Commercial Exploration and Market Opportunity Analysis of Fuel Cell Vehicle

The 2018 China Automobile Forum officially opened on April 4-26. The theme of this forum is: new era, new trends, new strategies. The host of this forum is Shi Jianhua, deputy secretary general of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers and secretary general of China Automobile Forum Organizing Committee. Lin Qi, Chairman of Shanghai Remodeling Energy Technology Co., Ltd., delivered a keynote speech on “Commercial Exploration and Market Opportunities of Fuel Cell Vehicles” in the “Subsidiary Era, New Energy Vehicle Development Bottlenecks and Solutions” sub-forum. The following is a shorthand finishing of the conference:

Linqi: Hello, everyone, although time is limited, but as a fuel cell car in all of today's links is different from the previous I think after more than a decade of relatively mature energy storage battery car industry. Let me introduce myself today. I'm Linqi. I'm from remodeling technology. The theme of my speech today is "Commercial Exploration and Market Opportunities for Fuel Cell Vehicles".

It is well known that a fuel cell system is a power generation system that undergoes an electrochemical reaction through hydrogen and oxygen, and that emits water. It has three characteristics: zero emission, high energy density, high volumetric power density and high quality power density; Third, long life span.

Take a look at what has happened to the fuel cell industry on a global scale over the past year, especially in China. In fact, in the past nearly 20 years, fuel cells have been at the stage of technology development and exploration. Whether it is North America, Europe or Japan and South Korea, they have not given up on the development of fuel cells.

In 2005, Toyota launched the first commercial fuel cell vehicle to give the industry a boost. From 2015 to last year, the industry has undergone great changes. In the past year, the amount of investment in M&A in the global capital market for the fuel cell industry exceeded 10 billion. This may not be a particularly large figure compared to the traditional auto industry, but it is a very large number for fuel cells. More crucially, the scale of this over 10 billion investment mergers and acquisitions, China's capital exceeds 9 billion, indicating that in the capital market, the fuel cell industry has actually got the attention of the capital market, especially the Chinese capital market. The more industrial capital, including financial investment, listed companies are concerned about this industry, including listed companies such as China, Xiongyi, Dayang, Sansuo, Zhongtong, and Youfu, all of which are in this industry. Investment, including domestic and foreign investment. More famous is that Ocean Electric invested in Canada's 37-year-old fuel cell industry's leading Bard power system, becoming its single largest shareholder.

After talking about the capital market, it's actually a sign that we're looking at the market. A total of 6,000 fuel cell passenger cars were sold worldwide last year, a small number. Mainly Toyota's sales, plus modern and other companies, there are 1,500 fuel cell commercial vehicles sold worldwide in the commercial car area, and 1,272 are in China. The number of 1272 is actually a very small number, but you know that in 2016, the sales of fuel cell cars in China should not exceed 30 as far as I know, so this is a very large increase. What has just been described is a microcosm of the global fuel-cell car industry in 2017: the capital markets and vehicle sales.

In fact, there are more than 9 billion investment mergers and acquisitions in China. What is the status of the Chinese market and the Chinese industry? In fact, starting from 2016, from the road map for energy conservation and new energy vehicles, it is proposed that the Chinese market will build 100 sandwich stations in 2020, there will be 50 million vehicles, 2030 will be 1,000 Jiaqing, and there will be 1 million fuel cells. Sales.

At the same time, after 2017, after such a plan was made at the national level in 2016, in September 2017, Shanghai City took the lead in issuing the development plan for Shanghai Fuel Cell Vehicles from the local government level, which was divided into three phases: The first stage is until 2020. This industrial chain can produce 15 billion yuan in output value in Shanghai, plus 5-10 hydrogen stations, and two passenger vehicle demonstration areas with a scale of operation of more than 3,000 vehicles. By 2025, this output value will reach 100 billion. Passenger car sales have reached 20,000 units. The sales of special vehicles can achieve 10,000 units. From 2026 to 2030, the output value of the entire industrial chain exceeded 300 billion yuan, which was issued by Shanghai in September 2017. Immediately after January 2018, so far, more and more local governments in China, including Suzhou, Xi'an, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and Foshan, have issued relevant plans for the development of hydrogen fuel cells. Suzhou, for example, hopes to reach a production value of 10 billion yuan by 2020, and 800 fuel cell commercial vehicles can be put into use at the government level and public transportation level. By 2025, Suzhou City hopes to reach a production value of 50 billion yuan, and 10,000 fuel cell cars can serve the government or public transportation. Foshan should also issue a five-zone linkage plan in the first two weeks. In the two years from 2018 to 2019, 10 hydrogenation stations will be built to serve 2,000 fuel cell buses operating in the five districts of Foshan. From this point of view, in fact, at the national level, fuel cells have been done as a national strategy, and the cooperation and response of various local governments is increasingly positive.

When it comes to vehicle sales, we can not do without hydrogen. There are more than 300 hydrogen refueling stations worldwide, mostly in Japan and South Korea, Europe and North America, and only one in South America. This plan should not be included in this 118-seat one. This number has been completed by 2017.

What is China? Before 2015, China should have only three hydrogen refueling stations nationwide, one in Beijing, one in Shanghai, and one in Zhengzhou. The blue on the map is already in operation. This happened in 2017. There are already 13 hydrogen refueling stations in operation, including Shanghai, Changshu and Nantong, and two new ones in Shanghai. Including Zhongshan, Foshan, Chengdu, Shiyan, Yunfu and other places, there are already 20 buildings under construction. I believe this number will exceed 100 by 2019.

So with cars and stations, fuel cell vehicles, in general, are a growing trend in the world, including in China. Both in terms of vehicles and hydrogen stations, they have received national and local government levels. And a lot of attention at the capital level.

So I'm going to give you a brief overview of reinventing technology, reinventing technology for almost three years now, focusing on engineering services for fuel-cell vehicles and the development of fuel-cell products. In July 2017, the production base of the fuel cell system was officially put into operation, with an annual output of 5,000 units and an expansion of production to 20,000 units. In 2017, we and Dongfeng Specialists launched 500 fuel cell vehicles on the Chinese market, 500 in Shanghai, 30 in Guangdong and 20 in Hubei. In particular, the 500 fuel cell logistics vehicles in Shanghai have become a demonstration operation for the largest single 500 commercial vehicles in the world. These vehicles are gradually serving major e-commerce and express delivery industries. We choose to enter the market from the logistics vehicle to the commercialization of fuel cells, mainly because of several considerations: First, commercial vehicles for the fuel cell system is relatively flexible space layout; The second is that for the hydrogen refueling stations in their operating state, his operating route is relatively simple and relatively fixed, so it is called fixed-point alignment, so the layout needs for hydrogen refueling stations are relatively small; Third, the promotion of fuel cells in urban public transport and logistics distribution has a certain sense of promotion; Fourth, we want to promote the commercial car market, which can drive the construction of hydrogen infrastructure and pave the way for the future passenger car market.

We think that unlike overseas, the layout of fuel cell cars around the world starts with passenger cars, whether Toyota or Honda, modern or Benz. So in the Chinese market we choose to open the way from commercial vehicles, where is the challenge? I think the biggest challenge is the durability. We all know whether to run a bus or a logistics car. In fact, there is a great challenge to life expectancy. So far we have done more than 2,500 hours of fuel cell testing on the platform, and at 2,500 hours we have done a test, and the whole decay is 1.45. We expect the system to decay by no more than 10 inches at 12,000 hours, about 8.1 inches. At the same time, we have 12 fuel cell logistics vehicles to perform durability tests on conventional roads, which have exceeded 150,000 kilometers in total and currently decay by no more than 1 kilometer. So according to our road durability test, we estimate that the entire life span can exceed 400,000 kilometers, and the system decay will not exceed 10 <UNK>, about 7.8 <UNK>. Although there are not enough samples for these two trials, I think we are also very confident that the current remodeled system can basically meet the needs of commercial vehicles.

So thinking about the future of cars must be electrification, and I think there's a global consensus. For a fuel cell system that is also an electric drive platform for electrification systems, I think the advantage is that the fuel cell system is not sensitive to the load of the vehicle, and its mass is relatively higher than power and volume. Its fuel refueling time is very short, and it can make up the fuel in about 3-5 minutes. This will give it a longer and heavier range and load, so we think that the advantages of fuel cells are more suitable for large-load applications and medium-to-heavy commercial vehicles.

On the basis of these considerations, we feel that the current rapid development of the e-commerce and logistics and distribution industry in China, especially under the premise that large and super-large cities have greater demand for the logistics and distribution industry. At the same time, under the premise of higher requirements for the urban environment, fuel cell logistics vehicles are a good way to fill the current application of new energy vehicles in the blank area of long endurance and high load. So we also did an analysis, in the current logistics industry is divided into ABC three lines, 200 kilometers below the storage battery advantage area. In the branch line is the distribution point to the business point in this area is more suitable for the use of fuel cell vehicles. For the longer range, that is, from the area of super-long endurance and ultra-heavy load between cities, we also think that fuel cell vehicles have more advantages. Why didn't you write it? Because the current cost of high-power fuel cells is still limited.

So we also found customers in the Shanghai 500 fuel cell car demonstration project, and we have been doing the corresponding vehicle trial. For example, we see Jingdong, which is currently using fuel cell logistics vehicles in Jingdong Asia No. 1 warehouse, then Jingchao Industrial Co., Ltd. has a logistics warehouse center, and then returns to Jingdong Asia No. 1 warehouse. The fixed route like this is two to three times a day. The single operating mileage is 128 kilometers, so the fuel cell car can meet their application conditions. You can see that in this application, the number of vehicles currently used by Jingdong is also increasing. After nearly three months of trial use, they have been tested. It can be seen on this map that its basic path is fixed-point alignment, and that every day the same path is repeated. So when it's the same path day after day, building a hydrogen station in this area can actually satisfy about 200 fuel cell vehicles.

Another customer like Shen Tong, Shen Tong's single mileage is about 30 kilometers, so he is 5-6 times a day, which is very satisfying for their applications. Three days of hydrogen filling can satisfy their applications, and their routes are relatively fixed.

I won't go into details, but at present in Shanghai we are demonstrating that there are more and more logistics customers like Shentong, IKEA, Jingdong and Yunda are willing to use fuel cell cars. Second, it can go to the city. The second can meet the needs of long endurance and high load.

From the previous thinking to the real data display in the hands of customers, and our more practice, we are more confident that in the field of commercial vehicles, fuel cells must be able to truly deliver value to users, so we A series of products has also been planned, which we call the Cavan series of products applied to this field of fuel cell vehicles. At present, we start to produce Calvin three 32kw in batches. In June of this year, we started mass production of 46kw fuel cell system called Kavin IV. In the first quarter of next year, we will reach the 74kw fuel cell system for medium and heavy commercial vehicles. Mass production, that is to say in reshaping technology we have a range of fuel cell system products for commercial vehicles.

We also have a plan, and we think the application of fuel cell systems in the commercial vehicle sector is more critical to two factors: one is to improve the durability of the product and the other is to reduce the cost. Because you know that the market is now driven by policy subsidies, we have to think about how we can survive when the subsidies go downhill or even when we don't, so we 've also made plans from 2018 to 2025. In this period of time, we can reduce the cost to 80 in a certain number of markets, and the durability of the product can reach 25,000 hours from the current 12,000 hours. I want to achieve these two key indicators. Fuel cell systems in commercial vehicles can be truly long-term sustainable development.

So we invested in 500 cars in 2017. I think this number will grow very much before 2020. In order to face more commercial demonstration applications and bigger tests, we are this year. The first is that the investment is 30 million to establish a professional after-sales service center for fuel cell power systems in Shanghai and Foshan. This is to ensure the commercial demonstration operation of batch fuel cell vehicles in these two regions. Also explore how to build a service system that meets the standards of this type of application. Then we also invested 170 million in this year to establish our own fuel cell R&D and verification center in Shanghai. There will be 20 laboratories established and put into use in the first half of 2019. It is for more verification. Our fuel cell products meet the needs of a larger future market. Finally, we will release a 46kw fuel cell system product in June this year for medium-sized commercial vehicles.

Having said that, the more applicable field of fuel cell vehicles is a trend in the future of fuel cells. We can also see that we have more challenges in the case of such a market, and we have divided this challenge from our perspective. Three categories:

First, the standard class. Just mentioned that a core value of a fuel cell vehicle is long battery life. Long battery life means you have to bring more hydrogen, so I think the current standard hydrogen gas system of 70Mpa in the hydrogen storage system needs to be broken. In the field of logistics, for the end users, they are more concerned about the operating costs, so we have to deduct the details from the storage and transportation of hydrogen, and deduct the cost to develop technology. There are also standards for fuel cell vehicles that need to be improved.

Second, the resource class. The use of fuel cell vehicles is inseparable from the investment and operation of hydrogen refueling stations. At present, there is great pressure on the hydrogenation station in both approval and land use. Although we have 13 stations that we have already put into operation, there are 20 stations under construction, and there will be more in the future. Station, in fact, there is still a lot of need to be clear and optimized in this section, whether it is from approval or in the land category. Second, the self-developed parts and components have just mentioned that we have to reduce the cost by 80% in 2025. In the strategy of reducing costs, there is actually a strategy to realize the independent development and localization of key components of the fuel cell system. This is a key path to reduce costs. This piece also needs to be supported by supply chain and component manufacturers. The third is policy-oriented market pressure. Everyone knows that it is now a subsidy-driven market. After there is no subsidy or subsidies to retreat, this pressure must also be borne, and there must be a solution.

Third, cognitive classes. The first is the excessive interpretation of hydrogen safety. In fact, I think we are doing fuel cell presentations in various places, and we have to communicate. In fact, there are many governments and enterprises. In fact, there are doubts about the safety of hydrogen. The second is the social science of fuel cell technology. Because of the name of the fuel cell, they are called fuel cells. In fact, it is different from energy storage batteries. Then this understanding still needs to be improved by all walks of life. It is actually A power generation device whose energy is actually stored in the hydrogen storage system. The third is the diversification of the global technology route. In fact, at present, whether it is Toyota or Honda, etc., because there is not enough market, it does not reflect competition. It is not particularly clear on the technical route, so I think it is also on the technical route. There is a need to identify 1-2 very clear technical routes in the future.

This is our three areas that are the biggest challenges for the industrialization and commercialization of fuel cell technology. Based on these three areas, we actually need more support from the government level and the industry. In this context, we have received more attention from the government and the association. We are in Guangdong on March 26 this year. Yunfu established the China power battery Industry Innovation Alliance to set up a new club called Fuel Cell Branch. This club is to meet the corresponding challenges of fuel cell development in cooperation with enterprises, governments and various resources.

This club has gathered like fuel cell systems, stacks and components, hydrogen bottles and systems, vehicle companies, research institutes and universities, testing and certification institutions, equipment manufacturing, hydrogen refueling equipment, hydrogen refueling station operations, vehicle operations, Product promotion, government departments, directors are reshaping technology, the governing unit is Tongji University, Shanghai Fuel Cell Commercialization Promotion Center, and the secretariat is set up to reshape technology. We also hope to promote the development of fuel cells through the strength of this chapter. . The main work of the club will focus on the development and implementation of the fuel cell industry development planning standards. Focus on common technology public relations and fuel cell industry services, and finally promote industrial cooperation and development. These jobs are also going to face the challenges of more and more fuel cell vehicle promotion and development. I also hope that I can sincerely invite more colleagues in the automotive field to pay attention to and join this chapter. Let's work together to promote this development of fuel cells in China and around the world.

With limited time, I will finish my report work quickly. Finally, I want to end my introduction today with such a commercial promotion video.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.