WM Motor Founder Freeman Shen Comments on EV Supercharging

Freeman Shen, Founder, Chairman and CEO of WM Motor, issued comments on Tuesday through Chinese social media regarding the future prospects of electric vehicle supercharging technology.

Shen said that on the power grid side, supercharging stations need to be matched with super capacitors, and the strength and speed of the power grid in order to do this directly determines the penetration rate. In terms of implementation progress, the executive forecast that it will take five to 10 years to complete nationwide capacitor transformation, according to an optimistic estimate.

Talking about construction, Shen said that the cost of supercharging stations, plus the supporting energy storage systems, brings about high construction costs and necessitates an efficient business model. A basic business model with large coverage, from theory to practice, balancing costs after expansion, will never work without five to 10 years of development.

He pointed out that according to current implementation progress, it is difficult for users to really feel the advantages brought about by 800V during the best service period. Of course, there must be forward-looking technical planning and implementation for car companies.

In April this year, WM Motor released the pure electric SUV EX5, which attracted widespread attention for its ultra-high subsidy. The EX5 includes three models with six different configurations, with the selling price ranging from 179,800 yuan to 298,800 yuan ($26,775.9 – $44,497.4), and the subsidized selling price ranging from 112,300 yuan to 216,300 yuan ($16,723.8 – $32,211.5).

However, such huge subsidies failed to bring about a breakthrough in sales. According to the official data of WM Motor, in May 2022, the total delivery volume of its vehicles was 3,240 units, a decrease of 2% from the previous month. Although the cumulative delivery volume from January to May this year reached 18,061 vehicles, an increase of 86.6% year-on-year, compared with other mainstream new electric vehicle firms, WM Motor still has a big gap.

The recent surge in the price of raw materials for batteries will also cause considerable cost pressure for enterprises involved in the price war within the pure electricity market. Several automobile manufacturers have recently announced price increases for their vehicles.

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Freeman Shen previously a post on Monday, saying that the key factor in the future sales competition is the battle for users. He said that “the corresponding retail model and service model should focus on reducing major social negatives and highlighting business models and service advantages.”