With the deepening of the concept of sustainable development, electric vehicles have witnessed rapid development in the past two years, and their ownership is also rapidly increasing. However, issues such as insufficient mileage and slow charging times remain the anxiety of many car owners. To this end, major automotive companies have never stopped looking for solutions. From the initial slow charging to today's fast charging, electric vehicles can barely meet the rapid charging needs of most users, but compared to fuel vehicles, their efficiency still lags far behind. Perhaps only the "power exchange" mode, which has been in the exploration stage, can solve the biggest constraint facing electric vehicles today - the charging problem. Based on the electricity exchange model, Weilai has recently taken the lead in implementing the sales model of "separation of vehicle and electricity". What is its prospects?

With policy support, the "power exchange mode" is approaching

In April 2020, the new subsidy policy for new energy vehicles pointed out that when electric vehicles in the electricity exchange mode enjoy the purchase subsidy, they will not be limited by the price and range conditions; In May, as an important component of new infrastructure construction, the replacement power station was included in the 2020 government work report for the first time; In July, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology made a detailed interpretation of the new energy power exchange mode and began to promote the new energy vehicle power exchange mode. In just a few months, positive policy support attitudes have been repeatedly displayed, indicating that the development of the electricity exchange model will usher in a wave.

On July 27th, BAIC Group and State Grid Electric signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement. The two sides will jointly build and operate a power exchange website, and plan to build 100 power exchange stations by the end of June 2021, serving no less than 10000 electric vehicles.

On July 30, Chang'an New Energy established the Chongqing Power Exchange Alliance and formally signed a contract with Aodong New Energy to serve Chang'an New Energy E-series vehicles in a power exchange mode.

On August 13th, the recommended national standard GB/T "Safety Requirements for Electric Vehicle Power Exchange", drafted by BAIC New Energy, Weilai Automobile, China Automotive Center, and other units, passed the review, marking the birth of the first national standard for energy exchange in China.

On August 20th, Weilai Automobile, together with Ningde Times, Guotai Jun'an International Holdings Co., Ltd., and Hubei Science and Technology Investment Group Co., Ltd., jointly invested to establish Wuhan Weineng Battery Assets Co., Ltd., and launched a battery rental service based on the power exchange mode (BaaS).

To sum up, with the support of policies, new energy vehicle manufacturers have accelerated the pace of promoting the power exchange mode. Among them, Weilai is even more dutiful to become a crab eater, and wants to take the lead in breaking the traditional sales model and truly opening the sales solution of separating cars from electricity. This provides consumers with a new choice of car purchase; For the industry, this is undoubtedly a bold attempt.

What is the future of electric vehicle power exchange mode?

Compared to previous charging modes, the biggest benefit of the power exchange mode is that it greatly speeds up the charging time. For consumers, they can quickly complete the power supplement by approaching the time when the fuel truck enters the station for refueling to improve their battery life. At the same time, after the battery is recycled, the power exchange platform can uniformly detect the battery condition, reducing failures caused by the battery, and bringing a better vehicle experience to consumers.

On the other hand, for society, after the battery is recycled by the power exchange platform, the charging time can be flexibly adjusted to reduce grid load, and a large number of power batteries can be used to store idle clean energy such as wind power generation and tidal power generation, in order to transmit electricity to the grid during peak or emergency power consumption. Of course, whether for consumers or society, the benefits of electricity exchange are far more than these, so from the perspective of the future, it is bound to be an inevitable choice in the new energy era.

However, there are still many issues that need to be addressed in promoting the power exchange mode. The first is that currently there are electric vehicles and models on sale in China, most of which are developed based on charging technology and do not support power exchange. To promote the power exchange mode, it is necessary for vehicle manufacturers to transform to power exchange technology. According to the automotive companies that are currently undergoing transformation, various power exchange technologies are different, resulting in incompatibility between power exchange stations. However, the current investment in the construction and operation of power exchange stations is huge, and in the absence of unified power exchange standards in China, many resources may be being wasted. At the same time, for car companies, the funds for building power stations and developing tram models are also a huge burden. Of course, the problems faced by power exchange are far more than the above, but in this era, all these problems will be faced and solved by car companies and society.

Weilai is trying to sell cars separately from electricity. What is BaaS service?

The separation of car and electricity means that when consumers purchase a car, the purchase fee no longer includes the price of the battery pack. Taking Weilai as an example, on the basis of the purchase fee without batteries, you can use the Weilai BaaS service to pay monthly battery rental fees for normal use of the vehicle. In simple terms, the Weilai BaaS service separates the "ownership" of the battery from the ownership of the vehicle. Users will save on the cost of purchasing the battery when purchasing a car, but they will need to pay a certain battery usage fee for subsequent use, which means changing from buying the battery to renting the battery. It is understood that when purchasing a car based on the Weilai BaaS service, users can waive the battery pack fee of 70000 yuan from the original model, while paying a monthly battery rental fee of 980 yuan.

In fact, this battery rental model, which is the practice of separating vehicles from electricity, has already received policy support last year. Last year, the "Implementation Plan for Promoting the Updating and Upgrading of Key Consumer Goods and Smooth Resource Recycling (2019-2020)" issued by the state has clearly pointed out that it is necessary to promote the consumption mode of separating vehicles from electricity such as new energy vehicle battery leasing, in order to reduce the cost of purchasing vehicles. According to the official statement given by Weilai, the separation of car and electricity not only allows consumers to purchase a car at a lower cost, but also enjoys the convenience of changing the electricity and replacing large capacity batteries as needed at any time. It can also improve the value preservation rate of used cars for vehicle models.

However, some consumers pointed out that the charging model under Weilai BaaS is not cost-effective. If you directly purchase batteries for 100000 yuan in the past way, the batteries will still belong to users after 5 years; "If you purchase a car using the BaaS model, the battery only offsets the car price with a value of 70000 yuan, which is equivalent to 30000 yuan more expensive than the car price. With a 5-year rent of 63600 yuan, you need to spend 93600 yuan in total, and ultimately the battery does not belong to the user."