Bitauto News On February 2, Honda held a press conference on its hydrogen energy business strategic plan. Shinji Aoyama, Director and Chief Executive Officer, Arata Ichinose, Executive Officer and General Manager of Business Development, and others attended the press conference. The content of the press conference is as follows.
Toward a carbon-neutral society, Honda is actively expanding the application of hydrogen energy
Committed to further upgrading the fuel cell system as the core of the hydrogen energy business, Honda and General Motors *** The new generation fuel cell system developed will strive to double the durability and reduce the cost to one-third. In addition, Honda will continue to promote basic research and strive to further double the durability and halve the cost.
The fuel cell system as the core technology has been further upgraded
The four major fields of fuel cell vehicles (FCEV), commercial vehicles, fixed power supplies, and construction machinery are positioned as the core of the fuel cell system application areas and actively cooperate with other companies. Especially in the field of commercial vehicles, it cooperates with Isuzu Motors Co., Ltd. to research fuel cell heavy-duty trucks, and cooperates with Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd. to start technical verification of next-generation fuel cell systems in the field of commercial vehicles.
FCEV equipped with a new generation fuel cell system jointly developed with General Motors will be launched in North America and Japan in 2024. Generally speaking, the main challenges in the application and promotion of fuel cell systems come from cost and durability. To this end, the new generation fuel cell system utilizes the experience and economies of scale of both partners, applies innovative materials to the electrodes, improves the cell sealing structure, simplifies the auxiliary structure, and improves productivity. Compared with the "CLARITY FUEL CELL" fuel cell system, Cost reduced to one third. Thanks to the use of corrosion-resistant materials and the application of deterioration control technology, durability has been doubled and low-temperature resistance has been greatly improved.
Start external sales of fuel cell systems and expand application fields
It plans to start selling 2,000 fuel cell systems per year in the mid-2020s, gradually expand sales, and strive to sell 60,000 fuel cell systems per year by 2030 sets, with hundreds of thousands of sets sold annually by the second half of the 2030s.
FCEV:
Honda plans to launch a new FCEV in North America and Japan in 2024, based on the CR-V launched in North America last year and equipped with a new generation fuel cell system. In addition to the characteristics of FCEV such as short charging time and long driving distance, the plug-in function also makes it have the convenience of pure electric vehicles, and charging can be completed without leaving home.
Commercial vehicles:
Jointly researching fuel cell heavy-duty trucks with Isuzu Motors in Japan and planning to conduct road demonstration tests in 2023. In China, starting from January 2023, we have cooperated with Dongfeng Motor Group Co., Ltd. to start technical verification of the new generation fuel cell system in the commercial vehicle field in Hubei Province.
Fixed power supply:
In recent years, due to the expansion of cloud services and big data applications, the power required by data centers has increased dramatically, from BCP (Business Continuity Planning: Business Continuity Planning ), the demand for emergency power is also growing. Therefore, we will propose and promote fuel cell systems in the power generation field starting from clean and quiet emergency power. We first installed approximately 500kW of fixed power supply at the site of American Honda Motor Co., Inc., a local subsidiary in California, USA. This power supply reused the fuel cell system of "CLARITY FUEL CELL" and will be installed there from the end of this month. Started demonstration operation as an emergency power supply for data centers. This is then applied to Honda's factories and data centers around the world in an effort to reduce Honda's own greenhouse gas emissions.
Building a hydrogen energy ecosystem
So far, Honda has participated in the establishment of Japan Hydrogen Refueling Station Network Company (JHyM), as well as in North America through its participation in the hydrogen refueling station business Shell and FirstElement Fuel and others have provided support to help expand the hydrogen refueling station network.
In the future, as a new field, Honda will actively promote the construction of a hydrogen energy ecosystem centered on stationary power sources and starting from places where hydrogen energy is needed, and actively participate in projects organized by the government and local governments to use ports and other large-scale imports of hydrogen. projects and establish partnerships with relevant companies. In Japan, in order to build a hydrogen energy ecosystem, Honda has started discussions with Marubeni Corporation and Iwatani Industrial Co., Ltd. on the supply of hydrogen energy and the introduction of commercial vehicles; in Europe, Honda is planning to invest in renewable energy and hydrogen. Conduct empirical experiments on the construction of energy ecosystems that can be combined.
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