about driving new energy vehicles, which also put forward higher requirements for charging and energy replenishment service levels.
In the three days before the holiday, a total of 2.9686 million new energy vehicles were charged on highways across the country, with an average of 989,500 times per day, an increase of 48.41% over the same period last year; the charging capacity reached 71.6193 million kWh, with an average of 23.8731 million kWh per day, an increase of 49.39% over the same period last year. Among them, the charging capacity of highways across the country reached 28.0469 million kilowatt hours on October 1, an increase of 60.4% compared with the first day of the National Day holiday last year, setting a record high in a single day during the holiday.
A major pain point that once troubled new energy vehicle owners was the vehicle's cruising range. Judging from the situation during this holiday, "battery life anxiety" has been alleviated. The latest data shows that during the National Day holiday, while the traffic of new energy vehicles increased by 35% year-on-year, the average daily number of particularly busy charging service areas dropped by 17% year-on-year.
The changes of one increase and one decrease are closely related to the improvement of the functions and performance of new energy vehicles and the acceleration of the construction of my country's charging network.
The performance of my country's new energy vehicle products is increasingly optimized. The average cruising range of pure electric passenger vehicles reaches 500 kilometers, and fast charging technology is applied in batches. Jian Xiaorong, director of fiscal, taxation and financial policy research at the China Automotive Strategy and Policy Research Center, analyzed that at the technical level, my country's rapid energy replenishment technologies such as flash charging, fast charging, and battery swapping have been implemented on a large scale. Flash charging and fast charging have entered the minute-level energy replenishment stage. The flash charging technology of leading companies can recharge hundreds of kilometers of energy in a few minutes. It only takes a few minutes for a mainstream battery swap station to complete a battery swap. It is understood that BYD has built more than 11,500 flash charging stations in total, with layouts in Lhasa, Tibet and Shangri-La, Yunnan; from October 1st to 5th, a total of 902,300 people were charged through the Xiaopeng charging platform; on October 5th, NIO's total number of battery swaps exceeded 183,600 times in a single day, setting a new high.
At the same time, the construction of charging networks continues to accelerate. As of the end of August, the total number of electric vehicle charging infrastructure (guns) in my country has exceeded 24 million, establishing the world's largest electric vehicle charging network. In the first eight months of this year, approximately 11,000 high-power charging facilities were added to the service area, which is equivalent to the previous cumulative number. "We have put into operation 38 fully liquid-cooled supercharging stations in the province's high-speed service areas. The maximum output power of a single gun reaches 600 kilowatts. The charging efficiency is several times that of conventional high-power fast charging interfaces. Basically, the charging life is '1 second and 1 kilometer.'" said Hu Wanyong, station operations manager of Hunan High-speed New Energy Technology Co., Ltd.
Faced with a large amount of travel demand released in a short period of time, the problem of charging "tide" during holidays is still a realistic test. During this year’s National Day holiday, some netizens reported that the waiting time for charging in high-speed service areas was long.
"The essence of the problem is the tidal supply and demand mismatch unique to holidays." Jian Xiaorong said that during the National Day holiday, travel is highly concentrated on a few popular channels and during peak hours, and the instantaneous charging demand far exceeds the station's design carrying capacity on weekdays. At the same time, the charging equipment in some service areas built earlier is old and unable to output full power. Some sites still have faulty piles, which reduces the number of actual available piles.
As charging technology improves, service guarantees should also keep up. During the National Day holiday, various regions deployed in advance, and car companies took active actions to provide convenience for new energy vehicle owners by upgrading supercharging piles, adding mobile charging vehicles, and strengthening operation and maintenance inspections.
China Southern Power Grid's "Shunyi Charge" platform reviews traffic flow simulation data in high-speed service areas every day, and dynamically allocates mobile charging vehicles and mobile energy storage charging devices based on station heat to replenish energy for new energy vehicles in service areas along Daguang Expressway, Guanglian Expressway and other areas; Hunan Expressway Group invests 26 mobile emergency charging vehicles (cabins) and 6 intelligent mobile charging robots were deployed and flexibly deployed to high-traffic service areas on key road sections according to changes in charging traffic flow; Hebei Lufa Group sent additional personnel to the service area for on-site guidance and opened underpasses for diversion.
"We added batteries before the holiday and dynamically allocated batteries to key high-speed battery swap stations. At the same time, we used algorithms to predict traffic peaks and transferred fully charged batteries from adjacent stations in advance." Yuan Zhao, the head of NIO Energy's Anhui region, said that during the holidays, NIO also arranged dedicated personnel on duty and deployed mobile service points in high-speed service areas and other areas with dense traffic to guide car owners to complete battery swaps efficiently.
Jian Xiaorong suggested that in the face of the "big test" during the holidays, relevant departments and units should further strengthen dispatch monitoring, release information in a timely manner, improve the turnover efficiency of charging piles, deploy more operation and maintenance personnel, and continue to ensure the travel of new energy vehicles; car owners can choose to replenish energy during off-peak hours, flexibly plan routes, and charge near the expressway entrance or exit or get off the nearest expressway to the city.
According to the plan, by 2030, my country will have more than 40 million charging infrastructures and about 300,000 high-power charging facilities; performance levels such as power battery safety, charging rate, low-temperature suitability, and cycle life will continue to improve. In the medium to long term, it is necessary to promptly upgrade and renovate old charging piles, improve energy replenishment points in scenic spots, national and provincial trunk lines, and county and township lines, and actively explore the application of new technologies such as integrated optical storage, charging and replacement stations.
