Special Report on New Energy Battery Swapping: Underestimated Battery Swapping Stations （part 3)

    Compared to battery swapping stations, charging stations have lower service efficiency and suffer from a severe shortage of charging piles.

    The construction of public charging station infrastructure is insufficient and lags significantly behind the growth rate of new energy vehicles. The ratio of vehicles to charging piles remains high. According to data from the Ministry of Public Security, as of the second quarter of 2023, China's stock of new energy vehicles has reached 16.2 million, showing rapid growth. At the same time, the cumulative number of public charging infrastructure in China has reached 2.15 million units. Assuming that all new energy vehicles require charging at public charging stations, an average of 7.54 new energy vehicles need to be served by one public charging pile.

   The statistics on the ratio of vehicles to charging piles since the fourth quarter of 2021 show a continuous increase, rising from 6.55 to 7.54 since the second quarter of 2022. This has led to a worsening problem of charging facility congestion, especially during peak periods and holidays.

    At the current stage, the ratio of charging to vehicles falls significantly short of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's requirement of achieving a 2:1 ratio by 2025 and a 1:1 ratio by 2030 (as stated in the "Notice on Organizing Pilot Projects for Comprehensive Electrification of Vehicles in Announcement Areas"). According to data from the Ministry of Public Security, as of the end of 2022, the number of charging stations in China reached 5.2 million (including private charging facilities), resulting in a ratio of 2.52:1. To achieve a 2:1 ratio, the number of charging stations would need to reach 6.55 million, and to achieve a 1:1 ratio, it would need to reach 13.1 million. This corresponds to an additional 1.35 million and 7.9 million charging stations, respectively, which indicates a significant gap in the current infrastructure.

    However, there are still challenges in charging station construction, including insufficient planning coordination, limited profitability, and difficulties in accessing residential communities. Currently, there is a spatial and structural mismatch between the planned construction of charging stations and the usage of electric vehicles. On one hand, charging difficulties sometimes occur, while on the other hand, the utilization rate of charging stations remains low. Insufficient profitability poses challenges for charging station manufacturers to engage in differentiated competition, as construction costs are constrained by location, resulting in limited profit potential.

    Charging stations also face the issue of difficulty in accessing residential communities. There are limitations in transformer capacity in these communities, presenting certain safety risks. High-power charging stations can increase the electrical load and exacerbate three-phase imbalance in residential areas. Using a medium-sized residential community as an example, assuming a transformer's rated power is 1250 kVA, simultaneous charging of six substream fast charging stations at 200 kW each would overload the transformer. Considering the daily electricity needs of residents, the number of charging stations that can be accommodated in the community is extremely limited. These construction challenges hinder the large-scale expansion of charging stations, making it difficult to significantly improve the vehicle-to-charging-station ratio.

    Moreover, electric vehicles have long charging times, leading to long queues and low service efficiency for users. According to the "2022 China Electric Vehicle User Charging Behavior White Paper" jointly published by the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Alliance and Nenglian Zhidian, the average single charging duration for electric vehicle users is 49.3 minutes, with an average of 1.4 charges per day, resulting in an average of 69 minutes of charging time per day for each user. This means that a significant number of users have to wait for several hours to access charging, resulting in low service efficiency. On April 29th, Baidu Maps released data showing the queue times at service area charging stations on the first day of the May 1st holiday. The data revealed that the longest waiting times for charging were at the Ya'an Yaxi Service Area on the Yaxi Expressway (towards Xichang) and the Linhai Service Area in Taizhou (towards Taizhou), both reaching 2.7 hours. In total, there were six service areas with queue times exceeding two hours. Prolonged waiting times waste users' time and impact the penetration rate of electric vehicles.