Will integrated solutions launched by Chezhubang be iconic products in auto energy supply industry?
Gas nozzle on car. Image credit: John Cameron/Unsplash
Recently, Chezhubang (车主邦) raised CNY 450 million in Series B+, and launched two new services: "autocade refueling" (团油) and "one-click charging" (快电). Investors include China national SME development fund(国家中小企业发展基金), CCB Qingdao branch(建设银行青岛分行) etc. The total funding of this company exceeds 1 billion RMB, through 7 rounds of financing.
Founded in May 2016, Chezhubang has been offering energy solutions to commercial vehicles, it's also the first opening energy Internet of Things (eIoT) platform in China. This company's business scope covers more than 300 cities, 10 thousand gas stations, and 310 thousand charging piles. Through the energy platform, a closed-loop system connecting data of commercial vehicles and energy stations has been realized. Besides, micro-electrical grids have been built to support energy supply based on blockchain technology.
At present, Chezhubang has established long-term cooperative relations with oil brand such as Shell. It has jointly developed with Huawei, Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba for the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) platforms development; also offering energy procurement solutions to logistics firms such as Yunniao (云鸟), Huolala (货拉拉), etc.
"Our task in the following 3 to 10 years is to figure out how to transfer energy digitalization into infrastructure. Our mission is to become the biggest online energy retailer without having one gas station or charging pile, like Alibaba." Said Dai Zhen, founder of Chezhubang.
How big is the China EV charging network?
The National Energy Bureau recently released data showing that as of the first half of 2019, the number of charging piles in China exceeded 1 million units, about 41 percent of which are public. Between June 2018 and May 2019, the number of public charging stations showed an average monthly increase of 11,205 units. China has built the world's largest network of EV charging facilities at this level.
However, the infrastructure is not scattered across the country. The top ten provinces (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Anhui, Guangdong, Hubei, Hebei, Jiangsu, Shandong and Zhejiang) account for 75.3 percent of all such facilities.