In order to promote the consumption of new energy vehicles and the upgrading of related industries, the executive meeting of the State Council recently decided to extend the policy of exemption from new energy vehicle purchase tax until the end of 2023, and at the same time vigorously build charging piles and include them in the scope of support for policy-based development financial instruments. As the penetration rate of new energy vehicles continues to rise, the development of the charging pile industry has been actively driven, and a number of listed companies are increasing the layout of the charging pile market.

The rapid growth of new energy vehicles is prominent, and the problem of "charging difficulty" is prominent

China Business Daily reporters walked into a number of new energy vehicle charging pile stations in Beijing to investigate and found that charging pile stations are mostly located in the internal roads or paid parking lots of the community, and many car owners reported to reporters that their own new energy vehicle charging still faces the dilemma of "charging piles are not easy to find", "long queues" and "high costs".

At the Kamax charging station on the ground floor of Beijing's Rainbow Shopping Mall, Mr. Li, the owner of a ride-hailing car, said that in addition to the charging price, he will also consider factors such as parking charges, distance to residence, and maintenance of charging facilities. "The community where I live is not allowed to install charging piles, so I can only go to the charging station close to home, in order to save time, I will choose fast charging, because every time I enter the basement of the mall, I have to pay a parking fee, so the cost is not low."

Many charging stations are built in parking lots, and car owners need to pay parking fees for use

Problems such as the difficulty of building piles in residential communities, the imperfect planning function of charging paths, the uneven development of public charging facilities, and the need to improve users' charging experience have also gradually been exposed.

Zhang Xiang, director of the New Energy Vehicle Technology Research Institute of Jiangxi New Energy Science and Technology Vocational College, told a reporter from China Business Daily that there are many problems with new energy vehicle charging, mainly because the number of charging piles is not enough. Theoretically, if each car can be equipped with a charging pile, there will be no problem of charging difficulty.

According to data released by the China Charging Alliance, as of May 2022, there are 1.418 million public charging piles in China, and the number of private charging piles built with vehicles is 2.16 million, while the number of new energy vehicles in China has exceeded 10 million, almost three vehicles share a charging pile. At the same time, the use time of the charging pile is different from the refueling time of the fuel vehicle. Under normal circumstances, fuel vehicles can complete refueling in three minutes, while new energy vehicles take two or three hours to charge. As a result, the waiting time of the owner in line is extended, which not only reduces the charging efficiency, but also affects the charging experience.

Zhang Xiang said that unlike the unified planning and eye-catching identification of gas stations, many charging piles are scattered in some social parking spaces, not only the location is not ideal, but also there is no obvious signage, resulting in the low utilization rate of these charging piles. At the same time, the lack of management of charging facilities is also the reason for the low utilization rate of charging piles. At present, many charging piles are unmanaged, car owners directly throw electric guns on the ground after charging, fuel vehicles occupy public pile parking spaces, resulting in new energy vehicles cannot be charged, etc., which also brings many car owners the problem of "easy to enter the field and difficult to charge".

And the demand for charging continues to increase. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in the first half of 2022, China's cumulative sales of new energy vehicles reached 2.6 million units, a year-on-year increase of 115%, and the market share reached 21.6%. It is expected that China's new energy vehicle sales will reach 5 million units in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 42%.

Intensive layout of enterprises to alleviate "charging anxiety"

As the number of new energy vehicles continues to increase, the demand for energy replenishment of supporting charging infrastructure has been further stimulated. In the face of the huge market, many companies actively layout charging business. In addition to BAIC, NIO, Geely, GAC and other vehicle companies, battery manufacturers and traditional oil giants are vigorously layout.

Enterprise investigation data shows that up to now, there are 200,400 charging pile-related enterprises in China. In the first half of 2022, 37,200 new charging pile-related enterprises were added in China, a year-on-year increase of 55.61%.

In August 2022, the first "photovoltaic charging" refueling station project jointly built by Sinopec Fujian Petroleum Branch and CATL was completed and put into operation at the gas station on Ningde Min East Road in Fujian. The station uses green energy to meet the electricity demand in the station, increases the proportion of clean energy power supply in the station, and can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 1,570 tons in the whole life cycle of the project compared with traditional fossil energy.

As early as April 2021, Sinopec announced its cooperation with NIO to build 5,000 NIO swap stations in Sinopec's national network by 2025. With the advantage of having its own 30,000 gas stations, Sinopec cooperated with NIO to build a total of 175 charging and swapping stations in 2021. By the end of 2021, Sinopec had built 1,212 charging stations, 83 exchange stations, and 1,048 distributed photovoltaic power generation stations.

In addition, BP and Avita Technology have also signed a strategic cooperation agreement to accelerate the layout of China's ultra-fast charging network.

"To solve the problem of poor charging experience, it is still a multi-faceted collaborative solution. Only by solving the problems of slow charging and difficult charging can enterprises truly promote the rapid development of the charging pile industry. Zhang Xiang said.

Intensified business competition Enterprise innovation development model

According to the "2022 China New Energy Charging Pile Industry Insight Report", from the perspective of charging pile ownership pattern, China's new energy vehicle owners can choose two types of charging channels: public charging piles and private charging piles.

According to the statistics of the China Charging Alliance, as of July 2022, the member units in the alliance have reported a total of 1.575 million public charging piles, including 684,000 DC charging piles, 890,000 AC charging piles, and 485 AC and DC integrated charging piles. From August 2021 to July 2022, an average of about 52,000 new public charging piles were added every month.

At present, the mainstream fast charging pile supports 60kW or 120kW, and under normal circumstances, it can achieve 200 kilometers of energy replenishment in 15 minutes to 1 hour. Yu Shiying, chairman of Zhuhai Shuen Technology Co., Ltd., told China Business Daily that the standard of charging piles is constantly improving, and the current market demand is 120KW integrated dual-gun DC charging piles, charging objects are mostly buses, ride-hailing, taxis. Operators can combine the rules of bus charging to fully open ride-hailing and taxi operations to the outside world during the day, and ensure the charging of their own public transport vehicles at night to maximize revenue. In addition, in the case that the old community cannot increase capacity, operators can also ensure that the existing power can meet the charging of more parking spaces through reasonable allocation of resources and priority strategies.

In addition to the innovative operation model of public charging piles, the business model of "private pile sharing" has gradually matured, attracting more and more car companies and charging pile operators to participate. According to data from the China Charging Alliance, as of June 2022, the number of charging piles in China reached 3.918 million, of which 2.39 million were private piles, accounting for more than 60%. Public data shows that the current private charging pile is idle 70% of the time.

Mr. Zhao, the owner of a new energy vehicle, told reporters that when he went to work or went out, his private charging pile was empty for a long time. "If the model of 'private pile sharing' can be promoted, others pay me, and I rent out the idle use time of private charging piles, which can not only increase the utilization rate of private charging piles, but also benefit private pile owners, and solve the problem of difficult charging of new energy vehicles." Mr. Zhao said.

In fact, the "private pile sharing" model also has many problems such as immature charging mechanism, increased property management costs, and the need to coordinate the interests of multiple parties involved in business, operating enterprises, properties, and power grids, but due to the large demand for charging, this model still maintains a rapid development speed. According to data from the China Charging Alliance, as of July 2022, the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance has counted 74,300 shared private piles, showing a rapid growth trend.

Favorable policies have been introduced to help the development of the charging pile industry

The steady development of the charging pile industry is the basic guarantee for the development of new energy vehicles and electric vehicles. In this context, relevant levels have successively issued relevant policies to support the innovation of charging piles related technologies, models and mechanisms, while solving the development problems of new energy charging piles, building a new power system, improving relevant infrastructure, and helping to achieve the "dual carbon" goal.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) issued in January this year issued the "Implementation Opinions of the National Development and Reform Commission and Other Departments on Further Improving the Service Guarantee Capacity of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure", which proposed that by the end of the "14th Five-Year Plan", China's electric vehicle charging guarantee capacity will be further improved, forming a moderately advanced, balanced layout, intelligent and efficient charging infrastructure system, which can meet the charging needs of more than 20 million electric vehicles.

The Ministry of Transport recently issued the Action Plan for Accelerating the Construction of Charging Infrastructure along Highways. The plan requires that by the end of 2023, qualified ordinary national and provincial trunk highway service areas (stations) can provide basic charging services. Chen Wanjian, deputy director of the Highway Bureau of the Ministry of Transport, said that charging operators are encouraged to take into account the reasonable income of investment operators and the economy of user use, and implement preferential service fees during the market cultivation period to ensure that charging service fees are reasonable and standardized. At the same time, local governments are encouraged to introduce relevant preferential policies to implement phased reduction and reduction of charging infrastructure site rent, so as to create conditions for accelerating the construction of charging infrastructure.

A number of industrial promotion policies have been implemented one after another, so that China's charging pile industry has a healthy development environment. According to data from the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance, in the first half of 2022, China's charging infrastructure increased by 1.301 million units, 3.8 times that of the same period last year. As of June 2022, the cumulative number of charging infrastructure in the country was 3.918 million units, an increase of 101.2% year-on-year, forming the world's largest charging infrastructure.