65438+ In late February, the temperature in Shanghai was kept below 10 degrees in the morning and evening. On the way to work, Kevin Z and his Roewe e950, the cruising range of this new energy vehicle dropped rapidly from 60km to 40km. Kevin Z had to fall into "mileage anxiety".

Similar to Roewe, owners of new energy vehicles such as BYD, BAIC and Tucki have the same experience. What's more, they have all experienced the situation of "driving 20 kilometers and losing 50 kilometers".

In the cold winter, the air conditioner in the car is turned on, and the speed of power failure of new energy vehicles is beyond the imagination of the owners.

The last JAC iEV5 owner in Zhihu complained that the temperature in Beijing dropped sharply and the mileage of vehicles was damaged by more than half. He often braved the cold wind to run the charging station all day, and dared not turn on the air conditioner all the time while driving. And his friend Beiqi EV 150 can only run 20km below 0. Since being left on the road twice last year, the family has been scrambling to drive the gas car at home.

According to the evaluation data of EV-TEST, a brand of China Automotive Technology and Research Center, BYD Qin EV has shrunk at least in the low-temperature battery life shrinkage ranking, with a low temperature of 206 kilometers and a normal temperature of 284 kilometers, shrinking by 27%; Zotye E200 is at the bottom with its cruising range reduced by 93%. The cruising range at normal temperature is 159km, and it can only travel at-7 degrees below zero/1km.

The cruising range of new energy vehicles at room temperature, high temperature and low temperature, the picture comes from EV-TEST.

The cold temperature is testing the strength of every new energy vehicle in this city, and it is also testing the patience of every owner. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. In addition to the battery life, the unreasonable distribution of charging stations and the long charging time of vehicles also plague the owners, and some new energy vehicles still have potential safety hazards.

Zheng Xuelun, a technical expert in the field of new energy vehicles, believes that at present, new energy vehicle manufacturers are facing problems such as cost and technology, among which safety technical problems such as explosion, battery life and heat removal are more obvious.

According to the data of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the global penetration rate of new energy vehicles is only 2%, and that of China is about 4%.

On June 6th this year 10, Chairman of Xpeng Automobile He publicly stated on social media that only about100000 new energy vehicles in China were sold to real consumers, which was "almost the same" as Tesla's sales in the United States in the first three quarters of this year.

For a long time, traditional internal combustion engine vehicles will still occupy the mainstream position. If new energy vehicles want to be more popular, they must first enhance their own strength.

1

Mileage anxiety of car owners

2065438+March 2006, BAIC New Energy obtained the first new energy vehicle production qualification. Under the favorable subsidy policy, the first batch of crab owners were born.

Kevin Z still remembers that a few years ago, when he first went to a 4S shop, there were only a few brands in China to choose from, such as BAIC and BYD, and many car companies had not yet mass-produced.

A Shanghai brand, he bought a Roewe e950, which is a hybrid new energy vehicle.

This is Kevin Z's first reaction to driving it as a traditional fuel car. For the first six months, Kevin Z didn't charge the car. He doesn't know much about new energy vehicles, and it seems more convenient to run like an oil car.

Later, Zheng Cai really realized that the "hard injury" in battery life and charging is a very real problem. Roewe e950 sold for nearly 300,000 at that time, but its battery life was only 60km.

Kevin Z recalled that on the slow charging pile at home, the car can only be charged for 4 or 5 hours at night, but it can only run a short distance.

The new energy vehicle is charging.

He thinks that a fuel truck can run more than 400 kilometers with a full tank of oil. He believes that it is very troublesome to "charge 50 kilometers" for new energy vehicles. If you turn on the air conditioner, you may only be able to run 40 kilometers. "

As for the attenuation of cruising range, it is mainly due to the lack of battery performance. A new energy vehicle owner mentioned that this car has only been in operation for one year. Originally, the cruising range was 100km, but actually it could only drive 20km. In the meantime, he changed four batteries.

In winter, the situation is worse. In the case of high power consumption of pure electric vehicle air conditioner, the power generation capacity of lithium battery is reduced, the generated current is not enough to support power consumption, and its own battery management ability is insufficient, and the constant temperature function is affected by temperature, which further affects the battery life.

Chao Wang, owner of Chery EQ 1, told Wired Insight that when the air conditioner was turned on in winter, the original cruising range of 150 km was only less than 100 km. "I panicked at the time and didn't dare to drive long distances."

Yao Rui, the owner of Tesla, mentioned that seeing the long-distance travel sharing of Tesla owners on the Internet could not be called travel at all, but was torturing himself. "Driving to a place of MINUS 10 degrees, in order to save electricity and not turn on the air conditioner, in order to reduce mileage decline, the speed can only be kept at 90/km, and the requirement for high speed is 120/km."

Xpeng Motors officially released the "Winter Guide" to solve the problem of vehicle endurance and charging in winter. Several of these suggestions have caused a lot of controversy. Whether the air conditioning temperature of 22 degrees can meet the needs of keeping warm in the car in winter, and whether you can find a greenhouse or a suitable temperature when parking, these are all questioned points.

Xpeng's official "Winter Guide", the picture comes from the Internet.

When the battery life is affected, the charging problem becomes more prominent.

Kevin Z is lucky, and some cars mainly go to the charging station outside to charge. He mentioned that if it was completely in accordance with the national regulations at that time, only the residential area and the property had the installation conditions to buy a car, but some 4S shops did not install charging piles in many car owners' communities in order to win sales.

"Charging outside is as convenient as refueling, and certainly not in front of you." Kevin Z found that in a first-tier city like Shanghai, most shopping malls have charging piles in their underground garages, but fuel vehicles will occupy the parking spaces of public charging piles. New energy vehicles need 1 hour for fast charging, 3 or 4 hours for slow charging, and there will be queues during hot periods.

The new energy vehicle is charging.

Yao Rui once planned a long-distance trip to go on road trip in Northeast China, and finally found it too difficult to achieve. The overall coverage of Tesla charging station in China is not high, and there is no complete display on the computer. After leaving the provincial capital city, there is a great risk of not charging on the way.

According to wired insight, most car owners surveyed believe that new energy vehicles do not have the conditions for long-distance driving and can only be used as a tool for commuting. Even Tesla, who won the global new energy vehicle sales champion, is not immune.

2

Problems pile up like a mountain

Most owners of new energy vehicles need a period of adaptation, such as getting into the habit of checking whether the power is sufficient at any time, investigating the location of charging stations in advance when going out, and queuing at charging stations.

Kevin Z called this process "disguised compromise". This is also the reason why new energy vehicles are called "electric dads". It has been mentioned that buying an electric car is equivalent to finding yourself a second father.

But some problems can't be solved by compromise.

Kevin Z still remembers that 20 17 riders had high negative emotions. Among a group of riders, the first owners gathered. There are always people in the group who "spit out" all kinds of problems, from the rotating shaft and lever of the car to the car being put into gear and unable to start. As the owners of the first wave of crabs, they encountered many problems.

When riders were screened by various problems, another car owner, Wang Chao, had the "worst car experience in history".

After buying the first new energy vehicle, turn on the air conditioner in winter. When Chao Wang is locked inside, he will smell an odor mixed with plastic. After driving for a while, my eyes were smoked. In summer, not only does the air conditioner not cool, but it also emits a lot of white smoke. At that time, Chao Wang immediately thought of the previous spontaneous combustion accident and was very alert. After handling the after-sales procedures, the staff finally said that there was no way to solve the air conditioning problem.

This car was originally intended to be bought for his wife to pick up the children and buy food. He felt very uncomfortable at the thought. Not long after, he changed to other brands of new energy vehicles.

Around 20 17, under the favorable subsidy policy, many car companies flooded into the field of new energy vehicles, but made a large number of unqualified products.

Chery, for example, has fallen behind in the field of new energy, and has been labeled as "cheating". 2019101The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Announcement on Auditing the Subsidies for the Promotion and Application of New Energy Vehicles in the 20 17 Fund Settlement.

Chery Automobile Co., Ltd. reduced 6,406 vehicles due to "the mileage approved by the national supervision platform does not meet 20,000 kilometers", and the qualified rate was only 49. 14%, and the unsuccessful subsidy amounted to 243 million yuan.

In the field of new energy, star companies such as Weilai have also repeatedly raised security issues. In the first half of this year, there were three spontaneous combustion incidents in Weilai. In order to prevent the situation from deteriorating, Weilai recalled a total of 4,803 ES8s from June 27th.

In the past five years, new energy vehicles have repeatedly exposed problems from research and development to mass production and then to consumers, which has been controversial and questioned.

This also makes new energy owners feel lonely. "Driving an electric car is quite stressful. After all, my electric car successfully attracted the topic. As long as I am here, young people don't worry about getting married and urging their babies. " Wang Chao once wrote this sarcastic remark on social media, describing new energy vehicles as "lonely trams".

Only he knows clearly in his heart that his relatives' views on inconvenient charging of electric vehicles, fear of radiation, poor price of used cars and fear of spontaneous combustion are constantly improving.

After the second-hand sale of the electric vehicle with many problems, the second new energy vehicle purchased by Wang Chao has been used for two years, and there is no major problem. If there is a need to change cars in the future, he will buy a new energy vehicle.

In order to solve the problem of consumer experience, in recent years, the industry and car companies are constantly developing and iterating products.

Wan Yin, the founder of an operator in the charging industry, believes that although the equipment of new energy vehicles has undergone many technical upgrades, these upgrades can only be called iterative, not revolutionary upgrades.

Erasing the "hard injury" criticized by the owner is not only an urgent life and death problem to be solved when getting off the bus, but also a competitive point in the future industry.

three

The next battlefield

Battery performance and charging problems have always been the focus of car owners.

The performance of battery directly affects the cruising range of automobile, so the development of new energy automobile industry also promotes the development of battery industry.

At present, most domestic car companies use ternary lithium batteries. In the choice of battery type, car companies should not only consider cruising range, but also consider safety issues.

Previously, Tesla used lithium cobalt oxide batteries because of its high energy density and strong endurance. However, due to the excessive and unstable cobalt content, overcharging or collision may cause combustion and explosion. Now Tesla rarely uses lithium cobaltate batteries, but uses ternary lithium batteries.

"The national policy is constantly raising the subsidy threshold for new energy vehicles, from the previous cruising range of 250 to 300 kilometers to 300 kilometers or even more." Evening News Yin mentioned that this is a requirement for battery manufacturers and car companies, asking them to do everything possible to improve the life of batteries.

However, she believes that it will take a long time to develop or plan to use new materials to improve the efficiency and safety of batteries, not a few years.

On August 24th, this year, Weilai announced that it would provide all the first owners of ES6 and ES8 with lifetime free power exchange service on top of the original lifetime free warranty service.

Li Bin, founder and CEO of Weilai, has publicly mentioned the services of "3-minute free power exchange" and "one-button boot". This involves two modes: changing electricity and charging. In the former case, the owner drives the car to the power station and can leave in a few minutes.

The latter is to configure a mobile charging car and connect 250,000 third-party charging piles where there is no power station change, which can be directly powered on through Weilai APP.

"From a commercial point of view, the future power exchange mode will be a better choice. Especially for the owners of high-end brands such as Tesla, they have the ability to consume expensive cars. Through the power exchange plan, they can spend an extra 654.38 million yuan to replace the battery several times a year to ensure that they are not affected by battery loss. " Yin said at night:

However, for car owners who buy a large number of low-end brands, the cost of the power exchange plan is not low and the acceptance is limited.

This also involves another focus topic of extending battery life-the charging method of new energy vehicles.

Charging piles have always been the most important infrastructure for the promotion of new energy vehicles. When it was difficult for car owners to find piles, there was a period of poor communication between operators and service providers, which aggravated the problem.

Kevin Z, the owner of the car, mentioned that now owners of Roewe, BYD and other brands can use charging piles and share them with each other.

Recently, the new forces of new energy vehicles have also taken action. 65438+February 1 1, Xpeng Automobile officially announced the signing of a contract with Weilai NIO Power. After the cooperation, the car owners of both parties can use the super charging pile to quickly charge through the App scan code of their respective brands.

Pudong airport charging pile

In addition to Weilai's mobile charging car, many entrepreneurs in the industry are aiming at this piece. Later, he mentioned that he was also preparing a mobile charging project recently. "You can understand it as a mobile charging treasure, not at a fixed point, but through a line and then move the power supply."

"Another trend is wireless charging, and now a small number of people are doing it in the market. It requires you to have a receiver in the car when charging or installing a generator. The cost of the receiver is difficult for the owner and the car factory to bear, which is the difficulty of its promotion. " Yin mentioned in the evening.

The cruising range of new energy vehicles has made great progress.

According to "China 20 19 Most Fully Measured Endurance Ranking of New Energy Vehicles", Tesla Model3 and Tesla ModelX have higher performance, while BYD Tang EV, Weilai Automobile ES6, GAC New Energy GE3 530 and so on. They are all close to or more than 300 kilometers under high-speed working conditions, and the suburban working conditions are all about 400 kilometers.

But this level may not be enough. Under the condition that the battery performance is not improved, the charging speed of the current charging pile cannot be improved.

There are still many practical obstacles to improve the speed of charging piles. In the evening, Yin met many customers and asked to install 3000w or even smaller charging piles in buildings, because many buildings were not well planned for new energy when they were under construction and could not accommodate larger loads.

There are too many questions and too many imaginations about new energy vehicles. Perhaps it will take decades for new energy vehicles to be developed and mass-produced.