Shulou(Shulou.com)12/24 Report--

Pure electricity is just a transition, hydrogen energy is the future! In the past two days, the release of a piece of news has made hydrogen cars popular again.

Recently, according to CCTV news, the "China hydrogen Energy Expressway Action Initiative" was launched at the China fuel Cell vehicle Conference on December 1. The initiative aims to speed up the construction of a hydrogen high-speed network based on the demonstration groups of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhengzhou and Hebei. There are 41 cities in the five demonstration city clusters, and the goal is to establish a hydrogen energy high-speed network connecting the five demonstration city clusters.

Source: the China fuel Cell Automobile Conference has been debating the route of hydrogen energy and pure electricity for a long time in the automobile circle.

In theory, compared with pure electricity, the advantage of hydrogen energy is extremely obvious, whether it is environmental pollution, efficiency and other aspects, are far better than pure electricity. But in the face of cost, transportation, supply and, most importantly, safety, pure electricity seems to be the best choice.

These difficulties have not stopped the car companies from pursuing hydrogen-powered vehicles. It can be seen that hydrogen energy has been applied to the ground in the field of commercial vehicles and has good economy. In addition, a number of domestic car companies, such as the Great Wall, Changan and Geely, are also accelerating the research and development of hydrogen-powered passenger cars, and have launched some products.

Of course, Hyundai and Toyota's hydrogen technology is obviously more developed than the Japanese and South Korean car companies that entered the hydrogen race track earlier, which also means that there is still much room for improvement in China's hydrogen passenger cars, and independent car companies still need to speed up their pace and strive to catch up.

1. Many domestic players with the global climate change, all countries have set carbon neutralization targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In terms of traffic direction, pure trams, which have been vigorously promoted in recent years, are actually not the best way to achieve carbon neutrality. A fact is that in the production process of electric vehicles, the pollution caused by its raw materials is no less than that of traditional fuel vehicles.

In addition to pure electricity, as a clean, efficient and renewable way of energy utilization, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have received more and more attention in the past two years. If only from a theoretical point of view, hydrogen energy vehicles are indeed more advanced than electric vehicles, and they have the advantages of pollution-free, renewable and high efficiency, which is more in line with the goal of carbon neutrality.

It is precisely because of this core reason that in the past two or three years, the development of China's hydrogen energy industry has been accelerated, and many car companies have also participated in it.

Perhaps in the eyes of these car companies, whoever breaks through the technological fortress of hydrogen-powered vehicles will dominate the next era.

According to statistics, by the end of November this year, the country had produced a total of 5261 fuel cell vehicles, an increase of 35 percent over the same period last year. In terms of industrial ecology, 62 enterprises in China currently have the production capacity of fuel cell vehicles, and more than 700 models have been announced. Of course, this data is more in the field of commercial vehicles than passenger vehicles.

In fact, there are many domestic car companies that make hydrogen-powered passenger cars, among which Great Wall Motor is one of the earliest complete vehicle companies in the field of hydrogen energy.

As early as 2016, Great Wall Motor has begun to lay out the hydrogen industry and has accumulated some technology in the field of hydrogen energy. To two years ago, Great Wall Motor announced at the global conference of hydrogen energy strategy to adopt the "business and ride" model, through scene exploration to promote the development of technology and industry, and accelerate the landing of products.

In the field of passenger cars, Great Wall also announced that it will launch the world's first C-class hydrogen fuel cell SUV in 2021. Unfortunately, since then, Great Wall has been announcing new moves in the commercial vehicle field, and the product is going according to plan, but in the passenger vehicle field, the C-class hydrogen fuel cell SUV has not been landed for a long time.

In addition to the Great Wall, Changan brought China's first mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell car at the end of last year. It is reported that the hydrogen version of Deep Blue SL03 is the first hydrogen-producing fuel cell car in China. The hydrogen energy consumption of 100 kilometers only needs 0.65kg to achieve 1kg hydrogen power generation of 20.5kWh and ultra-fast energy replenishment in 3 minutes.

However, in addition to the bright data, the price of the hydrogen version of dark blue SL03 as high as 699900 is also extremely "astonishing".

Figure: the hydrogen energy of the hydrogen version of Deep Blue SL03 is mainly utilized in two ways: fuel cell and hydrogen internal combustion engine. The latter has the advantage of low cost and is an important technology direction. As one of the established domestic car companies, Geely has made some achievements in this direction.

In the middle of this year, Geely Automotive Power Research Institute officially announced that after two rounds of exploration and development, the thermal efficiency of the self-developed 2.0L direct injection pressurized hydrogen internal combustion engine would be raised to 46.11%, reaching the industry-leading level.

In fact, in addition to Great Wall, Chang'an, Geely, including Dongfeng, Guangzhou Automobile and other car companies, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been announced one after another in the field of hydrogen passenger vehicles in the past two years. With the entry of these automobile companies, China has made a certain industrial breakthrough in fuel cell core technology, system integration and key components and materials.

Although it is worth encouraging, many car companies have only solved the problem of "starting from scratch". Domestic cars are still in the initial stage of development in terms of hydrogen vehicles, and there is still a gap with Japanese and Korean car companies.

2. After Toyota Hyundai leads into the 21st century, the development of global hydrogen energy and fuel cell technology is gradually mature, and car companies continue to launch related products, the first to bear the brunt is Japanese car companies.

In 2014, Toyota launched its first hydrogen-producing fuel cell car, the Mirai, which is described by the media as a "hydrogen society" with epoch-making concepts such as "fast rush for 3 minutes, a range of 600km, no carbon discharge, unimpeded travel at minus 30 degrees Celsius, and external power supply as a mobile emergency power station when taking refuge and camping."

When Toyota launched the Mirai in 2014, the cost of fuel cell systems was very high. After applying for the subsidy, the market price of Mirai in Japan is about 5 million yen. To this end, Toyota in recent years to reduce costs as the main direction of research and development, the goal is to reduce to half of the existing costs.

In addition, by 2025, it has set the goal of reducing it to 1x4 and increasing its range from 650km to 850km.

Photo: the second-generation Toyota Mirai is followed by South Korea's Hyundai, which began its hydrogen energy operations in 1998. This year, based on the forward-looking research and judgment on the prospect of hydrogen energy industry, Hyundai Automobile has set up a professional R & D institution dedicated to the research and application of hydrogen fuel cell technology.

Only two years later, in 2000, Hyundai developed the first hydrogen fuel cell car, and then in 2013, Hyundai launched the ix35 Fuel Cell, becoming the world's first mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.

In 2018, Hyundai launched the hydrogen electric vehicle model "NEXO". Sales of the "NEXO" in South Korea increased from 727 in 2018 to 4194 in 2019. But in recent years, with the support of the South Korean government, the growth has been very significant.

According to statistics released by SNE Research, a global emerging energy market research agency, the global registration of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles exceeded 10,000 from January to July this year, and Hyundai ranked first in sales.

In terms of market share, Hyundai ranked first with 51.2 per cent, followed by Toyota (40.1 per cent) and Honda (1.6 per cent), thanks to the strong performance of NEXO launched in January.

Figure: modern NEXO starts early and accumulates rich technology, which is the core advantage of Toyota and Hyundai in the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and also creates their unshakable leading position in the field of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle multiplication. Compared with these two car companies, Chinese car companies lag more than one level in the process of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle multiplication.

Of course, from a large level, the refinement of policies, the improvement of industries and the upgrading of technology are all the reasons for the gap.

Lag is a fact, but there is no need to belittle yourself. China plans to achieve the scale of 1 million hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in 2030, and now there are still six or seven years to go. As long as car companies continue to optimize and make progress, I believe that domestic hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will rise abruptly based on their accumulated strength.

3. Commercial vehicles have a great advantage in becoming the leading role, and some people do it, but from the perspective of the whole automobile market, hydrogen-powered vehicles are still very "minority". The root cause of this situation is that it is difficult for hydrogen vehicles to achieve scale growth.

The cost of hydrogen-powered vehicles includes not only the cost of the whole vehicle, but also the cost of energy supplement. No matter the cost of hydrogen production or the energy replenishment industry chain such as hydrogen filling station, they are all climbing slowly in the early stage of development.

For example, in terms of hydrogen production, the main source at present is the acquisition of fossil fuels, which are not environmentally friendly. According to the China hydrogen Energy Alliance, coal accounts for 64% of hydrogen production, 21% of industrial by-products, and only 1% of the greenest electrolysis.

Secondly, in terms of infrastructure construction, there are very few hydrogen filling stations in China at present.

According to the data of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, by the end of 2020, a total of more than 110 hydrogenation stations have been built in China. for vehicles that rely on hydrogen replenishment, the large-scale development of the replenishment end is one of the prerequisites for the rapid development of hydrogen vehicles. Compared with gas stations and charging piles all over the country, the number of hydrogenation stations is almost negligible.

In fact, whether it is hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, hydrogen use, are not insurmountable obstacles, as long as there is a lot of economic and policy support, these can be solved.

The real core issue of hydrogen energy is actually safety.

Hydrogen energy itself can be seen as a mobile bomb, an extremely dangerous source of energy. Just imagine, hydrogen energy vehicles scattered in every corner of society, such as underground garages, in the event of a leak, the concentration reaches 4% Mel 10%, and the whole garage will explode directly in the event of an open fire.

Only this reason, it is doomed that hydrogen passenger cars in the consumer field, it is difficult to get a wide range of applications through the thinking of "miracles".

Although it is difficult to carry out in the field of passenger cars, hydrogen energy has a bright future in the field of commercial vehicles, such as heavy trucks, buses and so on.

The reason is not complicated, because the body size of the commercial vehicle is large, there is no need to worry about the occupation of space in the vehicle, and the hydrogenation speed is fast and the energy replenishment time is short, which can obviously improve the transport efficiency for commercial vehicles.

In addition, as the operation route of commercial vehicles is relatively fixed, the corresponding design of hydrogenation stations according to their routes can better achieve timely replenishment.

Modern hydrogen-powered vehicles, for example, are also dominated by heavy trucks. As for China, the focus of hydrogen energy in the field of traffic vehicles is also heavy commercial vehicles, especially heavy trucks.

In terms of risk volume, according to the statistics of the China Automobile Association, the top three hydrogen fuel cell vehicle plants in 2022 are BAIC Foton, Yutong bus and Foshan Flying Chi.

From these brands of car companies, we can see that all of them are mainly commercial vehicles. From the specific structure of commercial vehicles, it is mainly heavy trucks and buses.

From this point of view, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will still be dominated by the commercial vehicle market for some time in the future. As for the field of passenger cars, it seems that all we can do is to "wait". Waiting for the breakthrough of technology and the arrival of the east wind of the market.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: zinc Finance (ID:xincaijing), author: Lu Shiming

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