The trend of energy transformation to clean energy on a global scale is irreversible. With its advantages of zero pollution, renewable, fast hydrogenation, and sufficient battery life, hydrogen fuel cell technology has theoretically surpassed the potential of oil and gas. Lithium batteries are often considered as the "ultimate form" of vehicle energy.
However, the fly in the ointment is that the industrialization progress of hydrogen fuel cell technology has been very slow and has been unable to be implemented. The "vision" of hydrogen energy utilization has been planned, but has not yet been mass-produced.
In the past decade, due to the rapid advancement of lithium battery technology and industrialization, hydrogen fuel cell technology has been overly underestimated. In the past year or two, hydrogen fuel cells have attracted attention again. One of the reasons is that pure electric vehicles have encountered two hard-core problems:
The battery life is stuck in the next generation of lithium battery technology breakthroughs and the energy density is stuck. It is at the limit of physical chemistry, so based on this situation, hydrogen energy has been taken seriously by the Chinese country again. Japan, Germany and China have not actually given up on hydrogen energy research and development.
Relevant companies are also making rapid progress. For example, Toyota and BMW are continuing to develop hydrogen energy, and Great Wall Motors in China is also continuing to make progress. However, whether hydrogen energy has the feasibility of technology implementation? And what are the difficulties in the research and development process. We interviewed Chen Xuesong, President of Great Wall Motor Weishi Energy.
The following is the transcript of the interview:
Q: Why is the development of hydrogen energy fuel cells in my country not as good as pure electric and hybrid vehicles?
Chen Xuesong: In the entire transportation and energy fields, no country or company currently claims to follow a single path to the end. They all have different strategies as technology evolves. Hydrogen energy is of great significance in China. It cannot always be considered in terms of technology and economics, but also factors such as strategic energy security and environmental governance, and the need to achieve future carbon reduction targets. Various factors determine that China will have great development in hydrogen energy. This time the "Energy Law" plans to include hydrogen energy in the energy category, which also conveys this message from the national level.
Q: What achievements has Great Wall made in hydrogen energy technology in the past three years?
Chen Xuesong: I mentioned just now that Great Wall’s hydrogen energy project was established in 2016. In less than half a year, it quickly established an international team with more than 40 foreign experts and a R&D team of nearly 100 people. At the same time, it was decided to invest in establishing a hydrogen energy research and development center. After more than four years of investment and technical research, it’s time to have some open discussions.
The achievements are reflected in the following aspects:
1. The hydrogen energy business has completed the industrial layout of global development and the construction of the preliminary industrial chain, and established an international R&D center in Baoding. The center has a world-class laboratory and holds more than 360 patents.
2. Have an entire development system platform for developing cost-effective fuel cell generators and hydrogen storage products. R&D investment is ?1.23 billion. There are currently two engines announced on the Internet, one is 97kW high power for commercial vehicles, and the other is 65kW for buses and logistics vehicles; passenger cars In terms of fuel cell, there are now 95kW and 80kW, and fuel cell passenger cars will be demonstrated in small batches in 2021.
3. The level and scale of parts suppliers are lacking. In order to meet the goals, Great Wall develops many core parts by itself, such as air compressors with high-speed air bearings, hydrogen circulation pumps, and Booster, stack, etc. At present, a series of products have been developed. For example, high-power stacks meet the requirements of engines, including 100kW, 120kW and 140kW, and are metal versions of high-power density and high-power stacks.
The core components of the stack, such as technical bipolar plate membrane electrodes, also have a research and development team and their own trial production line. The automated production line can produce 1 million membrane electrodes per year, meeting the scale of approximately 3,000 vehicles. . At the same time, there is also an automated production line with 1,000 sets of stacks, which has been put into use. The stacks currently loaded are all stacks coming off the production line.
In addition to power generation and on-board hydrogen storage, we also develop relatively advanced 70MPa and 35MPa III and IV hydrogen bottles, bottle valves and pressure reducing valves as well as integrated on-board hydrogen storage systems. They are all used in our own cars and have been developed and installed on passenger cars for testing on the road.
Q: Currently, some key components and core technologies in the field of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are still monopolized by foreign companies. How can Great Wall Motors break through in the face of a blockade?
Chen Xuesong: Nowadays, the so-called key components and technical bottlenecks are electric stacks, and air compressors are the most obvious. Previously, an air compressor cost hundreds of thousands, but now these are no longer relevant to us. Bottleneck. The engine and all the components matching the power have been installed on the car and are being tested.
The bottleneck is a later issue, such as large-scale production:
1. How to ensure quality; 2. How to reduce costs? At present, the domestic industry has not yet reached that stage. The supply of core components in this industry does not yet have production capacity, and some are planning. This may take time to verify.
No matter who is doing it now, including Great Wall, there is indeed a bottleneck at the material level, because for the three core materials used in electric stacks, catalysts, proton membranes and carbon paper, there are also some domestic manufacturers doing this. Research on the subject can even provide samples.
However, if it is loaded on a vehicle, the quality stability and performance requirements cannot be met.
But there is also an effect that these domestic materials will force the price of imported materials to drop rapidly, just like air compressors. Because there is domestic supply, foreign suppliers do not dare to ask for high prices and will not set profits at 200% or 300%.
Q: "Talent reserve" is an important cornerstone of technology development. Can you introduce the current R&D team of Great Wall Motors' hydrogen energy research?
Second question, when it comes to cost control of hydrogen energy fuel cells, which aspect does Great Wall think is the most important? Is it because the heavy metal materials used in the catalyst are reduced, or is the cost of the entire stack reduced through economies of scale after large-scale production?
Chen Xuesong: As of July, the total number of relevant people has been close to 400, including more than 50 experts.
Our strategic planning is based on the DOE model and has been forecasted in conjunction with the Chinese market. DOE's assumption that those conditions are true, as long as the scale is expanded, the cost can be reduced by approximately 92%. We predict based on China's data, policies, enterprises, and technology that the cost reduction rate may reach about 58% due to economies of scale, and the rest will depend on technological progress.
Toyota once proposed a cost reduction route, which relies on technological progress accounting for 75% and scale only accounting for 25%. On the one hand, technological progress means that the electricity generated per unit volume and weight of materials must More; in addition, can we use material improvements, such as not using platinum in the catalyst, and the cost will be reduced a lot?
From these two aspects, we believe that if China relies on scale, it can play a certain role in reducing costs, but this is not enough. It must carry out technological innovation before it can truly It may take a long time to reach the cost target of large-scale commercialization without subsidies. Material research and development generally takes 5 to 10 years, because it needs to be completed from the material level, component level, system level, and vehicle level. Verify layer by layer. The project may take a product development cycle of two to three years. Great Wall is also making some large-scale investments. It has its own production lines, which will have lower costs than suppliers. At least it will be competitive in terms of yield and efficiency. According to analysis, scale alone cannot reach the level of commercial competition. For example, 1kW corresponding to 500 yuan cannot be achieved based on scale.
Q: Safety is the top priority in development. How does Great Wall Motors ensure safety issues during the research and development and application of hydrogen energy?
Chen Xuesong: Mainly consider two aspects:
1. Starting from the business aspect, how to ensure the safety of the business premises;
2. Starting from the product How to ensure safety from the design perspective and product application.
For example, there is a three-level hydrogen safety management system, which is controlled step by step; the equipment used also has certain safety considerations, how to isolate and detect the water and electricity of the entire equipment, and how to communicate with the entire building Carry out alarm, ventilation, emergency response, etc.
In addition, there must be strict operating specifications and procedures in terms of operation. For example, when doing an experiment, we must first identify the hazard sources of the experiment and whether there is a solution for each hazard source. We It's called "No operation without analysis". There are very strict safety requirements both internally and externally.
In the product design process, functional safety, electrical safety, collision safety, and hydrogen energy safety are designed after strict analysis.
1. There must be redundancy in the design, a very high safety factor, a full analysis of various failure modes, and corporate standards must be formulated, which must be strictly higher than industry standards. , because industry standards are set based on average levels.
2. There must be strict quality control during the production process. Not only must the design be safe, but also to prevent poor quality control and inadequate inspection indicators during the production process. In this process, Safety inspection.
Q: We just talked about Great Wall Motors’ high degree of self-research on hydrogen energy, with an expert team of nearly 400 people. What difficulties does Great Wall Motors currently encounter in the development of hydrogen energy? How did we solve it?
Chen Xuesong: Some of the difficulties currently encountered are fundamental problems in the industry, such as the difficulty of hydrogenation, the expense of hydrogen, and the high cost of vehicles.
In addition to these, some of our technical products are forward-looking, so when we market the products and find users, we encounter problems such as the non-existence of industry standards and the lack of regulations.
For example, the 70MPa plastic liner we developed is called an IV bottle. It has the advantages of light weight and low cost. In fact, it has already been commercialized abroad, but in China does not allow it, so this product encountered very special difficulties when it was launched into real vehicles.
There is also low-temperature liquid hydrogen technology, but currently liquid hydrogen is only allowed for military use and has not yet been opened for civilian use.
Q: Is there any detailed data available on Great Wall Motors' technological progress, fuel cell life, efficiency, low-temperature start, and catalyst platinum usage? Do we have any plans for our products?
Chen Xuesong: The dosage of catalysts is decreasing. Now the dosage of catalysts is based on milligrams per square centimeter. Great Wall can now do 0.35.
In terms of efficiency, we can now produce 1.3W per square centimeter.
In terms of cold start, from the perspective of the stack, it has been verified that starting at minus 30 degrees Celsius and storing minus 40 degrees Celsius is no problem.
Q: What is the development trend of hydrogen fuel cells in the next 5-10 years? What are Great Wall’s hydrogen fuel cell vehicles? The second question is whether there is any relevant data on the scenarios in which Great Wall vehicles are tested, in terms of safety.
This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.