🚗 Rapid Development of Supercharging and Battery Swapping Benefits the Energy Storage Industry 🔋

🌟 In the era of the booming development of new energy vehicles, "supercharging" and "battery swapping" are undoubtedly the two hottest terms in the industry.

Recently, Tang Ziwei, the dean of the Electricization Research Institute of If Technology at Great Wall Motors, stated that neither battery swapping nor charging are widely popular at present. Once they scale up, they must be combined with energy storage to prevent the power grid from being overloaded. Initially, supercharging has a low input cost, and battery swapping has a high efficiency, but in terms of layout numbers, both are on par due to the limitations of the power grid capacity, which will instead promote the development of the energy storage industry.

🔌 This leads to a series of hotly debated questions: Will supercharging and battery swapping drive the development of the energy storage industry? How will they achieve efficient regulation of the power grid? What impact will the large number of batteries about to be retired have on the industry?

🔄 Supercharging and Battery Swapping Advance Together

Currently, both supercharging and battery swapping are making concerted efforts, and electric vehicles are expected to achieve rapid energy replenishment like refueling. In terms of charging, a batch of new models with an 800-volt high-voltage platform has been launched, and the latest supercharging technology is gradually shortening the charging time to 15 minutes or even 10 minutes; in the field of battery swapping, NIO is taking the lead and gradually expanding its "circle of friends," exploring cross-brand services. The development of supercharging and battery swapping is expected to accelerate the resolution of "range anxiety."

🚕 "At present, the market is very welcoming of the battery swapping model," said Zhang Li, a partner at Cathay Capital. The business model that has been successfully implemented is for taxis and ride-hailing services because these types of vehicles have time efficiency requirements. For example, for taxis with a range of over 400 kilometers, as long as the energy replenishment cost is lower than that of fuel, drivers will accept battery swapping. The experience of supercharging, if it can reach 1 kilometer per second in the future, will also be easily accepted.

🔋 "If supercharging can achieve a time similar to that of battery swapping, the advantage of lower supercharging costs will be highlighted," said Meng Xiangfeng, Vice President of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL). CATL is involved in both battery swapping and supercharging, and both models can solve the problem of rapid energy replenishment. However, no matter which type of energy replenishment method is used, it is related to infrastructure. Currently, more battery swapping models are used for trucks, buses, taxis, and ride-hailing services, while private cars choose supercharging more. Changes may occur in the future, depending on whether the advantages of supercharging can be fully utilized.

There is also a view that, in addition to supercharging and battery swapping, other rapid energy replenishment methods may emerge. "Supercharging and battery swapping are both very important energy replenishment methods, especially valuable on highways," said Tang Rui, founder of Zongmu Technology and Cancong Robot. In cities, electric vehicle consumers feel that it is better to charge at home or during working hours, and there is no need to go to a supercharging station or battery swapping station like going to a gas station. It is understood that many residential areas or office buildings did not consider the demand for supercharging when they were built. If they are to be renovated and expanded in the future, the cost will be high and difficult to achieve. However, if a mobile charging + mobile energy storage solution is adopted, it can provide a new idea for urban transformation. Mobile energy robots providing mobile charging services will be a rapid energy replenishment solution in addition to supercharging and battery swapping.

🌐 Reducing the Load on the Power Grid

Nowadays, as the scale of supercharging and battery swapping continues to grow, the practical demand for energy storage has also increased significantly. On the one hand, when the number of supercharging and battery swapping reaches a certain level, the load on the power grid will be difficult to bear, and energy storage methods must be used for regulation, such as replenishing energy to energy storage power stations during low-peak hours, and then using energy storage to disperse the direct pressure of supercharging and battery swapping on the power grid. On the other hand, as electric vehicle batteries are retired, a large number of batteries will enter the stage of cascade utilization, and a large part of them will be used for energy storage power stations. In this regard, some places have already started corresponding exploration and deployment. Among them, Hainan Province's "Letter on Grasping the Construction and Management of Electric Vehicle Charging and Battery Swapping Infrastructure in 2024" proposes to support the province's charging and battery swapping network service company and charging and battery swapping enterprises to explore the deployment of energy storage facilities of a certain scale at charging stations, enabling charging stations to have flexible load regulation capabilities and achieving the integrated development of the charging network and the power grid.

Supercharging has a low input, and battery swapping has high efficiency, which will stimulate the development of the energy storage industry. "After the volume increases, it will bring about the expansion of the energy storage industry," as Tang Ziwei said, once the application increases in volume, supercharging must be done in conjunction with energy storage, otherwise it will cause the power grid to be overloaded. The same is true for battery swapping; the battery swapping station needs to be equipped with about twice the amount of electricity to adapt to a large number of battery swaps. If the batteries for battery swapping are retired and enter secondary use or cascade utilization, they will also accelerate the development of the energy storage industry.

Faced with the rise in the cost of supercharging, Tang Rui said that the previous slow charging from 11kW to small direct current 20kW, 120kW, etc., all have cost advantages. If the speed and power of supercharging are particularly high, the cost will increase exponentially. Therefore, it is not necessary to blindly pursue supercharging with excessively high power. At the same time, from the perspective of investment return, including large manufacturers in this field in Europe and America, the investment return cycle is generally long, reaching 12 years or even longer. In addition, from the consumer experience, under supercharging, the original 1-hour charging is now accelerated to half an hour or 20 minutes, which is a good consumer experience, but the high initial investment cost will be passed on to consumers to a certain extent. At Tesla's supercharging stations, after using supercharging and occupying the charging parking space, the fee per minute is as high as 6 yuan.

Considering hydrogen energy as a form of energy storage is also a new idea. From an energy perspective, electricity is used immediately after generation, while hydrogen can store energy from nature, so hydrogen energy is long-term energy storage. Because of this, hydrogen and electricity can form a complementary dual system, jointly promoting the large-scale application of renewable energy. In recent years, the global focus on carbon reduction has increased, which has also promoted the development of hydrogen energy. There are still some issues in the development process of hydrogen energy, such as incomplete infrastructure and transportation blockages, but under the pressure of carbon reduction and external carbon tariffs, these issues will be gradually resolved, and the prospects for hydrogen energy in transportation are broad.

Not long ago, Li Bin, the founder, chairman, and CEO of NIO, said that in the next 6-8 years, at least 20 million electric vehicles in China will need to replace batteries, which will have a series of impacts on the industry. It is expected that by 2025, China's electric vehicle industry will usher in a large-scale wave of battery retirement, which will undoubtedly continue to grow the lithium battery recycling market at a high speed, with a market size that may break 100 billion yuan. He also cited an example that at the home of the Dutch team Ajax - the Cruyff Arena, a 3-megawatt energy storage system was built using new battery modules equivalent to 148 Nissan Leaf batteries provided by Nissan and cascade utilization (second life) battery packs, which can store the electricity from the 4,200 solar panels on the stadium's roof.

In Zhang Li's view, these energy storage methods are one of the effective ways to solve the cascade utilization of a large number of retired power batteries. He emphasized that the scale of the energy storage track is much larger than that of the charging infrastructure, with a volume at least tens of times larger. Moreover, energy storage is deployed at the power generation end, the power grid end, and the user end, and supercharging and battery swapping only directly contact the user end. The battery swapping station should become an energy storage station, and the supercharging station