Which one has more promising future, CTC battery chassis technology or battery replacement technology?

The endurance of new energy vehicles has always been centered around two aspects: one is the vehicle's endurance, and the other is the charging speed. In order to solve these problems, most car companies have adopted the approach of expanding battery capacity. The problems that follow are vehicle safety, charging efficiency, lightweight, and cost issues.

In order to better solve the above problems, car companies, battery manufacturers and many start-ups are exploring different paths. Among them, CTC battery chassis technology and battery replacement technology are the two most controversial methods in recent times. Regarding the advantages and disadvantages and characteristics of the two, various experts have recently analyzed them. But in the long run, which one is more promising?

Battery swap technology has been proposed for a long time. This is because the energy density of the battery pack was not high at that time. In comparison, battery swapping is much faster than charging. And from the current point of view, the advantages of battery swapping technology are quite obvious. On the one hand, it takes a lot of time to swap batteries. Take Weilai as an example. It has announced the average charging time during the National Day holiday. With more than 27,000 battery swaps, the average time is only about 14 minutes. Compared with fast charging, which takes about 20 minutes at the fastest, it is much faster. After all, charging also takes into account the time of queuing for entry.

At the same time, from the perspective of consumers, battery swapping technology has its unique advantage - cost. It is not that battery swapping is cheaper than charging, but the maintenance cost of the battery. In those days, the cost of power batteries accounted for almost one-third to one-half of the cost of the entire vehicle. From the current perspective, although the cost of power batteries has decreased, it still accounts for nearly a quarter of the cost of the entire vehicle, especially now that the shortage of materials has led to an increase in battery costs, and the price has become even stronger.

Compared with the 10%-15% engine cost of fuel vehicles, the power battery of pure electric vehicles accounts for too high a proportion of the vehicle price, which makes consumers face double losses. The first is the depreciation rate of the vehicle, and the second is the cost of replacing the battery as the battery deteriorates.

However, the emergence of battery swap technology can solve these two problems well. Taking Weilai's battery rental plan as an example, the car price is reduced by 70,000 yuan, and the battery rental service fee is 980 yuan/month. This plan can make users have no anxiety about battery decay, and can also ensure that the depreciation rate of the vehicle is limited to the car, without being affected by the battery. This is why battery swap technology is better now and in the short term in the future.

In the long run, the development of battery swap technology is not as good as that of CTC battery chassis technology. The biggest limitation of battery swap technology is that each company operates independently and lacks a unified standard. In the short term, there will be no unified standard, which will gradually erode the advantages of battery swap technology.

From a policy perspective, there will not be a unified standard in the short term, because there are still too many uncertainties in the development of electric vehicles. Unifying the standard too early will lead to rigid thinking, which is not conducive to the development of the entire new energy vehicle market. Secondly, even if the domestic standard is unified, there are still differences between different countries. It is impossible to solve this problem in the short term.

Therefore, if battery swapping technology is to be popularized, it can only rely on the strength of the companies themselves, such as CATL and AIWAYS working together to promote battery swapping technology. However, this does not solve the situation of fighting alone. Different standards among different car companies make it difficult for them to truly popularize it, especially in first-tier cities where land is expensive. A limited number of battery swapping stations will only reduce the experience, but if battery swapping stations are built in large quantities, the cost will increase. This is an almost irreconcilable contradiction.

On the other hand, CTC battery chassis technology does not have such concerns. Compared with battery swap technology, CTC battery chassis technology is a universal technology and will not be unable to be popularized due to battery size issues. It is more like an optimized battery pack technology, which not only allows longer battery life, but also increases the space of the vehicle. The overall experience is better than battery swap technology.

Moreover, from the perspective of the general trend, CTC battery chassis technology also occupies a dominant position. Apart from Tesla, which was the first to propose it, a number of European companies and domestic brands have proposed their own CTC battery chassis technology development routes. The most typical example is Leapmotor, which has already produced mass-produced models. According to the plans of different automobile companies, this year there will be a large number of mass-produced vehicles equipped with CTC battery chassis technology, which can be called the first year of CTC battery chassis technology.

More importantly, although the impact of the epidemic will cause battery costs to rise in the short term, in fact, the cost of power batteries will continue to decline over time. From 2010 to 2021, the cost of battery packs fell by as much as 89%, although this was due to the initial stage. But even with the slowdown in battery development from 2020 to 2021, there is still a 6% cost reduction.

Therefore, in the future, as long as the cost of batteries is low enough and the battery standards are not unified, battery swapping technology will have no advantages. By then, more car companies will choose CTC battery chassis technology instead of battery swapping technology. Moreover, compared with battery swapping technology being subject to battery manufacturers, car companies will also tend to prefer CTC battery chassis technology, which they have stronger dominance.

In the short term, the advantages of CTC battery chassis technology are not obvious. It is more in the research and development stage, which means it has a higher cost and will appear more in mid-to-high-end models. Therefore, in the short term in the future, the market will definitely have a situation where CTC battery chassis technology and battery replacement technology coexist. However, from an engineering perspective, CTC battery chassis technology has a broader development prospect. Of course, the market is not determined by engineers, and the final answer will ultimately be left to consumers to answer.