"Break an acre of three land." Three years ago, General Secretary Xi Jinping listened to the report on the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in Beijing, and his words still lingered in his ears, which also opened a new door for the cross-regional coordinated development of the three regions. In the past three years, Beijing has taken advantage of the momentum in many fields, and industries such as environmental protection, new energy vehicles, and ice and snow have been reborn amidst changes. The functions of the city are rearranged and combined, old businesses are gone, and new business opportunities are overflowing.

"90,000: 60,000", this is the ratio of the number of new energy vehicles in Beijing to the number of charging piles by the end of 2016. According to the standard that the ratio of charging interface to new energy vehicles is no less than 1:1, the scale of charging piles is far in short supply. With the expansion of the scale of new energy vehicles, pure electric vehicle after-sales service companies that focus on the construction of charging piles also want to get a share of the new energy vehicle market.

The "Thirteenth Five-Year" National Strategic Emerging Industry Development Plan issued by the State Council proposes to give priority to the construction of charging infrastructure in public service areas in urban development, and the Beijing Municipal Government's strategy to vigorously develop new energy vehicles is even more important for charging piles. The business opportunities provide policy guarantees. The huge demand gap and huge commercial potential for serving new energy vehicles make charging piles an untapped gold mine.

Charging piles enter the "enclosure movement"

Charging piles were once regarded as "money printing machines", and are expected to be as lucrative as today's Sinopec and PetroChina's gas stations. In the upsurge of new energy vehicle promotion from 2009 to 2012, the main force in the construction of charging stations was large state-owned enterprises with the initials of the country, such as the multiple key projects of State Grid and China Southern Power Grid. Industry survey and analysis have predicted that by 2020, the charging market will reach 100 billion yuan.

According to official data, as the largest purchaser of charging pile products in China, as of 2014, the State Grid has built a total of 618 charging and swapping stations, and the total number of charging piles reached 24,000, accounting for 85.7% of the national charging piles in the same period.

"If we say that before 2014, in the field of public charging piles, the construction and operation of the 'national team' like the State Grid, then after 2014, the state issued a series of policies to encourage social capital to invest in charging facilities, so that private capital can start charging facilities. Full of curiosity to actually take practical action." In the office of Beijing Penglong Building, Yang Xiaowei, vice president of Qingdao Telecall Group and chairman of BAIC Telecall, told reporters.

As a wholly-owned subsidiary of Terad, the first listed company on the GEM, Telidian, established in 2014, is mainly engaged in the construction and operation of new energy vehicle charging networks and Internet value-added services. Compared with the previous giants such as State Grid, China Southern Power Grid, and Sinopec, which were staking their land in the field of charging facilities, BAIC Special Call entered the Beijing market in 2015. Relying on the strength of capital and the advanced electric vehicle intelligent group charging system, it once became China's intelligent charging system. The wind vane of the charging industry.

"The construction of charging piles only depends on the high investment of state-owned enterprises and cannot meet the development speed of new energy vehicles. After summarizing the previous experience, the State Grid welcomes social capital to enter and encourages market forces to solve the problem of charging network laying. The social capital is ready to move." Yang Xiaowei believes that the introduction of social investment to participate in the construction of electric vehicle charging and swapping facilities will become the main cutter of the big cake of the urban charging pile industry in the future.

At present, the domestic electric vehicle charging network is mainly composed of three parts: one is home charging, which is generally installed by pure electric vehicle owners and car companies; the other is destination charging, which is generally in hotels, restaurants, office buildings, shopping malls, communities, In areas such as schools, car companies or properties such as Tesla will provide and install parking spaces; the third is public charging stations, which mainly solve the charging problem on the main road network.

In the field of open charging encouraged by national policies, most of the construction of charging piles participated by social capital does not include the installation of private electric piles for households, but to seek business opportunities in the field of public charging. According to the "Guidelines for the Development of Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure (2015-2020)", by 2020, the country needs to build 4.8 million electric vehicle charging piles to meet the domestic demand for new energy rail transit charging.

Miao Wei, minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, once said that with the rapid development of new energy vehicles, the construction of car charging infrastructure will become a big blue ocean. For this reason, more and more companies and products have joined the industry in the car charging market competition. Car charging is not just a physical charging pile, but also has the genes and functions of smart grid, Internet, Internet of Things, and big data. In the short term, there will be a boom of thousands of enterprises building piles, but the last survivor of market competition is like the communication industry. , Only those companies with strength, innovation, high-quality products, good business models, operational capabilities, and teams can exist.

With the participation of social capital, the construction of public charging piles in Beijing has been significantly accelerated. Statistics show that as of the end of November 2016, Beijing has built nearly 60,000 charging piles, including more than 7,700 dedicated charging piles, more than 10,000 public charging piles, and 42,000 private charging piles.

Money-burning corporate pile owner

Since the announcement of the country encouraging the construction of basic charging facilities, capital from all walks of life has poured in and stepped up efforts to build charging piles. Charging pile companies have also announced that Beijing will be a key market for their layout.

However, the reality is that the unclear profit model and the unprofitable operation of charging piles are considered to be the main obstacles to the development of charging piles. Liu Feng, general manager of Putian New Energy (Beijing) Co., Ltd., said, "The charging piles are still in the investment period, and the charging service operation is not in the foreseeable future, but it is unrealistic to achieve profitability within a year."

According to incomplete statistics, the number of charging pile companies in my country has exceeded 300 in 2015, among which there are nearly 20 charging pile companies in Beijing. As an important pilot site for the construction of charging facilities, the Beijing area presents a pattern of "four belts and one road" in the commercial layout of charging piles. These four are: State Grid, Putian New Energy, BAIC Special Call and Xingxing Charging. They are all standard charging pile operators, with the core of building and operating one electric pile, and more than 80% of the public charging piles in Beijing They were all built by these four companies, and private capital such as Huashang Sanyou and Fudian Technology also participated.

The reporter's investigation found that the current cost of building an AC charging pile (including cables and land use) is at least 10,000 yuan, and the cost of DC fast charging piles is more than 60,000 yuan. This is only a one-time investment in the early stage. The main cost of the operator lies in the management and maintenance after the construction of piles. According to the guidance on accelerating the promotion and application of new energy vehicles issued by the General Office of the State Council in July 2014, it is clear and perfect the electricity price policy, and it is proposed that charging facilities operators can pay for electric vehicles. Car users charge electricity and charging service fees. Before 2020, government-guided price management will be implemented for electric vehicle charging service fees. However, in view of the relatively low utilization rate of existing charging piles, charging service fees are a drop in the bucket for operators.

"After calculation, if each DC pile is used 8 times a day, then this pile can achieve a profit-loss balance." Liu Feng revealed that the reality is that many piles have not reached the daily frequency of 8 times a day, which is also true. It means that many charging companies are still operating at a loss. At the same time, the current charging industry mainly relies on electric vehicle charging service fees, and this charging item is also managed by the government's guidance price, so the recovery of costs is slow. According to the current charging standard, it takes at least five years to recover the cost of a pile.