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I think the current development of electric vehicles has entered the era of intelligence from the era of electrification. Major domestic new energy OEMs are happy to develop smart electric vehicles. The biggest feature of intelligence is the concept of autonomous driving.
The US SAE divides autonomous driving into six levels, namely
L0 manual driving
L1 assisted driving
L2 partial autonomous driving
L3 conditional autonomous driving
L4 highly autonomous driving
L5 fully autonomous driving
The higher the value, the higher the maturity of autonomous driving.
At present, L2 to L2.5 are all assisted driving. From L3 onwards, the detection and perception of the driving environment can be completed by the automation system, which can be called autonomous driving.
Autonomous driving technology has attracted a lot of technology giants to enter the smart car industry. Foreign countries such as Google, Apple, and Tesla, and domestic ones such as Baidu, Xiaopeng, Weilai, and Huawei are all laying out the field of autonomous driving.
In 2021, L3-level vehicles will really hit the road. It can already satisfy most people to let go of their hands and feet, and let the vehicle system take over the driving. Some mass-produced autonomous driving models have been launched one after another, including Weilai ET7 and Xiaopeng P5 equipped with laser radar. In the future, when autonomous driving technology becomes more mature and popular, it can bring about subversive changes in people’s car experience. This is the era of smart cars.
When driving and parking are completely intelligent and no human operation is required, we can imagine such a scene: you come back and drive the car to the gate of the community, get out of the car and chat with friends, your car automatically drives into the underground garage and automatically parks. Everything seems so natural, and you don’t even need to go around the garage. How great it feels.
But when you finish chatting and suddenly remember that your car needs to be charged, and your charging equipment is still the traditional plug-in type, you have to go to the garage, find your car, pick up the charging gun, do these actions, and then go back home. Do you think this experience is too bad?
So I think that smart cars need to be matched with smart charging.
As of 2021, the main charging method for electric vehicles is “fast charging as the main, slow charging as the auxiliary, and encouraging battery replacement”. From the perspective of market application and technological development, the current development of charging equipment for electric vehicles is relatively slow compared to the development of electric vehicles. Many charging equipment cannot meet the needs of electric vehicles. One is limited by manufacturing production capacity, and the other is limited by the application of new materials such as SiC/GaN.
Excluding high-power supercharging and battery replacement modes, these are mainly distributed in charging stations and operating stations, similar to gas stations for fuel vehicles, with limited scenarios and a single charging experience. At present, the slow charging methods for electric vehicles on the market include: on-board OBC slow charging, portable/wall box DC slow charging, on-board power bank, etc. I divide the slow charging methods of electric vehicles into two-dimensional methods and three-dimensional methods. These are typical two-dimensional methods, which are characterized by static and non-intelligent.
In the future, the charging style of smart cars will present a variety of charging modes with technical support. The charging method will slowly develop from manual plug-in to wireless charging, solar charging, road charging, robot charging and other charging methods, so as to meet the needs of users in different scenarios. These are typical three-dimensional methods with intelligent, active memory and learning functions.
Two-dimensional charging method:
The market share is mainly based on on-board OBC. In recent years, the representative suppliers of on-board OBC in China, Shenzhen Weimaisi Technology, Shenzhen Xinrui Technology, Hangzhou Fute Technology, and Shenzhen BYD Technology, have occupied about 60% of the market share. Data shows that with the continuous improvement of the global penetration rate of new energy vehicles, it is predicted that the global sales of new energy vehicles will reach 13 million in 2025, of which the market space for on-board chargers for passenger cars is expected to reach 25 billion yuan, and the industry market space is broad.
Although the slow charging method on the market is mainly based on on-board OBC, the technical threshold of on-board OBC is high and the quality requirements are strict (to achieve PPM < 400), not all power suppliers can enter the market.
In recent years, some power supply manufacturers have begun to shout the slogan of de-OBC, launched external portable DC charging devices to replace internal on-board OBC, and gave many reasons, expounded the advantages of multiple parties, and promoted them. There are also car manufacturers such as Volkswagen that have begun to try external wall box DC charging. But the overall market share is limited. I think that the dispute between these two charging technology routes has not deviated from the dispute of dimensions, and the essence is still a two-dimensional method.
Product technology: three-phase PFC+CLLC topology, 11KW charging power, 800V battery voltage platform, compatible with V2X function. It will become the mainstream OBC product on the market in the future. The circuit topology is highly mature, and the power density of manufacturers of the same level is not much different.
Product trend: In the future, three-electric products will move towards functional integration, charging integration, and electric drive integration. Suppliers need to break through the inherent system and use digital, intelligent, and networked technologies to develop advanced, reliable, applicable, lightweight, modular, and systematic vehicle-mounted OBC integrated products.
Compared with other slow charging, solar charging and wireless charging are not yet popular. The solar charging method is to install solar panels on the roof for photoelectric conversion. Limited by the roof area and conversion efficiency, solar charging is currently mainly used to supplement the 12V battery on the vehicle, and there are few applications for directly charging high-voltage power batteries. In the future, with the improvement of solar panel energy density and conversion efficiency, the advantages of solar charging systems will be revealed. We don’t need to find charging piles. We can charge while driving in the sun, saving time and charging costs.
Volkswagen has developed the latest concept of mobile charging robots. It can provide charging for cars in different places. As long as the vehicle stops in the parking space, the robot will drag the mobile charger to the side of the vehicle and use the robot arm to automatically insert the charging gun into the charging port for charging. When charging is completed, the robot will automatically pull out the charging gun and send the mobile charger back to the designated location for charging.
Wireless charging does not require human operation. The vehicle can be automatically charged after automatic parking, which coincides with the intelligent direction of smart cars. This technology is difficult. At present, there are no mass-produced models in China, and there are few mass-produced models abroad. Because of the high cost, it is mainly configured on high-end models.
Wireless charging technology is not very mysterious. More than 100 years ago, Nikola Tesla demonstrated wireless charging technology to the world. He used wireless power transmission to light a phosphorescent lamp. But under the conditions at the time, this technology was not widely used. The wireless charging technology that is truly suitable for the whole vehicle is an experiment conducted by a foreign research team in 2007. They designed a magnetically coupled resonant wireless power transmission system and successfully lit a 60W light bulb at a transmission distance of two meters.
At present, many auto giants such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and BMW; suppliers such as Bosch, Qualcomm, WiTricity, Huawei, ZTE, Anjie, Wanan, Weimaisi and other companies have invested in vigorously promoting wireless charging. There are still many problems to be solved in automotive wireless charging technology, and the technology is still a long way from mass production application.
At present, the difficulty of automotive wireless charging is not the power transmission part, but the precise implementation of auxiliary functions.
Metal foreign body detection function FOD: When the wireless charging system transmits power, a continuously changing magnetic field will be generated. Metal objects in the magnetic field will receive energy and generate heat, and will disturb the magnetic field, causing safety problems. FOD detection is required to identify risks.
Living thing detection function LOD: During the charging process, the wireless charging system will excite an alternating electromagnetic field in the surrounding space area, and there is a potential impact when living things are exposed to the electromagnetic field. For living bodies that enter the electromagnetic field exposure area, the wireless charging system needs to perform LOD detection.
Alignment accuracy PD: There will be a certain relative offset between the ground end GA and the vehicle end VA of the wireless charging system. Exceeding a certain coupling range may cause a significant reduction in system efficiency, or even the risk of the system failing to start.
The solution to the above problems requires the cooperation of charging equipment and vehicle-end smart devices, and requires comprehensive consideration of various complex application scenarios. In the future, wireless charging technology and standards will continue to be improved, and their application will be vigorously promoted to reduce costs. I believe that wireless charging will be a very promising smart charging method.
When the era of smart cars arrives and is matched with smart charging technology; the scene will become: you stop your car in the community to chat, your car automatically drives into the underground garage, automatically parks, automatically charges, and informs you through the mobile phone app that everything is OK. You don’t need to go around the garage at all, and you won’t worry about insufficient power. How great it feels.
Written by: Betty from WTech
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