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Every time I talk about new energy vehicles with my colleagues and friends

There is always one question that cannot be avoided: when will new energy vehicles mature?

Speaking of new energy vehicles, they have been very popular over the past year.

According to data released by the China Passenger Car Association, in September this year, the wholesale sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 355,000 units, a month-on-month increase of 14.7% and a year-on-year increase of 184.4%. As of October this year, the penetration rate of electric new energy vehicles has reached 13%.

At the same time, the national level also provides "strong support" for new energy. The State Council's executive meeting passed the "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2020-2035)", proposing that by 2025, the proportion of new energy vehicle sales will reach 25%.

At the same time, more and more car owners around Tai Ge are choosing electric cars as their home commuting tool.

Many car owners will ask Brother Tai a question before buying a new car: Are today's new energy vehicles really mature?

To be honest, this question is not difficult to answer!

Today we will talk with you about how long it will take for current electric vehicles to mature, starting from the "core" of electric new energy vehicles - the three-electric system, namely electronic control, motor and battery.

Electronic control and charging technologies are basically mature

Basically can meet the use requirements of each port

The first problem that stops car owners from buying new energy vehicles is battery life!

First, let's talk about the principle of charging and discharging. Lithium batteries use a very unique lithium intercalation chemical reaction. We can regard the inside of the battery as a warehouse: charging and discharging is the process of lithium ions being repeatedly transported between the positive and negative electrodes, which generates current.

However, such "electron transport" also causes energy loss and generates heat. This will bring about a problem: lithium dendrites appear in the concentration polarization reaction.

The large-scale and high-speed movement of electrons inside the battery will cause the lithium metal in the electrolyte to precipitate and crystallize to produce dendrites. This dendrite formation will also occur during the non-charging period. Once the amount of crystallization reaches a critical point, it will cause the battery to short circuit and thermal runaway.

Then, boom! Your car explodes.

The battery management system (Battery Management System) installed by major manufacturers is used to control and eliminate the problem of lithium dendrites. Currently, the BMS systems of Ford and General Motors in the industry can measure the real-time battery power SOC with an accuracy error of less than 1%, that is, at any time, it can accurately measure the percentage of battery power left.

In this way, the goal can be achieved to ensure battery working efficiency, prevent overcharging and over-discharging, extend battery life, and help the battery operate normally.

Therefore, the current electronic control technology is basically mature, it just depends on whether the manufacturers are willing to spend money to complete it.

As for charging, car owners don’t need to worry.

It's a quick calculation that since Porsche Taycan first introduced this technology in 2019, in just two or three years, more and more manufacturers have deployed the 800V technology route.

Major automakers are also racing against each other to make arrangements for high-voltage fast charging.

Hyundai Motor uses an 800V voltage platform on its E-GMP platform. Mercedes-Benz's EVA platform, GM's third-generation pure electric platform, and Jaguar Land Rover's electrification platform have also chosen 800V as the vehicle's operating voltage. Volkswagen will also apply 800V supercharging technology in 2026.

As the king of overtaking on curves, China has already crushed the 800V high-voltage fast charging in Europe and the United States.

Geely's SEA vast architecture has reached the stage where the technology can be mass-produced. The voltage of BYD's e-platform models has actually been increased to over 600V, and the Tang New Energy has even reached 700V.

The Han EV model is equipped with self-developed silicon carbide power devices, so it will not be difficult to launch an 800V or even 1000V high-voltage platform in the future.

"Juwan Technology Research" under GAC Group has successfully mass-produced 480kw super charging (limit 600kw) at the beginning of this year, supporting a maximum voltage of 1000V. A 100-degree battery pack can be fully charged from 0-80% in just 8 minutes.

Moreover, this supercharging system has been commercialized this year. GAC Aion AION V PLUS can directly use supercharging that is faster than Tesla, and the car price is only 240,000 yuan.

Switched reluctance motor will become the mainstream power pack

However, the technology is still limited by the Japanese.

As electric car owners, everyone is competing to see who has more motors, which means they are faster and more expensive.

Low-end cars have only one motor, while high-end cars have two or even three. This is just like the fact that the larger the displacement of a car engine, the more fuel it consumes. Even at the same speed, multiple motors will definitely consume more power than a single motor. Therefore, electric cars have the same energy consumption as fuel cars. They hope to have more power, but also the highest efficiency.

The drive motors of new energy vehicles can be divided into three categories according to the overall technology: AC asynchronous motors, permanent magnet synchronous motors and switched reluctance motors.

The asynchronous AC motor is the most common power unit for the first generation of electric new energy vehicles. It is simple in structure, reliable and durable in operation, and easy to maintain. It is almost never broken in normal use, making it the most common motor in the industry. The first generation of Tesla Model S is a typical example of using AC motors.

But AC motors are not without disadvantages: although the maximum efficiency is very high, the "high efficiency range" is not wide. The efficiency range of this thing is the same as that of gas turbines. The efficiency is very good at a specific vehicle speed (rotation speed), and once it deviates from the optimal rotation speed, the efficiency deteriorates seriously.

Therefore, various companies began to research other motors to replace AC motors, and permanent magnet synchronous motors became the second generation of automotive motors and entered the field of vision of car owners.

As the mainstream powertrain of current electric new energy vehicles, synchronous motors have solved the problem of the narrow efficiency platform of asynchronous AC motors and have a relatively wide high efficiency range. However, due to the limitations of the permanent magnet material itself, the permanent magnets of the rotor will demagnetize under high temperature and vibration conditions, and the motor performance will decline over time.

This type of motor is like a diesel engine. Although it has high working efficiency, it is difficult to increase the speed under high temperature and high vibration conditions. In the end, it is just an old cow with low speed and high torque.

There are only two ways to achieve high speed: fill the motor with coolant like Tesla or install a gearbox like Porsche.

Tesla has modified the motor by immersing the motor rotor directly in the coolant, so that heat dissipation is no longer a problem. However, the coolant will also bring considerable shear resistance to the rotor, and the speed still cannot reach the highest efficiency.

Porsche uses flat wire windings. After increasing the winding power, it adds a 2-speed gearbox to the motor to solve the problem of the speed not being able to increase. However, the actual efficiency is greatly reduced due to the addition of a speed change mechanism.

Finally, there is the third generation motor, the switched reluctance motor!

It has a simple structure and the same "abnormal" extreme reliability as an AC motor, making it very suitable for use in automobiles. It also has the same "soft characteristics" as a DC motor, with an astonishingly wide range of high efficiency, and can maintain very high efficiency almost from starting to the maximum speed.

Why has the switched reluctance motor not become the mainstream of vehicle power at present, given its amazing performance? In fact, it is because this type of motor has extremely high requirements for the control system, and the development of a digital vector control system is very difficult.

Among the current vehicle manufacturers, Land Rover, Jaguar, and Toyota are relatively adept at using this type of motor.

However, a closer look reveals that they are almost all Japanese patented technologies. Toyota's reluctance motor technology was developed in cooperation with Tokyo University of Science, while the reluctance motor used by Land Rover and Jaguar comes from the 2013 electric Land Rover Defender, which is manufactured by Beijing Zhongfang Ruili.

Unfortunately, in 2015, Zhongfang Ruili was acquired by Nidec of Japan and became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nidec. Currently, all reluctance motors used in the domestic passenger car market come from Nidec.

It can be said that the current third-generation electric vehicle drive units are basically all in the hands of Japan's Toyota and Nidec.

Fortunately, Suzhou Dasling Company, a cooperation company of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Huike Reluctance Drive Co., Ltd. have come up with the internationally advanced patented "electrically excited double-pole motor" product. Perhaps it won't be long before we can see my country's own-brand electric vehicles equipped with domestically produced motors.