Source: Beijing Business Daily
E-bike dilemma: after decades of hard work, back to before liberation?
After three years, the four ministries and commissions have again proposed to clean up the E-bike industry. However, the old standard 12 years ago has attracted controversy from all parties, and most e-bikes are labeled as "exceeding the standard". Is it self rectification according to the old standard or illegal operation until the standard is revised? The entire E-bike industry is facing a life and death choice.
1、 Bring up the old standard 12 years ago again
Recently, the Ministry of public security, the Ministry of industry and information technology, the State Administration for Industry and commerce, and the State Administration of Quality Supervision jointly issued the "notice on strengthening the management of electric bicycles", which requires the rectification of the current electric bicycle industry and the elimination of "excessive" vehicles within a time limit, causing widespread concern among electric bicycle enterprises, consumers and related industries.
The so-called "exceeding standard" is actually based on the "general technical conditions for electric bicycles" formulated by the National Standards Committee in 1999. This industry standard document, known as the national standard of electric bicycle, sets the passing line of electric bicycle as: speed no more than 20km / h, and vehicle mass (weight) no more than 40kg. According to the regulations, the vehicles that do not meet this standard are all over the standard and are prohibited from production, sales and on the road, while the enterprises that violate the regulations will be punished by suspension of business for rectification, cancellation of production license qualification, revocation of business license, etc.
In the following time, this technical standard has not been strictly implemented, and the attention of the state and society to the development of E-bike industry is also very limited. Until October 2009, the "new national standard for electric motorcycle" was proposed. Because of its seamless connection with electric bicycles, the products belonging to bicycles were included in the scope of motorcycles from the starting point of "20km, 40kg".
As soon as the news came out, it immediately caused great concern in the electric bicycle industry. Many people believe that once the new standard is implemented, more than 90% of E-bike owners will have to go through a series of procedures such as driving test, registration and insurance before they can ride on the road, which will be a fatal blow to the E-bike industry. Under the controversy of the whole society and the appeal of the industry, the relevant departments urgently stopped the "new national standard of electric motorcycle". At the same time, the electric bicycle related associations decided to speed up the revision of the national standard of their own industry.
However, the "crisis" of the E-bike industry has not been lifted. In the rectification notice issued by the four ministries and commissions, it is clearly required to implement the standard of "20km, 40kg". For the "excessive" electric bicycles currently used by the people, local public security, industrial information, industry and commerce, and quality supervision departments, in line with the principle of smooth transition, encourage the masses to take the initiative to replace and scrap them by exchanging the old for the new, buying back at a discount, and issuing scrap subsidies《 The circular also requires local governments to set a transition period for exceeding standard electric bicycles and eliminate them within a time limit.
Although the "notice" has not yet been issued, all localities have not yet launched substantive rectification measures, the Shenzhen traffic management department has implemented the "power ban order" since the day before yesterday, stipulating that except for some streets, electric bicycles in other areas are prohibited, and violators are fined 200 yuan. Some people in the industry believe that Shenzhen took the lead in "banning electricity", which means that the government has begun to take the matter seriously. "This time the national standard is proposed again, it will not be as dead as it was in 2009, so the industry is bound to face a real reshuffle.".
2、 Frequent industrial problems need to be upgraded
In fact, in recent years, with the rapid development of the domestic electric vehicle industry, industry problems are gradually highlighted. The data shows that in 2010, 81.598 million bicycles were produced nationwide, an increase of 7.3% over the same period last year; 29.544 million e-bikes, up 24.7% year on year.
Some experts said that the growth rate of E-bike industry far exceeds that of bicycle, and in the future development, more and more consumers will devour the bicycle market. In addition, the motorcycle market will inevitably be threatened by E-bike. However, E-bike has not completely stepped out of the track of low-quality development and expansion, and there are still imbalances There are many problems of uncoordinated and unsustainable development.
Xing Jihua, director of Tianjin Bicycle Industry Productivity Promotion Center, said that many E-bike enterprises blindly expand their production capacity. Taking Tianjin as an example, the production and sales of e-bikes in 2010 soared to 13.43 million, a net increase of 5.15 million over 2009, an increase of 62%“ This kind of expansion momentum is a manifestation of the competition between the ebb and flow of the electric vehicle industry all over the country, but it is difficult to continue the development mode of only relying on capacity expansion to become bigger and stronger. ".
At the 2011 North China International bicycle and electric bicycle exhibition held earlier, the reporter also found that most of the electric bicycles displayed by more than 500 enterprises at home and abroad are very similar in appearance and performance.
Xing Jihua revealed that due to the homogenization of electric vehicle products flooding the market, with the continuous expansion of enterprise production capacity, the amount of market investment has gradually increased, resulting in intensified market competition and triggered a price war. In order to survive, enterprises can only develop a large number of low-quality products at the expense of product quality and brand reputation, and fall into the price war vortex.
In fact, the low-quality and homogeneous competition pattern of E-bike has seriously hindered the sustainable development of the industry and the improvement of technology level. Data show that in 2010, the domestic export volume of electric vehicles was only 580000, while tens of millions of huge production capacity can only rely on a single domestic market, a large number of electric vehicle products simply can not go abroad.
In addition, Hu Gang, vice president of Jiangsu Xinri Electric Vehicle Co., Ltd., also pointed out in an interview with our reporter that electric bicycle enterprises do not have strict requirements on land, factories, etc., so the investment is not much. They can own a production line with millions or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their main competitiveness lies in marketing and market, which leads to a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the industry, Disordered development.
From the perspective of safety, e-bikes have often become road killers in recent years. Huang Xiaodong, deputy director of the national E-bike quality inspection center, revealed in a media interview that in 2009 alone, the number of deaths caused by E-bike accidents reached 3600, an increase of about six times compared with 2004. In addition, the serious phenomenon of E-bike using motorway and running red lights, etc., in the long run, the domestic classified management of E-bike industry is the general trend.
3、 Rectification measures lead to disputes
Since the industry has agreed that it is urgent to achieve industrial upgrading and introduce unified standards, why do the four ministries and commissions work together to regulate the industry, which leads to disputes?
Ni Jie, the chairman of Lvyuan Electric Vehicle Co., Ltd., said: "in 1999, the annual output of electric bicycles in China was only more than 50000, and the technology was not mature. Now if we continue to implement the standards at that time, no matter in terms of speed or weight, we will certainly not be able to keep up with the development of the industry. "
"The electric bikes in our store are almost all over 35 kilometers per hour." The staff of a brand E-bike sales shop in Banbidian, Tongzhou District told reporters that the highest speed of an E-bike that looks like a bicycle is generally about 35 km / h, while the speed of an E-bike that looks like a motorcycle is generally more than 35 km / h, and some can even reach 80 km / h“ Different speeds can meet the needs of different customers, but few people buy e-bikes with speeds below 20 kilometers per hour, and we don't have such e-bikes in our store. " The source said. Another brand of E-bike manufacturer even advertises "speed up to 35 km / h", which is far from the speed limit of 20 km / h in the national standard.
From the current situation, manufacturers' overproduction has become the norm, and speed competition has become the main means of enterprise market competition. Therefore, most of the overproduced cars on the market and commonly used by consumers are overproduced cars.
Another practitioner told reporters that from a technical point of view, the upper limit of the speed of the electric bicycle is designed to be 20 km / h. When the speed reaches the upper limit, the braking voltage will be reduced, resulting in the speed only reaching 16 km / h. If braking and starting are taken into account, the average speed of the whole journey is likely to be only 12 km / h. In his view, in recent years, the speed of urbanization is accelerating, and the distance from consumers to work is increasing. The road conditions in both urban and rural areas have been greatly improved compared with 12 years ago. The purpose of cleaning up the standards is to improve driving efficiency. If the speed limit is 20 km / h, it will be like riding a bicycle. The weight of an electric bicycle usually comes from the following parts: 20kg battery, 7kg motor and 15kg frame. In addition to the above basic equipment, pedals, baskets, etc. are not installed on the standard.
Zhou Heliang, vice chairman of the Asian Electric Vehicle Association and executive member of the Asia Pacific Electric Vehicle Association, also said frankly that the standards required by the four ministries and commissions are outdated, and such a one size fits all standard is not conducive to the development of the whole industry.
4、 The E-bike is at the crossroads
Among the controversies, enterprises generally reflect that they are facing the choice of crossroads. Is it to rectify as soon as possible according to the old standard to avoid new production becoming waste, or continue to carry on and wait for the standard to be revised?
An enterprise insider told reporters that once the standards of 1999 are strictly implemented, the existing production lines of enterprises may face the doom of being overthrown, and the reconstruction of production lines that meet the "standard" products will become the primary task; Moreover, when the function of E-bike is greatly reduced, the sales will also be affected. The shrinking market space will be faced by the whole industry, especially many small and medium-sized enterprises may encounter elimination in this round of reform.
Hu Gang stressed that the short-term negative effect of the re implementation of the national standard mainly lies in that July, August and September are the peak sales seasons of electric bicycles, accounting for 40% of the annual sales volume. Many large orders are signed at this stage. At this time, the implementation of restrictions makes many consumers have a wait-and-see attitude, postpones the purchase plan, and makes the company's sales decline.
In addition, some downstream industries are also hard to escape the fate of the impact, among which the "how to continue" of the express industry with electric bicycle as the main means of transportation has become a hot topic recently“ If you don't let me use e-bikes, I can't think of any better way to deliver them. " A person in charge of the express delivery industry expressed concern to the media. Liu qiangdong, chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Jingdong Mall, also said through Weibo that the restrictions on e-bikes have increased the company's operating costs by 40%.
Therefore, many e-bike manufacturers appeal to the state to introduce new standards as soon as possible, so that they can directly produce according to the new standards. In this regard, Zhou Heliang believes that there is no direct relationship between body weight and safety, so there is no need to make very clear requirements on body weight. As for speed limit, it should be divided into three different standards according to different regions of use. The speed limit can be 20 km / h in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai, 30 km / h in small and medium-sized cities, and more than 40 km / h in suburbs.
Hu Gang expressed the hope that the domestic standards can be in line with those of the United States. At the same time, he also proposed that he hopes to improve the access standards of electric bicycles and implement them according to the standards of electric motorcycles, so as to ensure the overall strength of enterprises in the industry. According to the regulations of the Ministry of industry and information technology, the enterprises that obtain motorcycle license must meet the requirements that the total investment of the project shall not be less than 200 million yuan, the investment in fixed assets shall not be less than 80 million yuan, the investment in production and R & D equipment shall not be less than 20 million yuan, and the registered capital shall not be less than 80 million yuan.
At a time when the E-bike industry does not know where to go, EMS, Shunfeng and other express companies are planning to purchase small vans to replace e-bikes in response to the restrictions on e-bikes. However, they also reluctantly say that small vans are not as convenient and fast as e-bikes, and the cost has increased a lot.
