The future of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles has come? Industry: First reduce costs

Fuel cell enters the window period

From the perspective of industry, the hydrogen energy industry chain covers the hydrogen energy end and the fuel cell end. In the field of hydrogen energy and fuel cells, China has preliminarily formed an all-round pattern from basic research, application research to demonstration demonstration, and has laid out a complete hydrogen energy industry chain.

According to the data released by the third-party enterprise information query organization, there are 2675 hydrogen energy related enterprises in China. In the first half of 2022, 276 hydrogen energy related enterprises will be added in China, 680 in 2021, 499 in 2020 and 467 in 2019.

"In terms of technical characteristics, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are more suitable for priority breakthroughs in the direction of heavy trucks." Previously, a technician from the automobile enterprise told the reporter of the Daily Economic News that hydrogen fuel cells are more suitable for heavy trucks with high loads because of their high power and energy density and their advantages in load and endurance.

At present, only in China, the share of hydrogen energy heavy trucks in the new energy heavy truck market is growing. The data shows that in 2021, the sales volume of domestic hydrogen energy heavy trucks will be 779, increasing 42 times over the same period of last year, and its share in the new energy heavy truck market will increase from 0.7% in 2020 to 7.46% in 2021.

On August 26, Ouyang Minggao, president of the International Hydrogen Fuel Cell Association and academician of the CAS Member, revealed during the "Fourth World New Energy Vehicle Conference" that as of June 2022, the number of fuel cell vehicles in China has reached 10000, and will continue to grow under the policy incentive in the next two or three years. The industry is ushering in an important window of development.

With the advent of this window period, the construction of top-level design is inevitable. In March this year, China's first Medium and Long term Plan for the Development of the Hydrogen Energy Industry (2021-2035) was released, which proposed that by 2025, a hydrogen energy supply system focusing on industrial by-products and renewable energy hydrogen production should be initially established, with about 50000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and a number of hydrogen refueling stations should be deployed; By 2035, a hydrogen energy industry system will be formed to build a diversified hydrogen energy application ecology covering transportation, energy storage, industry and other fields.

With the increase of top-level design, special policies and plans for hydrogen energy industry in various regions are also rapidly followed up. For example, Shandong Province proposes to promote 10000 fuel cell vehicles and build 100 hydrogen refueling stations by 2025; Guangdong Province proposes that by 2025, the target of promoting more than 10000 fuel cell vehicles will be achieved by the end of the demonstration period, the annual hydrogen supply capacity will exceed 100000 tons, and more than 200 hydrogen refueling stations will be built.

Zhongtai Securities believes that 2022 will be the first year of the explosion of the hydrogen energy and fuel cell industry. During the "Fourteenth Five Year Plan" period, the introduction of policies, the speed of local patent research and development of the industry, and the sales volume of the commercial vehicle market will all enter the acceleration lane.

According to the prediction of China Hydrogen Energy Alliance, in 2050, the proportion of hydrogen energy in China's terminal energy system will reach at least 10%, and the hydrogen demand will be close to 60 million tons, of which 24.58 million tons will be used in transportation, accounting for 19% of the energy consumption in this field, and the production of fuel cell vehicles will reach 5.2 million units/year.

Cost and other problems remain to be solved

Although the prospect is generally promising, it is urgent to solve the problems of technology and cost in the promotion of hydrogen fuel cells.

The relevant report of China Energy News quoted the opinion of the industry insiders and said: "The development of fuel cell passenger cars has shown signs, which may be more effective in stimulating the large-scale development of the industry. It should be noted that the development cycle of passenger cars is relatively longer and the investment is larger, and the further maturity and improvement of the industrial chain and related technologies are particularly critical."

At the top level of technical design, on April 16, 2021, the National Fuel Cell Technology Innovation Center was officially unveiled in Jinan, marking that the center has officially entered the trial operation stage. With the full support of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Shandong Provincial Government and local cities, an enterprise was established as the operating body to implement independent legal operation.

After more than a year of trial operation, under the cooperation of various forces and relying on the "hydrogen into thousands of homes" science and technology demonstration project of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the center has successfully developed 15kW~200kW series of hydrogen fuel cell engines, forming a series of transformation achievements such as "Yellow River" snow wax vehicles, hydrogen energy cogeneration, high-speed hydrogen refueling stations, construction of hydrogen energy ports, and hydrogen fuel cell passenger ships.

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment jointly issued the Notice on the Implementation Scheme of Carbon Peak in the Industrial Field, in which the layout in the hydrogen energy field mentioned that hydrogen fuel cell research and development and demonstration applications should be carried out.

As the person in charge of the operation body of the "National Fuel Cell Technology Innovation Center", Sun Shaojun said to the reporter of the Daily Economic News that building a public platform at the national level and gathering relevant social resources are conducive to serving the entire industry in research and development, industrialization and other aspects.

With the promotion of technology, the cost of fuel cells has become another threshold that the industry needs to cross.

According to Tianfeng Securities, the current cost of fuel cell passenger vehicles is mainly composed of fuel cell stack cost and hydrogen cost, which leads to the cost gap between fuel cell passenger vehicles and fuel vehicles and pure electric vehicles.

"The cost of hydrogen fuel cell itself is also very high, which has a slow impact on the promotion of hydrogen fuel cell." But in Sun Shaojun's view, as the national and local governments began to pay attention to these years, the cost solution has been put on the agenda.

"Sinopec, PetroChina and the State Grid are all investing in the hydrogen industry, including hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, hydrogen transportation and hydrogen consumption, which will have a great impact on the next step of reducing the cost of hydrogen energy and hydrogen fuel cells." Sun Shaojun said that if the cost was lowered, the prospect of hydrogen fuel cells would be very broad.