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With the rapid deployment of all-liquid-cooled supercharging in major cities, the range anxiety that has long plagued new energy vehicles is accelerating. This new charging technology, which can achieve the fastest "one kilometer per second", is making it possible for new energy vehicle owners to "start with a cup of coffee and a full charge".

Recently, a reporter from Beijing Business Daily visited Huawei Digital Energy in Antuoshan, Shenzhen, and had a conversation with Yi Liqiong, chief architect of the intelligent charging network of Huawei Digital Energy Technology Co., Ltd., and learned the story of how Huawei Digital Energy took a unique approach, entered the full liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging track, and finally stepped out of the laboratory.

Charging is like refueling, say goodbye to range anxiety

"The charging experience is much better than slow charging! I didn't expect that such a large charging station would be opened in Xiaowuji. Now I don't have to worry about charging anymore." Mr. Chen, the owner of a new energy vehicle who came to Sinopec Beijing Petroleum Xiaowuji Charging Station for the first time to charge, said while taking pictures.

On January 24, the Beijing Petroleum Xiaowuji Charging Station, the country's leading fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging station, was officially opened to the public.

A reporter from Beijing Business Daily recently visited the Xiaowuji charging station, where more than 70 charging piles were lined up in order. On-site staff were guiding the vehicles that came to charge and instructing the car owners to charge by themselves. The charging piles used by the Xiaowuji charging station all use Huawei's ultra-fast charging technology, with a maximum charging power of up to 600kW. Car owners only need to scan the code on their mobile phones or use the "one-click charging" in the "EasyGo Gas" App/applet to self-service charging, achieving the fastest "one second per kilometer", greatly improving the efficiency of vehicle energy replenishment.

"Usually, it takes a whole night to charge the battery at home, but here it only takes half an hour to fully charge," Mr. Chen told the Beijing Business Daily reporter.

Mr. Zhang, the taxi owner who came to charge, said that due to the nature of his work, he has relatively high requirements for charging efficiency. The shorter the charging time, the better. While increasing the operating time, it can also reduce the parking fees in commercial places.

In recent years, my country's new energy vehicle industry has developed rapidly, and its production and sales volume has ranked first in the world for nine consecutive years. However, bottlenecks such as long charging time and poor charging experience still exist to restrict the development of the electric vehicle industry.

Relevant experts believe that establishing high-quality charging infrastructure represented by fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging is a key path to the rapid development of automotive electrification. It can effectively solve the charging anxiety of users who purchase new energy vehicles and support the rapid development of new energy vehicles.

"The construction of supercharging and fast charging is a definite development trend in the charging industry. Huawei's supercharging technology can not only provide fast energy replenishment for high-voltage platform models and maximize the charging needs of car owners, but also match the continuous evolution and upgrading of future models, and achieve energy security development and global green and low-carbon transformation." He Bo, vice president of Huawei Digital Energy Company, said.

Yi Liqiong told the Beijing Business Daily reporter that the so-called supercharging generally refers to charging technology with a power of more than 480kW. Fully liquid-cooled supercharging is a charging device with a liquid cooling system. The heat generated by the device can be circulated away through the liquid cooling module to achieve fast and efficient heat dissipation of the device. Due to the significant increase in power, this technology can effectively reduce the charging time, thereby improving the charging experience of car owners.

During the interview, Beijing Business Daily reporters found that Huawei's supercharging technology has indeed brought an extremely fast charging experience to many car owners. Compared with traditional slow charging, the charging speed has achieved a qualitative leap. Owners of some 800-volt high-voltage platform models can already experience a charging speed of "one second per kilometer", which is as fast as refueling.

Height for width to solve the leakage problem

"The first thing is how to ensure the full life cycle of liquid cooling, that is, the problem of leakage. And after the leakage, how to reduce its impact on the entire equipment." Yi Liqiong said.

Although liquid cooling has a heat dissipation capacity advantage of more than 30 times compared to air cooling, it is not easy to bring it out of the laboratory.

According to Yi Liqiong, structural design was a difficult problem that had to be overcome during the development of Huawei Supercharger. "In terms of design, the traditional air-cooled module is a form of two power boards buckled up and down. So, if we use the traditional air-cooled module to design, we will think about it and choose the same form of buckling up and down. Considering the heat dissipation problem, the liquid cooling plate is placed in the middle of the two upper and lower structures, which is equivalent to cooling the upper and lower boards."

The design problem was solved, but "height for width" brought another big challenge to Huawei's R&D personnel: the welding process. In the traditional scenario of using liquid cooling plates, their size is relatively small and can be solved with ordinary lead soldering process, but Huawei's first large-size liquid cooling plate has a welding path of 7 meters!

"With this 7-meter welding path, how can we ensure that every part of the welding is reliable? This poses a huge challenge to our product design and technology," said Yi Liqiong.

According to a Beijing Business Daily reporter, Huawei Digital Energy began to define the all-liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging integrated solution in 2021, and it will be officially launched in April 2023. Huawei's super charging solution covers four new aspects, namely new architecture, new devices, new processes, and new materials; today, the equipment life of Huawei's super charging has reached more than 15 years, and it requires almost no maintenance.

Reconstructing the energy system from home to commercial use

Yi Liqiong told the Beijing Business Daily reporter: "When entering the field of charging networks, we actually faced many choices. First of all, at that time, most of the charging solutions in China were still based on air cooling. We realized that the construction of charging products in the future would be more extensive, and charging piles would be deployed in various scenarios, such as high humidity and high temperature, high altitude and high cold, highways, counties and townships. We finally decided to build a charging infrastructure that is not picky about scenarios, highly reliable and high-performance, and take a different path of technological innovation. Therefore, we firmly chose the full liquid cooling ultra-fast charging architecture and launched the Huawei Supercharging Solution."

Since its launch in April last year, Huawei Supercharge has built more than 20,000 ultra-fast charging facilities, covering multiple highways in the mainland, 31 provinces, and more than 200 cities. It is expected that by the end of 2024, Huawei will work with partners to deploy more than 100,000 fully liquid-cooled ultra-fast charging piles, and the layout of multiple demonstration points has been completed.

With the rapid development of the new energy vehicle industry, many places across the country have also set off a wave of building "supercharging cities". Ms. Gao, a new energy vehicle driver, said: "If there is a supercharging station at the highway service area, I feel it will be more convenient. Fast charging can now be fully charged in nearly 40 minutes. If supercharging can be completed within half an hour, it will be more convenient to travel by car."

For ordinary car owners, the most obvious changes brought about by liquid-cooled supercharging technology are the reduction of charging time and the improvement of charging experience; for the entire industry, the mature development of liquid-cooled supercharging technology will also leverage the common progress of the entire industry.

In April this year, in order to accelerate the process of automobile electrification, Huawei joined hands with car companies, charging operators, and industry partners to build a supercharging industry ecosystem. While improving the supercharging network for users, it also promoted the rapid and high-quality coordinated development of new energy vehicles and charging network industries.

In the Huawei Digital Energy Exhibition Hall, Beijing Business Daily reporters also learned that Huawei is currently expanding the application scenarios of supercharging and has launched supercharging products of multiple power series, covering a variety of charging needs from urban public spaces to public transportation, logistics, etc. At the same time, through technologies such as integrated photovoltaic storage and charging, the efficiency of power utilization has been further improved, which not only meets the needs of existing electric vehicles, but also prepares for future new energy solutions.

Halfway through 2024, the retail penetration rate of new energy passenger vehicles in the domestic market has reached a high of 48.4% in June. In the commercial vehicle segments such as light trucks, heavy trucks, and large buses, new energy is still a blue ocean, attracting a variety of technical routes such as charging, battery replacement, and hydrogen energy to tap into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Zhang Yongwei, vice chairman and secretary-general of the China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, pointed out that the electrification of automobiles is showing a new trend of large-scale development, with the scale of production and sales increasing from the millions to five million, and may even reach tens of millions in the near future. This rapid development is driving the reconstruction of the automobile energy system.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Jin Zhaoli

Image source: provided by the company