Domestic parts and pile companies have little technical problems, but vicious competition makes it difficult to produce high-quality products?
Many domestic component manufacturers or complete machine manufacturers have no major defects in technical capabilities. The problem is that the market does not give them room to do well. For example, the domestic EVSE market has entered the red sea stage, and the price of the charging hardware has even been drop significantly, which makes it impossible for even companies with excellent technology to produce high-quality products. Therefore, many companies now hope to enter overseas markets, avoid domestic vicious competition, and seek a better market environment.
At the front end, our State Grid Corporation is also tracking the product quality of some charging stations, and found that many manufacturers took a good charger when they were doing formal tests, which met various indicators, obtained certificates, and sold them in the market Sometimes, it is done with something else entirely. It’s just two skins, the things on the market and the certified ones are not the same at all, and some certification agencies even relax some indicators for their own interests.
Therefore, there is indeed a gap between our system and foreign countries. Foreign laboratories will not do this kind of thing, and neither will enterprises. This is an urgent problem to be solved, because we strive to narrow the gap with foreign countries in terms of standards, and even indicators It is better than them, but it has not been implemented, which is a big problem.
How high is the barrier of the charging module, and what aspects are difficult to break through?
Whether the technical barriers are high depends on which angle you look at it. In terms of design principles, the charging module has not had many improvements and breakthroughs over the years. At present, the efficiency, electrical control and other indicators have reached a very high level. The main difference is that some modules have a wider range, and some have a narrower range. I personally think that the space for improving the efficiency of the charging module is very limited, because it cannot be achieved. One hundred percent, only 2 or 3 points of upside.
However, more difficulty lies in the production process and design, such as maintenance-free, that is, how to make the module do not need maintenance in the long-term working cycle, and can work normally in various high-temperature and low-temperature environments, and the repair rate should be low. Work hard on this.
That is to say, there is limited room for indicators to rise. Now it is more about how to control the cost and performance cost performance, including the cost of the whole life cycle and maintenance cost. When State Grid called for tenders back then, why the price was high, because we would put forward very high requirements, such as warranty within four to five years, which excluded some products with substandard quality. In some other places, purely relying on the price, it will break after a few months, so it will not work.
Then there is the scale benefit. Now the production of modules is basically concentrated in several large enterprises. In general, I think the current technical barriers are not in new circuits or breakthroughs in new principles, but in production technology, cost control, design and maintenance.
Are there any technical upgrades for charging piles, such as liquid cooling technology, etc. Can you introduce this to us?
Liquid cooling technology is actually not a new thing. It is widely used in the industry, including cars that have always had a lot of liquid cooling, such as conventional engines. Charging piles are entirely out of high-power charging needs. When charging at high power, if you don’t add liquid cooling to carry such a large current, you must make the wires very thick to ensure that the heat generation can be controlled within a certain range. Inside.
So this forces everyone to adopt liquid cooling technology in order to meet the needs of high-power charging and at the same time provide services to ordinary people who need the compact and convenient characteristics of charging piles.
Liquid cooling technology itself is not complicated, but considering the application scenarios of electric vehicles, as it is already at 1000 volts now, and will reach 1250 volts in the future, the safety requirements may be different from traditional applications, such as thermal failure, a certain point of foundation The resistance suddenly increases, causing the temperature to rise. It is necessary to have a better monitoring method to deal with these key points.
But there are some special places, such as where the connector contacts, it is difficult to install the temperature sensor. For various reasons, since the temperature sensor itself is a low-voltage thing, but the contact point carries a high voltage of thousands of volts, so insulation must be added in the middle, etc., resulting in inaccurate measurement.
In fact, there are many such technical details that need to be considered, that is, how to provide cooling and monitor safely at the same time. In fact, we are now working on this ChaoJi interface, including the interface research of UltraChaoJi, and we have spent a lot of energy on solving this problem.
Now in the international arena, basically everyone spends the longest time discussing these issues. As far as I know, at least some domestic manufacturers may not be aware of this issue at all. I didn‘t really strictly consider what to do if there is an abnormality. This is actually a key consideration for liquid cooling systems, including failures on some equipment, and sudden changes in local contact. How to quickly and accurately monitor it requires careful attention..
Post time: Jun-16-2023