You may not know that the mobile power supply you carry around may be a "mobile bomb".

In the mobile power industry, negative events such as substandard capacity or even inferior products exploding and hurting people happen from time to time. The source of these problems is often related to batteries.

The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine launched a mobile power product quality and safety risk monitoring in August this year, and the results were shocking. A total of 32 batches of products and 224 samples were sampled in this test, and these 32 batches of products have quality and safety risks. Among them, 9 batches of product batteries do not meet the heavy impact test, and there is a risk of fire and explosion when an internal short circuit occurs; 28 batches of product output electrical performance tests do not meet, and there is a risk of damaging the charged equipment; 20 batches of product shell materials The flammability test does not meet, and there is a risk that the battery cannot be flame-retardant; the 0.2 ItA discharge test of the 17 batches of product batteries does not meet, and there is a problem of false capacity standards.

In the Huaqiangbei market in Shenzhen, the public sale of counterfeit mobile power products is very common, and many mobile power supplies sold in the booths use substandard batteries. The proliferation of counterfeit products has not only doubled the risk of products, but also the pain of the transformation of the mobile power industry in recent years. The mobile power industry, which is in a period of rapid development, is in urgent need of rectification.

Shanzhai and huge profits

The quality of the mobile power supply mainly depends on the quality of its batteries. Some industry media have conducted many investigations and found that the current mobile power market is full of "foreign garbage". For example, the use of "foreign garbage" to make mobile power with batteries has limited use times, low conversion efficiency, and insufficient capacity, resulting in short life, unstable charging, and high repair rate of mobile power.

Now, this kind of product still exists in some merchants in Huaqiangbei. In the several IT accessory markets in Huaqiangbei, various mobile power banks marked with Samsung, Xiaomi and other LOGOs flooded the market, and almost every counter had to put several samples to fill the facade.

In addition to finished products, some stores also sell the core part of mobile power-batteries.

In terms of hardware structure, the mobile power supply is mainly composed of three parts: the shell, the circuit board and the battery. Among them, batteries account for more than 70% of the cost, and another 20% is part of the circuit board. At present, there are only two types of batteries for mobile power sources, one is ordinary 18650 lithium batteries, and the other is lithium polymer battery batteries.

The mobile power sources currently on the market generally use 18650 batteries. In this mobile power product with a capacity of 10400mAh by Xiaomi, four 18650 batteries are used. In other words, the capacity of a battery cell is about 2600mAh.

But in Huaqiangbei's accessory market, the capacity of 18650 batteries is not the same, the lowest is only 1200mAh, but they are difficult to distinguish only from the appearance. The counterfeit goods that counterfeit the products of major manufacturers are generally manufactured using batteries with a capacity of only 1200 mA, and even 1300 mA are rare. Market personnel describe the cell capacity this way.

"Generally, it ranges from 1200-2200 (referring to the capacity of a battery cell), and the cheapest price can give you 1.2 yuan per unit. If you want a higher capacity, there are also, but you need to wait, but now on the market Basically 2000 (capacity) for mobile power is already good."

A battery with a capacity of 2000 mAh has an ex-factory price of RMB 6; a battery with a capacity of 1800 mAh has an ex-factory price of RMB 5; a battery with a capacity of 1200-1600 mAh has an ex-factory price of only RMB 3; a lower capacity The ex-factory price of batteries is only about 2 yuan, and some are even lower.

Each home appliance core company has its own screening equipment, which can screen out qualified batteries. The company will set a standard value. The capacity of each cell of the product that meets the specifications is within the standard capacity of plus or minus 50 mA. Products that meet the standard are called Class A products. Below Grade A, there are several grades such as Grade B, Grade C, and Grade D. These grades are all defective products.

"For the formal destruction of defective products, they should be returned to the raw material supplier of the battery cell. The material supplier can disassemble the defective battery cell to extract the useful metal elements in it, and use it as a new raw material to produce a new one. Batteries."

But even for large battery companies, there are very few that can achieve such a standardized process. Every company’s defective products are purchased and then resold. This has formed a very complete industrial chain. This is also the main reason for the flood of low-capacity batteries on the market.

"The reason why they are so cheap is that most batteries with poor quality are slightly processed from foreign waste purchased at low prices. Other defective products on the production lines of some companies are extremely low due to various reasons such as destruction costs. The price is sold to merchants who make fake or counterfeit brand power banks."

Three levels of explosion hazards

In addition to the problem of virtual standard capacity, what worries consumers most is the hidden danger of mobile power explosions. In recent years, mobile power burning incidents in public places have occurred frequently.

In May last year, the lithium battery discarded at the Airport South Station of Guangzhou Metro ignites spontaneously in a short-circuit, and the smoke is filled, causing the train to cross the station; in March this year, a passenger moved on the train bound for Huanghuagang on Guangzhou Metro Line 6 The power supply suddenly smoked, causing a large number of passengers to flee in a hurry.

In the eyes of practitioners, the battery cells, battery management system, and housing of mobile power supplies have potential safety hazards.

In the mobile power structure, there are three barriers to ensure safety. The first is the protection of the battery itself. A good battery cell has a safety valve. In the case of a short circuit, the battery cell will not burn even if it turns red. The second is the management system, that is, the circuit board, which is a boost and buck module that can adjust the voltage. The third is the outer shell, which involves the assembly process, the welding of the positive electrode and the negative electrode, and so on.

First of all, the most important component of the mobile power supply is the battery. The safety hazards of battery cells include: leakage, swelling, burning and explosion.

In the battery impact test conducted by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, 6 batches of 32 batches of mobile power sources caught fire and exploded. If consumers arbitrarily leave the mobile power supply and subject it to external shocks such as squeezing, needle sticks, and heavy object impacts, it may cause internal short circuits, resulting in fires and explosions.

In addition to the batteries, the circuit board is also the second key component of the mobile power supply. In the structure of the battery, although the circuit board is a very small component, its cost is only 10 yuan, accounting for only 10% to 15% of the total cost of the entire mobile power supply, but it is very important in the mobile power supply. Among them, there is a protection IC, which costs only 1-2 yuan. It is a short-circuit module and a step-up and step-down module, which is a key component to ensure the safety of mobile power supplies.

In the last inspection, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine inspected the output voltage of the mobile power supply, and the results showed that only 3 batches of the "output electrical performance" test of 32 batches of mobile power samples met the requirements. And the output voltage is too high will cause the user to burn the mobile power when charging the mobile device. The AQSIQ test showed that the voltage of some mobile power products can even reach more than ten volts. In order to save the cost of 1-2 yuan, some low-quality mobile power supplies do not protect the IC component at all.

Finally, the shell and assembly process. At present, the power bank shells sold in China are mainly divided into two types: plastic and metal, of which plastic shells account for more than 3/4. In this monitoring, only 5 batches of plastic shells of 32 batches of power banks meet the requirements. In other words, once the batteries catch fire in most power banks, these plastic shells will not be effectively flame-retardant. . In addition, some small family workshops are very rough in the welding of the positive electrode and the negative electrode, which is also prone to accidents.

Or copy the cold wave of fake mobile phones

The reason why the current mobile power industry has low entry barriers, poor product quality, and disorderly competition is a big reason why there is no national standard to regulate the entire industry. At present, some large manufacturers have formulated their own corporate standards with reference to the existing national standards such as the lithium battery national standard to ensure the quality of their products. However, due to too many copycat products, many manufacturers have too thin profits to survive.

In the entire mobile power industry chain, only the upstream cell industry is the most professional. Because the investment in the battery cell industry is generally tens of millions of yuan, the technology and capital thresholds for entry are high, so companies are large manufacturers. However, in the downstream assembly of mobile power supplies, the level of enterprise is very different, ranging from professional enterprises to small home workshops, resulting in a large gap in product prices. The price of products of large enterprises is much higher than that of copycat products, and their living space has been eroded.

Therefore, with the increasingly fierce competition, perhaps next year, Huaqiangbei's mobile power industry may be like the copycat mobile phone industry in 2011-2012.

After the domestic knockoff mobile phone market reached a peak in 2011, the growth rate was greatly slowed down due to various factors. At that time, in the famous SEG Building in Huaqiangbei, many counters selling counterfeit machines were marked with "counter transfer" signs.

By the beginning of 2012, in the Huaqiangbei market, there were only a few dozen manufacturers of the lowest-end "three-code phones" (counterfeit phones that directly counterfeit the serial code of the mobile phone) among the counterfeit mobile phones in the Huaqiangbei market. There are still thousands of manufacturers in, the former fake mobile phone industry said frankly.

"With the gradual changes in consumer consumption concepts, the lower prices of branded mobile phones, and the government's suppression of counterfeit electronic products that may involve intellectual property disputes, the counterfeit mobile phone industry is quickly facing the dilemma of where to go from being hot."

Nowadays, mobile power seems to be taking the old path of copycat mobile phones.

At present, most market operators in Huaqiangbei only operate the electronic professional market as a commercial property, and do not understand the electronic professional market from the perspective of the production service industry.

At the same time, most of the merchants in Huaqiangbei's shopping malls still insist on offline business methods and are fighting their own way.

When e-commerce continues to impact traditional industries, the businesses of many small and medium-sized merchants in the Huaqiangbei business district are naturally under pressure from online. Some merchants have begun to establish their own online sales systems on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao. However, due to the long-term serious homogeneity of the products of the merchants in the business district and the concept of relying on price wars to operate, the online sales of these merchants are not satisfactory.