At about 4 pm on August 26, a public charging station in Longquanyi District, Chengdu was already full of online car-hailing cars and taxis waiting to be charged.
Due to the extreme high temperature weather, the power supply and demand in Sichuan and Chongqing are tight, and an orderly power consumption policy has been issued successively.
In response to policy requirements, the charging station is not actually open for charging at this time.
These drivers waiting to be charged will not be able to recharge until after 11 o'clock in the evening. The drivers at the front of the line may be able to go home and rest in the early morning, but the waiting time is 4-5 hours or even overnight. someone here.
"It is very common to queue up for charging during the day. These drivers often did not charge the battery the night before and couldn't get a sports car the next day, so they simply parked there and queued up." Chengdu Weimar E.5 car-hailing driver Zhang Wei (pseudonym) also had the same experience. On August 26, he told a reporter from China Business News that about a week ago, Chengdu public charging piles also began to cut power, and almost all of them were shut down during the day. open one after another.
According to data, as of the first half of this year, the number of new energy vehicles in Chengdu has reached 311,000, and the proportion of vehicles in Chengdu has increased to 4.8%.
As of May this year, Chengdu has issued a total of 120,000 online car-hailing licenses, including about 80,000 new energy vehicles.
How are the more than 300,000 new energy vehicle owners in Chengdu living with less electricity?
Recently, Yicai reporters have intensively interviewed many car owners, and found that with Chengdu's efforts to ensure people's livelihood and electricity consumption, the power supply regulation is more affected by pure grid hailing and taxi drivers who rely on public charging piles.
Under this round of power cuts, almost all of these online car-hailing drivers interviewed experienced overnight queuing for charging.
On the issue of electricity supply, they talk freely, like half of electricity experts.
"Recently, I've been praying for rain every day. If there is water, there will be electricity." Zhang Wei's wish came true on the evening of the 25th. With the rain, the power supply situation is improving.
However, on August 29, a number of local car owners in Chengdu pointed out to reporters that the power curtailment originally scheduled to end at 24:00 on August 25 has not yet been completely lifted.
Difficulty charging at high temperature
On the evening of August 26, when the reporter saw Zhang Wei for the first time, he had not returned home for two days and one night, and there was a faint sour smell of sweat on his body and car.
The night before, Zhang Wei was in line from 9:00 to 6:00 the next morning, and finally charged.
On August 15th, Sichuan issued a policy of "letting electricity to the people", and most areas in the province started to limit electricity from 0:00 on August 15th to 24:00 on August 20th.
However, due to the fact that the high temperature weather has not improved significantly, the tension between power supply and demand has further intensified, and the period of power blackout has also been extended to 24:00 on August 25.
Zhang Wei told reporters that Chengdu's regulation of the power supply of public charging piles started about a week ago. At first, he didn't know about it. On, the charging pile is powered off.
Helpless, the vehicles with little power left could only stop directly at the charging station and continue to line up, and he also "strike" for a day.
After that, Zhang Wei played sports cars almost every day during the day and "stayed up late" at night in line to charge.
He recalled that one night, more than 60 vehicles lined up at a public charging station at the same time, stretching for nearly 1 km.
The charging station originally had 36 charging piles, but only half of them were opened due to the limited electricity.
A car generally takes more than an hour to charge, and it takes 4 to 5 hours for all the queued vehicles to be fully charged.
The situation of Wang Yu (pseudonym), a driver of the Hongqi E-QM5 online car-hailing service, is similar to that of Zhang Wei.
On the evening of August 24, Wang Yu started queuing from more than 7:00, and was charged at close to 1:00 the next day, and the queuing time lasted for more than 5 hours.
In addition to the long queue time, Wang Yu pointed out that under the premise of power supply regulation, he must reserve more power, because some charging piles are too long in queue, and some are not turned on, so there are more than 100 kilometers left in the car's power. When the time comes, he will find a charging pile.
He pointed to the cars on the road and told reporters, "Look, there have been significantly fewer new energy vehicles running on the road these days. They all queued up early to charge, so it has become more difficult for ordinary consumers to take a taxi."
In addition to public charging stations, the charging piles and swap stations of some car companies are also affected by the regulation of power supply in Chengdu.
In mid-to-late August, NIO, Tesla and Xiaopeng’s supercharging stations and swap stations experienced limited services or suspended operations, which also affected some new energy vehicle owners in Chengdu who did not have private piles.
In recent years, under the trend of "new four modernizations" in automobiles, Chengdu has also achieved phased results in promoting new energy vehicles.
According to the "Promotion and Application of New Energy Vehicles in 2021" announced by Chengdu Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology.
As of the end of 2021, Chengdu has more than 5.7 million vehicles, ranking second in the country; among them, the city has promoted a total of 266,000 new energy vehicles, ranking seventh in the country and first in the Midwest.
In addition, according to data from the Trade and Foreign Economic Statistics Department of the Chengdu Bureau of Statistics, Chengdu will add 108,000 new energy vehicles in 2021. Since 2022, Chengdu will further increase its efforts to promote consumption of new energy vehicles. In the first half of the year, 71,000 new energy vehicles will be added.
Will this power cut affect consumers' enthusiasm for purchasing new energy vehicles?
In the reporter's interview, most car owners said that they would not be affected by this, because the occurrence of extreme high temperature weather like this year is a very small probability event.
In fact, in the second half of last year, there have been power cuts in many places in my country, but that year was still the "big explosion" of new energy vehicles.
According to data from the China Automobile Association, in 2021, the national production and sales of new energy vehicles will exceed 3.5 million units, with a year-on-year increase of more than 1.5 times.
Auto supply chain suffers another "black swan"
In addition to bringing a certain degree of difficulty to ordinary new energy vehicle owners, the power regulation has also impacted the entire automotive supply chain.
Toyota announced on August 16 that its joint venture plant in Chengdu (FAW Toyota Chengdu production base) would cease operations until August 20.
It is understood that Toyota's factory in Chengdu currently mainly produces Costa buses and Asia Dragons, with an annual production capacity of over 100,000 vehicles.
In addition to Toyota, Sichuan, which is an important automobile production base in the west, also gathers mainstream car companies such as FAW-Volkswagen, Shenlong Automobile, and Geely Commercial Vehicles.
Among them, Dongfeng Peugeot's new 4008, 5008, Versailles C5X, and Tianyi BEYOND are the main models produced by the DPCA Chengdu plant.
The FAW-Volkswagen Chengdu plant mainly produces models of the Sagitar under the Volkswagen brand and all models under the Jetta brand.
In addition, Sichuan has also gathered many auto parts companies. Influenced by the power restriction policy, these parts companies cannot produce enough, which has also caused a lot of impact on vehicle production in other regions.
In mid-to-late August, the reporter learned from Tesla insiders that Tesla's supply chain companies in Sichuan have been affected to a certain extent.
A few days ago, Li Auto also released the "Delivery Time Delay Announcement for Li Li L9". The announcement shows that due to the power cut in Sichuan and the delay in the supply of the range extender factory in Mianyang, the delivery time of Li Li L9 was delayed.
Because of lithium and green power resources, Sichuan is also an important power battery industry center in China and the main producer of domestic lithium battery raw materials and materials.
Lithium salt companies such as Tianqi Lithium Industry, Shengxin Lithium Energy, Rongjie Co., Ltd., Ganfeng Lithium Industry, Shanshan Co., Ltd., and Tianci Materials have all set up here, and power battery companies such as BYD and Ningde Times have also set up factories here. .
In 2019, CATL announced a new lithium battery factory in Yibin, Sichuan, with an investment of more than 30 billion yuan.
The factory is one of the main lithium battery production bases in the domestic layout of CATL.
According to media reports, the factory in CATL has been shut down due to power curtailment, and the power curtailment period will be from August 15 to August 20.
In addition to Sichuan, Chongqing also rationed power at about the same time.
Changan Automobile, SAIC-GM-Wuling, Xiaokang and Great Wall all have production bases in Chongqing.
On August 18, Changan Deep Blue announced on the APP that in order to fully protect people's livelihood electricity, Changan Deep Blue and its main suppliers have suspended the production of SL03 vehicles and parts from August 15, 2022.
It is expected that this round of shutdown will continue until the 24th, which will have a certain impact on the total production and delivery scale of SL03 this month.
On the evening of August 26, Changan Automobile once again announced that due to the influence of power cuts in Chongqing, Changan Automobile will temporarily stop production at the Chongqing base.
The production and sales target in August is expected to be reduced by about 100,000 vehicles. The power cut will have a greater impact on the production and sales of the month, but the impact on the annual target will be limited.
According to public data, the Sichuan-Chongqing area has 45 automobile enterprises and 1,600 auto parts enterprises above designated size, with an annual output value of more than 600 billion yuan.
The annual output of automobiles is nearly 3 million, accounting for nearly 12% of the national total.
However, although the automobile supply chain has encountered another "black swan" in addition to the epidemic, many institutions still give more optimistic forecasts.
CICC pointed out in the research report that the current round of power curtailment is a seasonal, temporary and regional measure under extremely high temperature and little rain.
In previous years, during the peak electricity consumption in summer, various places will also take measures to limit electricity, and give priority to ensuring the electricity consumption of residents.
In the future, as the temperature drops, the power supply gap in Sichuan and other places may be alleviated, and industrial enterprises affected by power curtailment can make up for the early impact by rushing to work.
Therefore, the overall impact of this round of power cuts on industrial production is limited, much smaller than the same period last year.