NIO has launched a new integrated charging and discharging machine, and the camping economy has brought popularity to third-party mobile power stations

Recently, NIO launched a portable integrated charging and discharging machine, which is equivalent to an external inverter. It allows the battery of an electric car to output electricity to the outside, and at the same time it can be connected to an ordinary household 220V AC socket to charge the electric car.

According to the official introduction, the charging input voltage of this product supports 220VAC AC, and the charging power can reach 1.76kW under a 10A plug and 2.85kW under a 16A plug. The maximum discharge power connected to the car is 3.3kW, and it supports IP66 protection level.

Image source: NIO official

It can also be seen from the official introduction page that the usage scenario of this integrated charging and discharging machine is mainly in camping, to power camping lights, projectors, refrigerators, speakers, and other electronic devices. At the same time, it can also power another electric car through discharge for use in emergency situations.

Initially, NIO said that this product was only for rent and not for sale, and only offered a weekly rental price of 168 yuan, but it was widely complained by car owners. NIO explained that the portable charging and discharging machine is a low-frequency product, and combined with the insufficient production capacity in the early stage, it hopes to let more users experience this product through the leasing model. At the same time, it started with a fixed rental period of one week (7 days) in the early stage, and will explore more flexible leasing methods in the future, such as daily calculation.

However, today, NIO did not withstand the pressure and announced that in response to purchasing needs, the integrated charging and discharging machine is expected to be officially launched for pre-sale in the NIO Car Mall in mid-June, with a pre-sale unit price of 3,880 yuan.

Many people may have a question: Doesn't BYD also have direct external charging and discharging? And it can be achieved without an external inverter, so why does NIO need an external inverter to achieve external discharge? In fact, as early as 2019, BYD took the lead in launching the compilation of the standard "Electric Vehicle Conductive Charging and Discharging System Part 4: Vehicle External Discharge Requirements", which has now been released.

Looking through the content of the standard, it is mentioned that there are several forms of external discharge of new energy vehicles, including: V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle charging), V2L (vehicle-to-load), and V2G (vehicle-to-grid). These forms of external discharge all require internal or external charging and discharging equipment (bidirectional inverter).

Source: "Electric Vehicle Conductive Charging and Discharging System Part 4: Vehicle External Discharge Requirements"

Because new energy vehicle batteries use direct current, if you want to connect household appliances, you need to use an inverter to convert direct current into alternating current and then output it. Some vehicles have built-in bidirectional on-board charging and discharging modules, so they can directly output alternating current, such as many BYD models.

It is understood that BYD's bidirectional inverter charging and discharging technology can achieve an output of up to 15kW of AC power, which is a qualitative improvement compared to the 220V power supply equipped on some ordinary models, which can only output less than 150W.

However, since the demand for V2V, V2L and V2G is very low, for example, the frequency of use of V2V and V2L is very low, and they are only used in some emergency or special scenarios, and V2G is not widely used yet, most vehicles do not have built-in high-power external discharge functions. As Weilai mentioned, portable charging and discharging devices are low-frequency products, and in this case, renting is actually more practical than buying.

As the popularity of camping has soared this year, the demand for external discharge of electric vehicles has also been increasing. However, in the final analysis, as a low-frequency function, some car companies may still not integrate external discharge function in the car to reduce costs. So at this time, portable charging and discharging machines, also known as mobile power stations, may be a new market opportunity.

Image source: A merchant introduction page

A mobile power station is equivalent to an inverter, which is mainly composed of an inverter bridge, control logic and filter circuit. In fact, there are some third-party external power products designed for new energy vehicles on the market. From an e-commerce platform, the price of external power equipment with a maximum power of 5kW is generally more than 2,000 yuan, but there are not many products with mature industrial design. With the official launch of NIO, I believe that third-party mobile power station products will also usher in a new wave of upgrades.