When traveling on holidays, the supply of charging piles in the expressway service area is in short supply, which can be described as “charging for 1 hour and queuing for 4 hours”.
Today, with the vigorous development of new energy vehicles, the construction of charging infrastructure is also gradually accelerating. As an energy supply facility to maintain the operation of new energy vehicles, charging piles are a legitimate outlet. On October 13, Shanghai released the “White Paper on Transportation Development in Shanghai”. It is estimated that by 2025 Shanghai will build 760,000 charging piles and 300 battery swapping stations, with a vehicle-to-pile ratio of no higher than 2:1; the annual output of new energy vehicles in Shanghai is expected to exceed 1.2 million, and the output value of new energy vehicles exceeded 350 billion yuan.
At present, the domestic charging infrastructure industry has achieved certain results, and the “mileage anxiety” of new energy vehicle travel has also been somewhat alleviated. Overall, there is still a lot of room for improvement in the number of charging piles. In addition, contradictory issues such as the phenomenon of “zombie piles” and the profitability of charging pile companies still need to be resolved.
How to solve the “difficult to find” new energy vehicle? How far are the charging pile companies growing in losses from making profits? The latest issue of Titanium Media · Titanium News will take you to understand the current situation of the charging pile market industry, focusing on the “pile” of charging.
The surge of new energy vehicles, charging piles stand in the wind
With the large-scale popularization of new energy vehicles and strong policy support, the rapid development of the new energy vehicle industry and the increasing charging demand of users have promoted the rapid growth of China’s charging pile industry.
In recent years, the number of new energy vehicles has been increasing steadily. From 2015 to 2022, the number of new energy vehicles will increase steadily. As of September 2022, the number of new energy vehicles nationwide will reach 11.49 million.
Charging piles are energy supply facilities to maintain the operation of new energy vehicles. Judging from the ownership pattern of public charging piles (including public charging piles and dedicated charging piles) and private charging piles, the number of private charging piles is slightly more than that of public charging piles. As of the end of August 2022, the number of charging piles nationwide has risen from 66,000 in 2015 to 4.315 million, an expansion of 65 times in eight years. Among them, the number of public charging piles has reached 1.623 million, and the number of private charging piles has risen to 2.691 million. The charging pile industry is developing and expanding rapidly, and the market prospect is broad.
“There are piles everywhere” here, and “one pile is hard to find” over there
It is difficult to charge new energy vehicles because of the imbalance between the number of new energy vehicles and the number of charging piles. At present, the ratio of vehicles to piles is still in a situation of more vehicles and fewer piles. Data show that since 2015, the vehicle-to-pile ratio of new energy vehicles in China has decreased year by year, from 8.8:1 to 2.55:1. However, this obvious decline in vehicle-to-pile ratio is mainly driven by private vehicle-to-pile ratios.
Private charging piles are mainly installed in the owner’s community, mainly for private use at night. If calculated based on the public charging piles that provide charging services to the outside world, the vehicle-to-pile ratio has not dropped much, from 10:1 in 2015 to the current 6.7:1, that is, each public pile corresponds to about 7 vehicles on average.
According to relevant estimates, by 2030, the number of new energy vehicles in China will reach 64.2 million. According to the construction goal of a vehicle-to-pile ratio of 1:1, there will still be a gap of 63 million charging piles in China in the next 10 years. There is a lot of room for development.
Where are these charging piles built? China’s public charging infrastructure construction areas are relatively concentrated. The public charging piles built in TOP10 provinces and cities such as Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shanghai, Zhejiang, and Beijing accounted for 71.3%, showing a strong regional nature. Among them, the number of public charging piles in Guangdong Province is far ahead, twice as high as that of the second-ranked Jiangsu Province. As the development center of the national new energy automobile industry, Guangdong Province, with the help of new energy automobile enterprises such as BYD, GAC Aian, and Xiaopeng Motors, has promoted the development of the charging pile market in Guangdong Province to a certain extent.
It is worth noting that during the holidays, it is more difficult to charge new energy vehicles. As of the end of August 2022, a total of 16,655 charging piles have been built in 3,819 expressway service areas across the country, but the number of charging piles built on expressways accounts for only 1% of the total public charging piles in the country.
During the holidays, users’ travel needs increase, and charging vehicles on expressways increase intensively, and there will be queues in a short period of time. Compared with normal days, the number of passenger car charging vehicles has increased significantly, with an increase of 69%. Specifically, rental cars and taxis have increased by more than 100%, private cars have increased by 66%, and charging stations in high-speed service areas are mostly in a busy state.
