An executive meeting of The State Council recently reviewed and approved guidelines on accelerating the construction of charging infrastructure and better supporting new-energy vehicles in rural areas and rural revitalization. The meeting called for plans to speed up the construction of charging infrastructure and better support new energy vehicles in rural areas and rural revitalization.

This is a major benefit released by the top design since the new energy to the countryside activity was fully launched in July 2020. For the development of the new energy automobile industry, the layout of the sinking market of the accelerated charging facilities set by the meeting is the key point.

"Rural charging infrastructure construction lag is an important reason restricting the new energy to the countryside, the deployment of the national congress, can effectively guide the layout of the sinking market, to solve the remote area charging pile no one to build or build no one to manage the problem." Yu Qingjiao, secretary-general of Zhongguancun New battery Technology Innovation Alliance and chairman of the Battery 100 Committee, said that the sinking market of charging piles to be further explored will become another 100 billion level "blue ocean".

"After three years, the domestic new energy vehicles to the countryside has achieved 4.1 million results, the ‘sinking‘ effect is beginning to show, but subject to a series of shortcomings such as charging piles, the sinking market still has a lot of space to excavate." Mention the development pain point and potential of new energy vehicle sinking market, in Puritan.

In his opinion, the sinking market consisting of third - and fourth-tier cities, fourth - and fifth-tier cities and counties and townships has huge potential for automobile consumption. "There are nearly 500 million permanent rural residents in China, but the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in some third - and fourth-tier cities is less than 10%," he said. Yu admitted that one of the reasons limiting the growth of this number is the imperfect charging infrastructure.

Yu Qingjiao further analyzed the development predicament of charging infrastructure in the sinking market: "Rural areas are large and poorly populated, and the construction of charging infrastructure is scattered. In terms of the current popularity of new energy vehicles, the number of new energy vehicles in rural areas is still small. Compared with cities, the utilization rate of charging piles is low, and charging piles and new energy vehicles have not entered a virtuous cycle."

The ratio of piles is the most intuitive proof. By the end of 2022, the ratio of piles in China is 2.5:1. According to the plan of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to achieve 2:1 ratio by 2025 and 1:1 ratio by 2030, the target still needs to be reached.

"New energy vehicles and charging piles are never a matter of who is first and who is later." Duan Zhiqiang, president of the Research institute of Wan Venture Capital, holds similar views with Yu Qingjiao. He believes that, as a complementary charging pile market with the new energy vehicle market, it is the due meaning of the deployment of the National regular session to make timely efforts to help the new energy vehicle industry form a good and complete ecological closed loop at the key node where the number of new energy vehicles keeps rising.

In addition, from a global perspective, although the sales of new energy vehicles in Europe and the United States are growing rapidly, the development of charging piles is relatively lagging behind, and the supporting facilities of charging piles are obviously insufficient. The latest cross-border index of Ali International Station shows that the overseas business opportunities of charging piles for new energy vehicles have increased by 245% rapidly in the past year, and there will be nearly three times the demand space in the future.

"As a ‘large household‘ of new energy vehicles, China will not fall off the charging pile, and has seen the potential and future of the national industry." Duan added confidently, "At present, there is no problem that the sinking market of charging piles will exceed 100 billion."

"Charging pile companies have been facing profit anxiety, and they need to find new profit space." Duan Zhiqiang frankly, from the dimension of the industry, even if there is no policy support, "sinking" is also an urgent need for charging pile enterprises to lay a move.

Duan Zhiqiang from three aspects to explain the reasons for the poor profitability of charging pile enterprises. First of all, he said that although the number of new energy vehicles is increasing year by year, the total number of electric vehicles requiring charging service is still not much, especially the uneven distribution between north and south, urban and rural areas, resulting in scattered customers.

According to relevant data, by the end of 2022, the total number of motor vehicles in China reached 417 million, of which 319 million were automobiles, accounting for 76.59% of the total number of motor vehicles, and 13.1 million were new energy vehicles, accounting for only 4.10% of the total number of automobiles.

Secondly, it is because of the low utilization rate of charging piles. Duan Zhiqiang said, subject to the technical bottleneck, the charging efficiency of the charging pile on the market is still not high, full of electricity still need to be calculated by the hour, coupled with improper management, charging pile vacancy, occupying phenomenon frequently, which causes the overall utilization rate of the charging pile is not high, and then affect the asset turnover of the enterprise.

Under the low utilization rate, the income generally depends on the price difference of electric charge and charging service fee, "but in terms of urban electricity, the electric charge premium is already small, coupled with the high rent in the city, resulting in the high operating cost of charging piles in the city. Duan Zhiqiang said.

But purely on this last point, urban weaknesses can be turned into rural strengths. Duan Zhiqiang explained to reporters: "The rural area is large and sparsely populated, the land is cheap, the choice of the site is more diversified, in addition, the rural electricity can also develop complementary agricultural light, complementary fishing light, can bring down the operating costs."

Just as Duan Zhiqiang said, cheap and abundant natural resources are the advantages of rural areas. In order to make full use of this advantage, the "photovoltaic + energy storage + car charging" mode emerging in recent years has become an ideal plan to promote new energy vehicles to the countryside.

The so-called integration of optical storage and charging is a new green charging mode that integrates photovoltaic power generation, electric energy storage and vehicle charging to achieve mutual coordination. Duan believes that for rural areas, the "one-family, one-yard" living form, as well as the basic conditions such as idle land and roof, all provide superior conditions for large-scale construction of photovoltaic and energy storage facilities.

The meeting stressed the need to innovate the mode of construction, operation and maintenance of charging infrastructure to ensure that it is built, managed and sustainable. In this regard, Yu Qingjiao suggested to enterprises: "In order to seize the rural market, charging pile enterprises should do a good job in both aspects of operation and service."

On the one hand, we will speed up the construction and installation of charging infrastructure in counties and towns, and enrich and improve charging infrastructure operation and network services, he said. On the other hand, we should do a good job in supporting power grid security and power supply services, and further do a good job in market maintenance after the construction of charging facilities, so that it can achieve real sustainable development.

It is also widely believed by the industry that the main reason why the vast rural market is difficult to break through is the concern about the convenience and reliability of use. Therefore, the entry point for enterprises to break through the sinking market is to do a good job in operation and service and improve the experience of rural users.

Duan Zhiqiang explained to reporters through specific examples: "If a new energy owner to the charging station, found here can charge, and do detection, along with other surrounding services, then his experience must be very good. "The core competitiveness of charging pile companies depends on whether the upstream and downstream industrial chain can be smoothly connected."

As we all know, the industry chain of new energy vehicles is complex and lengthy, and the charging pile is just a small part of it. Duan Zhiqiang believes that in order to be more smoothly integrated into it, the charging pile enterprises are more suitable to actively seek communication and cooperation with the upstream and downstream in a way of convergence.

"Charging pile enterprises themselves are service-oriented enterprises, whose products need to match battery manufacturers and host manufacturers, so they do not need to spend too much energy and time to develop personalized products, which will also reduce their research and development costs and subsequent equipment input costs." Duan Zhiqiang explained.

Source: Mass Press Tuyere Financial     Author: Lv Hua

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