Electric vehicle battery swap station is not a new concept, but traditional large car companies that have never had enough weight are willing to advance in this direction. Although Renault has also expressed support for battery swap technology, and even the Chinese independent brand NIO , it has also established many battery swap stations in China and set up battery swap stations in Europe, and its market feedback is also good. But it cannot break the brand barriers and reach the level of cross-brand battery swap, so battery swap stations are just a concept after all.
SAIC, CATL , Sinopec , and Sinopec , and Sinopec , previously established a new energy company, Jeneng Smart Electric, which will drive all independent brands under SAIC to enter the battery swap track. This is another major Chinese automobile manufacturer decided to join the "car-to-power separation" operation model led by NIO in less than a year after GAC and Geely Group's independent brands introduced the battery swap system. Currently, the total number of battery swap stations has been built in the Chinese market, and it is estimated that it will continue to grow at a rapid pace.
In addition, CATL also launched the EVOGO battery swap brand at the beginning of this year, using the innovative "choco-swapping electric block) design and wireless BMS battery management system, which consists of 3 battery swap blocks, and the car owner can replace 1, 2, or 3. It only takes 1 minute to replace a battery replacement block, and the endurance of each one is about 200 kilometers. Therefore, the design of CATL once again broke through the thinking of the previous generation of battery swap stations, and made the operation of the battery swap station more flexible and fast by dismantling it into three pieces. Unlike other independent battery swap systems, CATL has the largest position in the global power battery market and can dominate the more standardized battery swap station technology, which will attract many car companies with insufficient battery R&D capabilities or lack huge funds to build battery factories, and join CATL's battery swap camp, directly catching up with or even surpassing the development progress of electric vehicle models of first-class car companies.
Let’s use battery swap technology regardless of whether global car manufacturers will agree with the concept of Chinese car companies. So why, while the electric vehicle trend has been spreading around the world for five years, the non-mainstream battery swap technology has begun to rise against the trend at this time?
- fast charging technology may be difficult to catch up with the time for refueling fuel vehicles within 10 years (generally, it takes only 3 minutes for a passenger car to fill a tank of fuel, and the mileage can reach at least 600 kilometers).
- "Car-electric separation" method can reduce car prices and lower the threshold for consumers to buy cars. Secondly, the battery uses a monthly rent. Although the cost of use is not low, the battery condition can always be ensured in the best condition. The owner no longer needs to return to the factory for inspection, and the maintenance factory does not have to invest too much maintenance equipment. The difference in the specifications of
- battery cell will become smaller and smaller, and will even be standardized. The most professional battery factory will work in the maintenance of battery swap stations (NIO also has an independent battery maintenance company). For car manufacturers, R&D resources can be bet on other technical fields.
- battery swap station can complement fast charging and slow charging services, making electric vehicle owners as convenient as using fuel vehicles, and no longer have mileage anxiety.
- Car owners can enjoy the latest battery technology. In the future, automobiles are a mobile platform that can download all newly developed functions of the car manufacturer through OTA paid. Of course, with the concept of a battery swap station, the largest component of an electric vehicle, the battery, can also be replaced at any time.
- battery swap station will also be an energy storage station. During peak electricity consumption, the load on the grid can be slowed down while maneuvering the power back to the charging grid to cope with urgent needs.
0 Even though the battery swap station has so many advantages, how will the global leading auto industry group view this counter-trend operation? From their perspective, maybe there are the following reasons?
Even if the skateboard design of the new generation of electric vehicles increases the feasibility of cross-brand battery swap, traditional big-brand car companies will still stick to the battery technology and production equipment that have bet on a lot of money, and will not share the battery swap station with other car manufacturers and abandon the characteristics of their own batteries.What is more important may be their arrogance. Imagine how a big car manufacturer with rich historical heritage can install batteries produced by other car manufacturers? (And they often change batteries from different car manufacturers)
If you want to operate a battery swap station on your own like SAIC Group , the sales volume of the electric vehicle of the car manufacturer itself must be large enough to have an economic scale. For large international automobile groups, the scale of the economy is by no means a problem, and battery swap technology is not a difficult task. However, if you have the attitude of breaking through and trying to disrupt the operation model like Chinese car manufacturers, I think this is not the corporate culture of traditional car companies such as Germany, Japan and the United States. Because under the practice of dual-line parallelism (pure charging and battery swap), any car manufacturer will face the decision that it may give up one of the routes in the future, which will have a serious impact on the company's financial operations. Even if a large car manufacturer in China does not have the official financial support, it may not be able to escape the subsequent risks of taking the courage to try.
In short, the obstacle to the widespread implementation of the concept of battery swap station is not technology, but the differentiation between car manufacturers' products and the financial risks caused by the conversion of charging/swap routes . As for the convenience of car owners using cars, this is not a priority for large car manufacturers!
