The price war in the domestic automobile market does not only exist between car companies. The charging industry supporting electric vehicles is now also trapped in the quagmire of low-quality price wars. According to CCTV Finance, the person in charge of a public charging station said that his charging station was built in 2020. Putting aside the land cost, he invested a total of more than 900,000 yuan and is equipped with 16 120kv fast charging piles.
When the website was first built,A gun can be charged up to 300 kilowatt-hours a day. Calculating the charging service fee of 30 cents, it can earn 500,000 yuan a year.
However, starting in 2023, more and more charging stations will be built in the surrounding areas, and various stations will reduce charging service fees, resulting in a serious decline in revenue.
According to reports, the charging fee for new energy vehicle owners consists of two parts: one part is the electricity fee, which must be paid to the power supply company; the other part is the service fee charged by the charging station, which is also the main source of profit for station operators.
The person in charge said that according to his cost calculations, his charging pile service fee should not be less than 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity. However, there are more and more charging stations around and they are all reducing their prices, so he can only give a lower price.
When he built the website in 2020, his annual income was 500,000 yuan. Starting in 2023, the annual income has dropped to 80,000 yuan. After including manual operation and maintenance costs, the profit is now only about 60,000 yuan a year.
According to the person in charge of operations of a head charging platform in Changzhou, Jiangsu, the charging station rollout began at the end of 2020.
The standard fast charging station built by their company has 20 charging parking spaces with a power of 1200kW.The cost of electricity per kilowatt hour is 0.4 yuan, which means that the service fee must be higher than this price to break even.
In the past, relying on national and local subsidies, the cost pressure was not great. Starting in 2023, subsidies for the construction and operation of charging piles across the country will be gradually eliminated, and service fees will continue to decline.
The person in charge of another leading company in the charging pile industry also calculated that a charging station with an investment of 1.2 million yuan is calculated based on 16 fast charging guns.Under the premise that each gun is charged 200 degrees per day and the service fee is 30 cents per kilowatt hour, after deducting depreciation, taxes and other costs, the final profit per kilowatt hour is as low as 4 cents.
In this regard, industry insiders pointed out that charging station service fees are unprofitable for operators, and upstream module manufacturers and equipment manufacturers lose the market foundation for technology iteration, ultimately harming the development of the entire charging pile industry.
