Since 2021, China’s new energy vehicle market has shown explosive growth. The penetration rate in September has reached 20%, and the annual penetration rate is expected to exceed 15%. As the power guarantee of new energy vehicles, the contradiction between the charging infrastructure and the high penetration rate of new energy vehicles is becoming more and more obvious.
In addition to the still insufficient number of charging facilities, users’ demand for rapid energy replenishment in some core scenarios has become increasingly prominent, restricting the further development of new energy vehicles. Charging anxiety has become a hurdle in the minds of many pure electric vehicle consumers. It is hoped that the fast replenishment can achieve the effect of “charging as fast as refueling”, and achieve the ideal experience of charging and leaving the car without leaving the car.
Therefore, the charging pile technology has advanced from “fast charging” to “super fast charging”, which is of great significance to solve the core pain point of “slow charging”, so as to meet the differences of users in special travel scenarios such as urban, high-speed, and inter-city travel scenarios. The demand for rapid energy supplementation is truly comparable to that of refueling.
The era of super-fast charging is coming, and there will be more and more players in this field. High-reliability charging equipment is the guarantee of high-quality charging. Whoever truly understands the key needs of the charging pile industry can seize the opportunity to come out on top.
The advanced charging equipment and solution provider with the mission of “making charging services everywhere” – Zhichong Technology has recently launched a “digital super-fast charging solution”, whether from the perspective of consumers or from the operator level, This solution can be called a milestone innovation in the field of charging, using efficient and reliable ultra-large fast charging technology to truly promote the development and progress of the industry, and better solve users’ charging anxiety.
Super fast charging is unstoppable
When new energy vehicles enter the stage of high-quality development, high-quality charging has also been put on the agenda.
On the “November” small holiday, the problem of difficult charging of electric vehicles rushed to the hot search. An electric car owner who returned to Hunan from Shenzhen, Guangdong said that it took him more than 5 hours to charge his electric car in the Leiyang service area in Hunan. It originally took only 8 hours to get home, but it took him 16 hours. Less time was spent waiting in line.
The highway charging heat map of the State Grid’s smart vehicle networking platform shows that during the National Day holiday, a total of 409 charging stations had queues, accounting for 18% of all highway stations. Compared with the National Day holiday in 2020, the number increased by 60%, which is almost the same as One out of every five high-speed charging stations is lined up.
In addition to the insufficient number of charging facilities, another reason for car owners to queue up to charge is that the charging time is too long. The outbreak of the pain point of long charging time is forcing the development of charging technology. Super fast charging is the general trend and becomes the key development direction of future new energy vehicle research.
In June 2020, State Grid Corporation of China and Japan’s CHAdeMO Council released the “Electric Vehicle ChaoJi Conductive Charging Technology White Paper” and the CHAdeMO3.0 standard respectively, marking that ChaoJi charging technology has entered a new stage of standard formulation and industrial application. A version compatible with the domestic GB/T standard is expected to be released in 2021. Under the new standard, the maximum current of the DC charging pile can reach 600A, the maximum voltage can reach 1500V, the charging power of passenger cars can be increased to 400kW, the charging power of commercial vehicles can be increased to 900kW, and the charging time can be greatly shortened to 10 minutes within.
Compared with ordinary charging piles, the super fast charging has a qualitative leap in charging speed, so as to achieve the effect of greatly shortening the charging time. Fast-charging technology and related standards have been researched for five years, and the basic conditions for standardization and industrialization are now in place.
As a leader in the operation of fast charging piles, State Grid is also the largest public bidding enterprise for charging piles in China. In recent years, the number of high-power charging piles tendered by the State Grid has shown a clear upward trend. In the first tender in 2018, 7kW, 60kW, 120kW and 200kW accounted for 25.85%, 39.73%, 26.33% and 0.91% respectively, while in the first tender in 2021, there was no less than 80kW, 80kW and 160kW accounted for 55.92% respectively And 39.51%, 480kW accounted for 2.18%, and the proportion of high-power charging piles increased significantly.
Charging pile enterprises, vehicle enterprises, and power battery enterprises are strengthening the research and development of super fast charging technology through the cooperation of upstream and downstream industry chains, establishing super fast charging piles, and launching super fast charging models and platforms.
At present, the cruising range of mainstream electric vehicles has been upgraded to 400 kilometers, and 500, 600, and even 700 kilometers are emerging in an endless stream. 75kWh 600km, and 85kWh over 700km. In terms of 50kWh, compressing the charging time to half an hour requires at least a charging power of 100kW, while a larger capacity rechargeable battery requires a corresponding charging power of 150kW-200kW.
Based on this, to overcome the bottleneck of charging speed, the first thing is to solve the bottleneck of charging piles. The output power of charging piles directly limits the charging speed of electric vehicles, and high-power super-fast charging piles are particularly important.
Smart Charge Technology Running Admission
The development path of high-quality charging should include a high-satisfaction user energy replenishment experience, high-quality intelligent system, and site selection, high-standard product service design, high-level network engineering construction, and efficient charging station operation.
In order to continue to provide users with high-quality charging services, Zhichong Technology has created a new tool to solve mileage anxiety/charging anxiety – a digital super-fast charging solution, namely Zhichong C9LQ split supercharging station system. This is a split-type DC liquid-cooled charging pile suitable for parking lots, commercial real estate, and new energy vehicle experience stores. This super-large fast charging pile has the characteristics of high stability and easy operation, which can realize the rapid deployment and unified service of charging services. While using modular components to reduce the total cost of charging, it can also use the automatic identification and automatic charging of the plug-in gun. Functions such as scheduled charging and ultra-high power output shorten the single-vehicle charging time and improve charging efficiency.
It is worth noting that the national standard currently limits the upper limit of charging power, the voltage is limited to 750V, and the current is limited to 250A. If you want to break through this limit, you can only make non-standard products, the cost of products and equipment is high, and the operating cost is large, or you can only Until the new standard is introduced, the time is uncertain.
As the first domestic manufacturer to independently develop super fast chargers and export them to Europe, Zhichong Technology participated in The Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union project. Based on the European standard, the C9LQ supercharged pile has gained a leading market contribution rate and rich application experience in the corresponding sales and use areas. Good market feedback can promote the introduction of new domestic standards that are more suitable for the development of the industry and maintain the healthy development of the industry.
On the other hand, many domestic manufacturers are promoting the high current, voltage, power and fast charging speed of their charging piles, but the rapid improvement of energy supplementation technology requires the joint realization of “piles” and “cars”, and the actual charging rate depends on The vehicle itself, that is, the charging gun of how much power and current the vehicle can receive, otherwise it will not help if the existing vehicle platform does not support such a high charging power. For example, the 500A high-current charging gun is very expensive only for the hardware price, which will lead to an increase in the charging price and a decrease in the cost-effectiveness in the use process. In fact, most models on the market cannot accept the extreme ideal values of current and power advertised by the manufacturer. Therefore, in addition to high power, high-quality super fast charging also requires strong practicability and charging experience.
Smart charging combined with the software side realizes intelligent power distribution, so that each vehicle can find a “super fast charging” suitable for itself, and the use efficiency and operational efficiency of charging piles are also improved. The split design of the C9LQ supercharger takes up less space, adapts to more parking space installation requirements, and has higher efficiency; the modular output power can reach a maximum of 360 kW, charging for 10 minutes, and a range of 300 kilometers. When charging at the same time, according to the actual needs of the charging vehicle, the power can be intelligently distributed among the splits, the energy is efficiently utilized, and the operation is worry-free.
This product has also been significantly upgraded in terms of charging experience, such as automatic identification of plug-in guns, automatic scheduling charging, and a T-LED charging indication system integrated on the top, which not only shortens the charging time of a single vehicle, but also improves the overall operation efficiency of charging stations. Support VIN plug and charge, WeChat scan code, card swipe and other startup methods, which add points to the convenience of interaction.
High-efficiency and high-reliability equipment is the most basic guarantee for high-quality charging. On this basis, a win-win business model, matching of vehicle pile requirements, personalized customized charging services, the positioning of different car owners, and the importance of charging services are also required. Differentiated needs require a one-stop solution to explore and achieve a win-win situation for car companies, users, and operators.
In addition to super-large fast charging equipment, based on industry-leading smart charging solutions, Smart Charge Technology can also integrate software and hardware design to run through the entire charging use and operation process, solve every problem encountered in the charging process, and provide customizable “one-stop” charging service for a profitable business model.
In terms of hardware, the smart charging device is equipped with a Cortex-A8 smart chip and an Android-customized XCOS operating system, which can perform real-time data transmission and interconnection with the smart charging cloud platform, and easily realize remote operation, software update, automatic diagnosis and unattended operation. services, etc.
The “smart hardware + cloud service” model highlights the concept of Smart Charge Technology in the overall operation and service of charging, making “improving charging operation efficiency and reducing management costs” a huge advantage for operators, thereby promoting the rapid deployment of charging networks and promotion. Its self-developed SaaS management system has made plans for how to obtain, store and use pure green energy in units of charging stations or buildings. The latest SaaS version uses the Internet of Things + data BI technology to open up the links of power generation, power transmission, power sales and power consumption, and uses technology to create a multi-connection system to reduce transaction difficulty and increase platform transaction frequency. The impact of super high-power fast charging in the future.
Among the current charging piles in my country, AC piles with low cost and slow charging account for a large part, but the charging experience of AC piles is very bad, and the utilization rate is very low. Overall, the digital super fast charging solution of Zhichong can be effective. Breaking the current profit dilemma of charging piles, the super fast charging technology can make a great breakthrough in the utilization rate of charging piles, thereby helping operators make profits and bringing users a better charging experience.
Epilogue
Under the megatrend of carbon neutrality, the electrification of global transportation is accelerating, and the demand for charging infrastructure and its solutions has risen significantly. As one of the new technologies in the development of the industry, super fast charging makes everyone realize that the progress and development of technology will drive changes in related industries. In order to help my country achieve the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, the “digital ultra-large fast charging solution” launched by Zhichong Technology relying on a deep understanding of the charging industry has far-reaching significance, and its leading role will continue to be used under the new trend. enlarge.
