What is the prospect of the hydrogen fuel cell industry?

A few days ago, Premier Keqiang Li, accompanied by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, inspected the Toyota Hokkaido factory in Japan and visited the Toyota hydrogen fuel cell vehicle. According to foreign media reports, when Keqiang Li saw Toyota hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, he focused on safety issues such as hydrogen compression storage and hydrogen station layout. Toyota Motor President Akio Toyoda publicly stated that "Premier Li seems to be very concerned about new technologies in the future and shows a high degree of concern."

At present, pure electric vehicles account for a large proportion in China's new energy vehicle market. The development speed of lithium-ion power batteries in China is also very fast, so that when it comes to new energy vehicles, many people will immediately think of pure electric vehicles, but in fact, Hydrogen fuel cells are also constantly evolving and are receiving industry attention. Some insiders believe that Premier Keqiang Li’s visit to Toyota’s hydrogen fuel cell vehicles seems to be releasing some signals to the industry, and hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicles may become the next vent.

In this regard, Yuwu Fu, chairman of the China Automotive Engineering Society, believes that the national energy strategy is very clear, and diversification is still the strategic basis of China's energy strategy. If everyone thinks that new energy is electrification, then this description or guiding direction is incomplete. Dongshu Cui, secretary-general of the National Passenger Car Market Joint Conference, said in an interview with the China Business News: "Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are a very important development direction and will be developed in parallel with battery-powered vehicles."

Slowdown in development

At the moment, the most familiar new energy vehicles are pure electric vehicles. Compared with pure electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are less mentioned. Unlike a lithium ion power battery that requires a charge and discharge energy conversion device, a hydrogen fuel cell is a power generation device that directly converts chemical energy into electrical energy by reverse reaction of electrolyzed water, and has many advantages such as zero emission and high energy density.

Despite this, the current promotion of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is relatively weak on a global scale. According to a survey conducted by international consultancy E4tech, as of November 2017, the cumulative total sales of fuel cell passenger vehicles worldwide was around 6,000, which is less than one-tenth of the sales of China's 2017 pure electric passenger vehicles of 468,000.

From the perspective of the Beijing International Auto Show, pure electric vehicles have been surrounded by traditional car companies and new car power companies as the mainstream technology solutions for new energy vehicles in China. Hybrid vehicles are submerged to a certain extent and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are even more "French horns." In contrast, Toyota, Honda and other Japanese car companies seem to pay more attention to the development of diversification, and the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is gradually emerging in these corporate brands.

Public information shows that as early as 1992, Toyota began to develop hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. In 2014, Toyota's first mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell vehicle Mirai was launched and officially sold in the market. From the perspective of vehicle performance, Mirai can travel for 500 kilometers with only 3 minutes of hydrogenation. Compared with Toyota, Honda also launched its own hydrogen fuel cell vehicle - Honda Clarity. According to public information, Honda Clarity can achieve a cruising range of 750 kilometers, and it can take up to 3 minutes to fill the hydrogen fuel.

In addition to Japanese cars, Mercedes-Benz's first hydrogen fuel cell power production model, the Mercedes-Benz GLCF-GELL, has also been unveiled and is expected to be launched this year. The Korean Hyundai brand was also released at the Beijing International Auto Show. NEXO, the first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, Hyundai official said that the car's working range can reach 805 kilometers, and it takes only 5 minutes to inject hydrogen fuel.

Compared with foreign brands, self-owned brands of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have also developed to a lesser extent. In 2006, SAIC Datong established the Fuel Cell Division and launched the HCV80, a highly mature hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, last year. “The maximum cruising range of this car can reach 500 kilometers.” The relevant person in charge of SAIC Chase said, “This is the first commercialized fuel cell wide-body light passenger in China. It is also the first fuel cell light passenger model in China. In addition to SAIC Chase, BYD has also started with American Hybrid Corporation (US Hybrid Corporation). ) Cooperating in the development of hydrogen fuel cell buses in the commercial vehicle sector. At present, although the independent car companies have begun to try on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the overall progress is relatively slow.

Accelerated layout

Ener Master, the founder of Ener Master, who specializes in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, believes that hydrogen has better controllability and plasticity. At the same time, it has the advantages of fast hydrogenation speed, high energy density, and hydrogen energy. The theoretical conversion efficiency can be close to 100%, and the energy conversion efficiency of the electric motor to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy is above 90%. Thus, the energy density of fuel cell power is 10 times that of conventional fuel power.

Due to the attraction of many advantages of hydrogen fuel, both the domestic automobile industry and the foreign automobile industry have begun to accelerate the layout in the field of hydrogen fuel cells. In the past 26 years, Toyota Motor has been promoting the mass production of hydrogen fuel vehicles, and plans to sell its hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to more than 30,000 vehicles worldwide after 2020. In terms of the layout of the hydrogen refueling station, Toyota has already built 91 hydrogen refueling stations in Japan. Toyota Motor is preparing to build a hydrogen refueling station on a large scale. It plans to build 80 hydrogen refueling stations in the next four years. It is expected to complete 160 hydropower stations construction by 2020.

In addition to Toyota Motors, foreign auto brands, including Honda Motors and Hyundai Motors, have increased their horsepower to deploy hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and infrastructure.

In the predecessor of the Department of High-Tech Development and Industrialization of the Ministry of Science and Technology, it seems that “hydrogen has the characteristics of wide-ranging, pure, fast-filling, etc., and it is relatively developable.” To this end, relevant departments in China have also introduced hydrogen promotion. Relevant guiding policies for the development of fuel cell vehicles. In May 2016, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the Outline of the National Innovation-Driven Development Strategy, expressing the need to develop next-generation energy technologies such as hydrogen energy and fuel cells. On May 7 this year, the Ministry of Science and Technology released the National Key R&D Program “New The 2018 annual project publicity list of the special projects for energy vehicles is proposed. Among them, the national level allocates 260 million yuan to invest in the research and development of fuel cell vehicles.

It is worth noting that in the case of the accelerated subsidence of new energy vehicle subsidies in 2018, the national level still maintains the preferential policy of fuel cell vehicle subsidies. On February 11, the China Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Industry Innovation Alliance led by the National Energy Group was formally established in Beijing. With the support of the policy, the domestic hydrogen fuel cell market has become active, and domestic independent brands and some emerging car-making forces have begun to develop hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. For the development of relevant development targets at the national level, the “Energy Conservation and New Energy Technology Roadmap” promulgated by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2016 mentioned that 100 hydrogen refueling stations will be built in 2020; 300 hydrogen refueling stations will be built in 2025; 2030 1000 hydrogen refueling stations have been built.

Pain point still exists

Despite the considerable support of the national policy, the industry believes that domestic hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will not usher in a large-scale market outbreak in the short term.

At the same time of having many advantages, the disadvantages of hydrogen fuel cells are also obvious. Compared with relatively mature lithium batteries, the problems of high storage cost, high transportation risk, and imperfect infrastructure of the hydrogen refueling station are all restricting the hydrogen fuel cell, an important factor in the promotion of scale. From the perspective of car companies, the most important thing is that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are expensive in materials and technically demanding. Although hydrogen fuel cell vehicles help to improve the sustainable development of the industry, high cost and high technology thresholds are also many companies are discouraged.

Faced with the series of "hard injuries" of hydrogen fuel cells, cutting from the perspective of commercial vehicles is the mainstream choice for domestic and foreign car companies. In view of the current development of domestic hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, Dongshu Cui believes that the use of commercial vehicle grinding technology to optimize the material cost route is feasible. Under this background, hydrogen fuel cells need at least five years of growth and the industry begin with scale. In this regard, experts engaged in hydrogen fuel cell research also said: "The domestic hydrogen fuel cell vehicle field is beginning to take shape and the relative maturity of technology is at least until 2025. On the one hand, the technology is still in its infancy, and car companies are still exploring. On the other hand, it takes a certain amount of time from the commercial vehicle to the passenger vehicle field itself."

At present, the development speed of lithium-ion power batteries is gradually getting on the right track and forming industrialization. While the development of fuel cells, especially hydrogen fuel cells, is still in its infancy and industry analysts believe that hydrogen fuel cells have broad prospects for development, but in their large-scale it takes a long time to solve the above pain points before landing.

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