Chapter 218 Three fatal problems are gone
Chapter 218 Three fatal problems are gone
Due to the technical limitations of Qirui Automobile’s new energy vehicle production line, the actual manufacturing cost of a bare Guizhen car is about 55,000 yuan.
That is to say, Datang Heavy Industry can only make 4,999 yuan for each Guizhen sold, and considering the sales cost and after-sales cost, it can be said that it basically does not make money.
Therefore, selling cars is not a profit link in the entire business model formulated by Zhang Qing. It is really just promoting the battery replacement model by making friends.
Once a large number of users start using Guizhen, profits may begin.
First is the battery rental. After cost analysis, CATL’s quotation for OEM sodium batteries for Datang Heavy Industry is 300 yuan/Wh. The cost of large-scale manufacturing can indeed be about 50% lower than that of lithium iron phosphate batteries.
Even after forming a more complete and larger industrial chain, there is still room for further compression.
But at present, the cost of an 80KWh battery pack is 2.4W. According to the rental of 400/month, it will take about 5 years to recover the battery cost.
However, because the cycle life of solid-state sodium batteries is more than twice that of liquid lithium batteries, the five-year-old sodium batteries are far from being scrapped. If they are properly maintained and slow charging is used all the time, the health will theoretically drop to 90% after 12 years.
And if the health drops below 90%, it can still be used for energy storage and continue to play a residual heat for almost ten years.
So the long-term profit of selling battery packs is at least three times more.
However, this profit is a long-term one, and it will take five years to start making money.
But Kang Chi actually doesn’t have to wait so long. After the market has formed a certain scale, he only needs to value the project and sell part of the shares to the three oil companies and the power grid to recover a large amount of funds.
It is equivalent to taking out the money that can be earned in the future in advance.
Therefore, Kangchi hopes that all car companies will respond to the call and launch battery-swap models to the market, so as to make the cake bigger and stronger.
In fact, in addition to selling batteries, battery swap stations can also bring huge profits.
The off-peak electricity price given by the power grid is 0.16 yuan, which means that they can make almost 1 yuan for every kilowatt-hour of electricity they sell.
If each battery-swap vehicle uses “two boxes of electricity” on average per month, it can bring at least 160 yuan in revenue.
If the battery-swap model can be fully popularized and the number of vehicles in use rises to 100 million, then the monthly revenue from selling electricity alone is 16 billion yuan.
After deducting the operating costs of the battery-swap station, the annual profit is definitely more than 100 billion yuan.
Moreover, this is only calculated based on the minimum standard of one box of electricity with only 80 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
If we take into account the large electric trucks that will inevitably appear in the future, and the mileage of large trucks that generally reach tens of thousands of kilometers per month, the profit margin will definitely be even more exciting!
Because China currently has 13.89 million operating trucks, with a total monthly mileage of over 100 billion kilometers, and undertakes 75% of freight logistics tasks! Therefore, after the Datang Heavy Industry press conference, it was not the passenger car market that first realized that Kangchi’s sodium battery and battery replacement mode might bring about a huge energy revolution, but rather truck manufacturing groups such as China National Heavy Duty Truck, Dongfeng Heavy Duty Truck, and Foton Motor! Du Junchang, chairman of China National Heavy Duty Truck, immediately summoned a group of executives and engineers to conduct a feasibility analysis of electric heavy trucks in the conference room.
”300Wh/kg energy density, 800KWh battery pack leasing mode, plus battery replacement mode…”
When Du Junchang finished explaining the main content of the Datang Heavy Industry press conference, everyone immediately realized the significant impact of this incident on the heavy truck market.
As we all know, the more electric vehicles are driven, the more money they save. Trucks can easily travel tens of thousands, or even 30,000 or 40,000 kilometers a month. Wouldn’t it be a huge money-saver to build an electric truck? But the fact is that although major truck manufacturers have also developed and manufactured electric medium and heavy-duty trucks, few people buy them. Range, weight, price.
These three fatal problems have seriously restricted the market development of electric trucks.
Among the electric heavy trucks in the world, the one with the longest range is Tesla’s Semi, which is about 800 kilometers.
But for logistics trucks, 800 kilometers of range is still not enough.
For logistics, time is money, and slow charging can waste time.Time, fast charging can damage the battery, both are losses.
The second is weight.
The energy density of power lithium batteries on the market is usually only about 120Wh/kg. The battery pack of the Semi with a range of 800 kilometers is 1000KWh, and the battery pack alone weighs at least 8 tons.
Such a heavy battery pack not only increases the power consumption per 100 kilometers, but also seriously limits the load capacity of the truck. For logistics trucks, pulling one ton less is a loss.
Finally, it is the price.
The price of ordinary heavy trucks of 300,000 or 400,000 yuan is already unbearable for many people, not to mention that electric heavy trucks are often millions of yuan, and the initial investment cost is too high.
Of course, in addition to the above three fatal problems, technology is actually a problem.
However, if the above three fatal problems can be solved, everyone will be more motivated to develop electric trucks, and this is actually not a problem at all.
“The energy density of 300Wh/kg means that the weight of an 800KWh battery pack is only 2.6 tons, which has little impact on the load of the truck!”
The director of R&D of China National Heavy Duty Truck analyzed excitedly: ”And it still adopts the battery leasing model. According to the monthly rental of 400 yuan for Datang Heavy Industry’s 80-degree battery pack, the 800-degree battery pack should be around 4,000 yuan, which is equivalent to the cost of a tank of oil.”
”And the 4,000 yuan in exchange is at least halved in the cost per kilometer. For example, now the express delivery trucks travel 20,000 to 30,000 kilometers every month, and electricity can save 20,000 to 30,000 yuan!”
”And the battery leasing model also greatly reduces the user’s initial investment pressure!”
”Plus the battery swap mode directly solves the endurance problem… I feel that Datang Heavy Industry’s technology may not eliminate fuel passenger cars first, but fuel heavy trucks!”
Du Junchang also nodded with a serious expression: “If what Dr. Kang said at the press conference is true, I also hold the same opinion, but we still need to see the specific situation…”
”Engineer Li, you quickly organize a technical team and go to Dongyang with me to talk to Datang Heavy Industry in person to see if their technology is real or not. Engineer Liu, you go to Datang Heavy Industry’s official website to download their battery pack data and study it, and then formulate a preliminary battery swap truck R&D plan…”
Under Du Junchang’s task assignment, all departments of China National Heavy Duty Truck immediately took action, and Datang Heavy Industry received their interview application the next morning.
In addition to China National Heavy Duty Truck, Dongfeng Heavy Duty Truck, Foton Motor, FAW Jiefang, Sany Heavy Industry, Jiangling and other manufacturers have also sent letters one after another, hoping to come to Dongyang for inspection and establish cooperation with Datang Heavy Industry.
This result was somewhat unexpected for Kang Chi, but after careful consideration, it was reasonable.
In fact, although electric trucks have faced three fatal problems before, the previous news that Tesla Semi will soon be mass-produced and enter the Chinese market has actually put a lot of pressure on domestic truck manufacturers…
(End of this chapter)