China has been ranked as the world's top producer and seller of new energy vehicles for three consecutive years. Measured by market growth, industry chain maturity, investment heat and other indicators, new energy vehicles have become a bright landscape of China's strategic emerging industries in recent years. However, with the increasing competition in the industry and the increasing technical threshold of financial subsidies, can the high growth of new energy vehicles be sustained? Charging infrastructure construction how to adapt to consumer expectations?

Personal consumption is close to 75% of the annual sales of new energy passenger cars, four Chinese companies entered the top 10 global sales of new energy vehicles, power battery shipments surpassed Japan and South Korea to become the world's largest producer ......

Whether measured by market growth, global ranking, industry chain maturity, investment heat and other indicators, new energy vehicles are a bright landscape of China's strategic emerging industries in recent years. However, the Ministry of Finance and other departments issued a notice to raise the technical threshold of financial subsidies for new energy vehicles, and increase the financial subsidy regression until the subsidy is completely withdrawn in 2020. So, can the high growth of new energy vehicles continue?

The global share of new energy vehicle ownership exceeded 50% in 2017

The highest sales volume, growth rate and market share, and the level of industrial technology has been significantly improved

In 2015, 331,000 new energy vehicles were sold, a year-on-year increase of 3.4 times. Among them, 247,000 pure electric vehicles were sold, up 4.5 times year-on-year.

New energy vehicle sales of 507,000 units in 2016, up 53% year-on-year. Among them, 409,000 pure electric vehicles were sold, up 65.1% year-on-year.

New energy vehicle sales of 777,000 units in 2017, up 53.3% year-on-year. Among them, 652,000 pure electric vehicles were sold, up 59.6% year-on-year.

China's new energy vehicle development of three major trends can be seen in a simple comparison of data: first, high growth, thanks to financial subsidies, license preferences, unlimited traffic and other incentives, since 2015, the world's top sales for three consecutive years, with a growth rate of more than 50%; secondly, along with the subsidy regression, the sales base increases, the growth rate of new energy vehicles is gradually declining, but in 2017, the sales of new energy passenger cars in the Personal consumption of more than 70%, indicating that the personal consumption market is rapidly emerging; third, pure electric vehicles are still the main force, accounting for 83.9% in 2017, higher than 80.7% in 2016 and 74.6% in 2015.

So, how is the gold content of this "global first" in China?

In 2017, the global total sales of new energy vehicles exceeded 1.42 million units, and the cumulative sales exceeded 3.4 million units. By the end of 2017, China's cumulative sales of new energy vehicles reached 1.8 million, more than 50% of the global cumulative sales.

Statistics show that in 2017, the world's top five new energy passenger car (pure electric and plug-in hybrid) sales countries, the United States of America's new energy passenger car sales of nearly 200,000 units, an increase of 26% year-on-year, accounting for 1.2% of the domestic market share; Norway's sales of 62,200 units, with a growth rate of more than 25%, and the domestic market share is as high as 39%; Germany's sales of 53,600 units, doubled year-on-year, and the domestic market share amounted to 1.6%; France's sales rose to 36,000 units, up 26% year-on-year, domestic market share of 1.7%. Of course, the fastest growing China, new energy passenger car sales of about 556,000 units, up 69% year-on-year, domestic market share of 2.1%.

So, whether it is sales, growth rate or global market share, China is the world's first, and the gap with the second place is getting bigger and bigger.

"The technical level of China's new energy automobile industry has also improved significantly. The range of mainstream passenger car models has reached more than 300 kilometers, in sync with the international advanced level." Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology, said that in 2017, the energy density of power battery monomers from leading companies reached 2 watt-hours per kilogram, and the price reached CNY1.2 per watt-hour. These two indicators are two times higher and 70% lower than in 2012, respectively. In addition, the investment of the backbone enterprises of new energy vehicles and power batteries has reached more than 8%, which is higher than the average level of the global industry.

The ratio of new energy vehicles to charging piles is 3.5:1.

National public charging pile 210,000, intercity high-speed fast charging station construction speed up

"The unit has a few charging piles, 1 km away from the shopping center underground garage can also be charged, it is the community property has always been security reasons, do not agree to install charging piles next to the parking space, it is inconvenient." Beijing's Mr. Liu bought an electric car the year before last, and his charging experience speaks for many car owners.

Liu Baohua, deputy director of the National Energy Administration, said the problem of building piles in residential areas is being gradually solved in 2017. According to incomplete statistics, there are 240,000 private dedicated charging piles nationwide, all of which are AC slow chargers. Among them, 83,000 are in Beijing, 78,000 in Shanghai, and 39,000 in Guangdong, with the three places holding more than 80% of the national share. In Beijing, for example, individuals purchased about 107,000 electric vehicles, and the proportion of charging facilities installed is close to 80%.

"The construction of public charging piles also grew steadily in 2017." As of the end of last year, China had built 210,000 public charging piles, ranking first in the world in terms of ownership, Liu Baohua said. Among them, 86,000 are AC piles, 61,000 are DC piles, and 66,000 are integrated AC and DC piles. The construction of intercity high-speed fast charging stations has been accelerated, with more than 1,400 charging stations built, involving 19 provinces and municipalities and serving 31,000 kilometers of highways.

However, in Miao Wei's view, the national 3.5:1 ratio of piles still does not meet the demand for consumer charging. "With the continued growth in the number of new energy vehicles, the problem of insufficient structural supply of charging infrastructure is becoming more and more prominent, and the overall scale is still lagging behind." Miao Wei said that in 2020, China plans to build the number of public charging piles of about 500,000, but compared with the 2020 plan of 2 million annual production and sales and 5 million ownership, the number of charging piles is still not matched, and the car pile ratio even has a tendency to deteriorate. In addition, the layout of China's charging facilities is not reasonable enough, the utilization rate of public charging piles is less than 15%, sustainable business development model has not been formed, there are still operating companies difficult to make a profit and consumers reflect the charging price is high two-way contradiction.

Liu Baohua said, China's charging facilities technology level is still low. Various types of charging facilities can only realize one-way charging, it is still difficult to interact with the power grid, and private charging facilities can not provide intelligent shared services.

2020 planning annual production and sales target 2 million vehicles

"Double points" policy to boost confidence, multi-pronged approach to break through the growth bottleneck

"China's new energy vehicle sales of 770,000 units in 2017 more than doubled compared to 2015. However, it will take a long time to accomplish the annual production and sales target of 2 million units in 2020." The head of the Ministry of Science and Technology recently said that the industry is still optimistic about reaching 1 million sales in 2018 after the promulgation of the "double points" (average fuel consumption and new energy vehicle points in parallel) policy. However, to reach the annual sales of 2 million units in 2020, there is still a long way to go to accomplish this goal.

Such concerns are not without reason. The National Passenger Vehicle Market Information Association statistics show that in 2017, the cumulative sales of new energy passenger cars were about 556,000, and the sales of pure electric passenger cars were about 449,000, of which the sales of miniature pure electric vehicles exceeded 300,000, accounting for as much as 67%. The reason for this is that in Shandong, Henan and other places, in order to attract users, many micro electric vehicles simply as low-speed electric car sales, without a license, without a driver's license, as well as on the road; secondly, in the new energy license plate resources of the first-tier cities, some consumers are inclined to buy a miniature electric car; thirdly, the relatively inexpensive miniature electric cars by the rental car market, car-sharing market welcome.

"Micro electric cars are popular, but also from the supply point of view to find the reasons." Xu Changming, deputy director of the National Information Center, said that in the market, more than ￥700,000 starting Tesla Model S, you can buy a pure electric car is only left after the subsidy of ￥200,000 price Tengshi, BYD E6 and Rongwei ERX5 only a few models, in the middle of the roughly 500,000 yuan of the price range is almost all blank, "double points" The implementation of the "double points" policy is to solve this supply gap.

Despite the confidence in the "double points" policy, Xu Changming believes that the policy-driven market will soon encounter a bottleneck in the development. "The rapid growth of new energy vehicles for four consecutive years can not be separated from the three major policies’ help, one is a high level of subsidies; the second is the license, restrictions on preferential treatment; the third is the policy intervention in the field of buses, logistics vehicles." Xu Changming predicted that because the subsidy slopes, the tight supply of new energy minibus licenses in cities with restricted licenses, the large-scale promotion of urban new energy logistics vehicles is still difficult, the bottleneck of growth is likely to occur when the annual sales volume of 1 million to 1.3 million vehicles.

How to make more consumers in non-restricted cities buy electric vehicles due to spontaneous demand is the key to achieving the annual sales target of 2 million new energy vehicles. And to realize this, user pain points must be addressed. Xu Changming said that a user survey by the National Information Center showed that the pure electric vehicle users are most dissatisfied with, first, the range is not long enough, and second, the charging time is long and inconvenient to charge. Chen Qingtai, chairman of the China Electric Vehicle Association, believes that the basis for the rapid growth of electric vehicles is that the cost-effectiveness and convenience of electric vehicles should meet or exceed that of fuel vehicles. Therefore, in addition to technological progress, the charging infrastructure must also keep up.