Article | Dongli
“I never thought I would see it again.” Floyd Wyczalek, 91, sat in the cab of the Electrovan again in 2016 inside.
Holding the steering wheel of the world's first fuel cell concept car, which he helped build 50 years ago, the former General Motors engineer's eyes shone.
In the blink of an eye, it has been another 4 years. On September 8, 2020, General Motors announced a US$2 billion investment in the electric vehicle company Nikola. The application of fuel cell technology is one of the highlights of the strategic cooperation between the two parties. "Worth billions of dollars", this is Nikola founder Trevor Milton's evaluation of the general fuel cell project.
Thousands of miles away in China, many people say that 2020 is the first year of hydrogen energy.
Profit-seeking capital is less likely to lie. Hydrogen Cloud Chain data shows that in the first seven months of 2020, the total nominal investment in China's hydrogen energy industry exceeded 130 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 30%. There were 5 projects with investment reaching tens of billions, while there were only 2 projects in the same period in 2019. indivual.
Today, more than 40 local governments have introduced policies to support the development of hydrogen energy. According to incomplete statistics, the current planned production capacity of hydrogen fuel cell stacks nationwide exceeds 3,000 megawatts, and the expected output of fuel cell vehicles exceeds 10 Thousands of vehicles.
On September 13, SAIC officially released the world’s first fuel cell MPV, SAIC MAXUS EUNIQ 7, and also announced its “hydrogen strategy”.
Capital, government, and car companies have all taken action. In this September, which is getting colder, China's hydrogen fuel cell market is particularly hot. The temptation of hydrogen?
When it comes to fuel cells, many people now habitually add a word in front of them - hydrogen, that is, hydrogen fuel cells, implying that this is a revolution in energy power.
Every human energy revolution is a process of improving carbon reduction, hydrogenation, and energy density.
Hydrogen is a high-energy and efficient energy carrier. The energy density of wood as fuel in ancient times was only 0.13 megajoules per kilogram. Now the energy density of standard coal, oil, natural gas, and hydrogen has reached a maximum of 140 megajoules.
And hydrogen energy is a renewable energy source that can be obtained in a variety of ways. Whether it is industrial by-products, petrochemical energy or water, humans can obtain hydrogen from it through various methods.
In the 21st century, mankind is moving from the fossil fuel era to the green energy era. Gan Yong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, believes that there are two transformations: one is the transformation from fossil energy consumption to green energy regeneration, and the other is the transformation from high-carbon fuels to low-carbon fuels. Returning to the essence, it is still the "hydrogenation and carbon reduction" of fuel.
"Zero-carbon" energy ultimately points to hydrogen energy, which is a zero-emission clean energy source. The final product of the full reaction of hydrogen and oxygen is only water.
Hydrogen energy is so attractive that governments around the world have begun to formulate strategies.
Many countries such as Japan have designated hydrogen energy society as a national strategy. Since the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, countries such as Germany have regarded hydrogen energy as an important means to revitalize the economy. In June 2020, Germany announced that it would invest another 9 billion euros to support the development of hydrogen energy.
China has also begun to make plans in this regard. In May 2016, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "National Innovation-Driven Development Strategy Outline", stating that they will "develop new generation energy technologies such as hydrogen energy and fuel cells."
After that, in 2019, Hydrogen fuel cells were included in the "Government Work Report" for the first time, and in 2020, hydrogen energy was included in the draft of the "Energy Law". Recently, some media reported that China’s overall hydrogen energy development plan, involving multiple ministries and commissions, is being formulated, and the top-level design of China’s hydrogen energy is about to be unveiled.
In terms of implementation, the automobile industry is an important part of the hydrogen energy strategy.
As a major emitter of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, cars need to use fuel cell systems to use hydrogen fuel.
A fuel cell is a power generation device that directly converts the chemical energy in externally supplied fuel and oxidant into electrical energy, thermal energy, and other reaction products through electrochemical reactions.
The fuel cell currently being studied most in the industry is a proton exchange membrane hydrogen fuel cell in which the externally supplied fuel is hydrogen and the oxidant is oxygen. A fuel cell vehicle is a vehicle powered or primarily powered by electrical energy generated by an on-board fuel cell system.
On October 28, 1966, in Michigan, USA, General Motors demonstrated a concept car called Electrovan, which was regarded as the world's first fuel cell vehicle. Due to the high cost, It was not promoted at the time.
Today, whether at home or abroad, the trend of vehicle electrification is unstoppable. However, the future is bright but the road is tortuous. From the past to the present, battery safety is still an important factor that makes many consumers hesitate to buy pure electric vehicles. Recently, CATL’s “811” battery has also been involved in safety controversy.
Hydrogen fuel cells are also a member of the electrification wave, and "fuel cells are safer than lithium-ion batteries." Yi Baolian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, believes that hydrogen fuel cells are essentially an electrochemical process. The energy conversion device achieved by the reaction is the same in principle as a lithium battery, but in terms of working method, it is more like an internal combustion engine.
The gasoline (diesel) of the internal combustion engine is stored in the fuel tank, and the hydrogen of the fuel cell is stored in the hydrogen storage bottle. The former has an engine for energy conversion, while the latter has an energy conversion place in the fuel cell stack. , the electric stack and the hydrogen storage bottle are separated.
“I have been working on fuel cells all my life, and I have never had any combustion or explosion accidents.” Yi Baolian said that there is very little energy in the fuel cell stack. If something goes wrong, just put the hydrogen By cutting off the supply, security can be guaranteed.
However, such a high-energy, efficient, safe and renewable clean energy has just entered the commercialization window period. The dawn after two ups and downs?
Currently, the civilian craze for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is the third wave since the 20th century.
General Motors’ Electrovan did not make much of a splash in 1966. It was not until 1973, when the Fourth Middle East War broke out, that it brought about the first wave of civilian use of fuel cells.
At that time, the International Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an oil embargo on Israel and other countries. In just three months, from October 1, 1973 to January 1, 1974, international oil prices dropped from The price of a barrel rose from US$3.11 to US$11.65, triggering a global oil crisis.
The oil crisis made the research and development and investment in civilian fuel cell vehicles hot for a while, but this wave did not last long. With the temporary resolution of the crisis, the fuel cell craze slowly cooled down.
The second wave emerged around 2000, driven by fuel cell manufacturers such as Ballard in Canada. However, because the technology at that time had not matured to the stage of commercial application, car companies did not support them, and consumers had no demand. Parts suppliers could not support the fuel cell vehicle market. In the end, hydrogen-powered vehicles did not develop.
In the period since then, due to the delay in mass production of hydrogen fuel vehicles globally, many policies have gradually tilted towards pure electric vehicles equipped with lithium batteries, and the entire industry chain of hydrogen fuel vehicles has frequently collapsed. tide.
In 2014, Toyota finally launched the Mirai, the world's first mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, and the hydrogen energy vehicle industry recovered after years of silence.
With this as a starting point, the undercurrent of the third wave of hydrogen energy in the automotive field begins to surge. It only takes three things, maybe this wave of commercialization of hydrogen fuel cells can really take off.
With the support of policies from various countries, Toyota Motor launched Mirai, and passenger models such as Honda's Clarity and Hyundai's NEXO have also been mass-produced. SAIC also launched the Roewe 950 equipped with a hydrogen fuel cell system.
Zhang Jinhua, Executive Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the Society of Automotive Engineers of China, stated in 2018 that the main performance of mass-produced models of foreign car companies, including lifespan, power density, price, etc., is comparable to that of traditional cars. Pidgeot has a certain degree of competitiveness.
In the field of commercial vehicles, Toyota is increasing its investment, and General Motors has chosen to cooperate with electric truck company Nikola to promote the implementation of fuel cell systems in the truck field. Domestic companies such as Great Wall, Foton and SAIC are also making efforts.
However, compared with foreign countries, China’s current technical strength in the field of hydrogen fuel cells still has shortcomings.
“We should face up to the fact that there is still a certain gap between my country’s hydrogen energy and fuel cell industries and foreign advanced levels.” Peng Suping, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor at China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing), said that “stuck neck” technology is distributed in hydrogen energy In many aspects of the industry, there is an urgent need to break the technological blockade, including shortcomings in hydrogen storage and transportation technology and the main reliance on imports of related core equipment. What's "stuck"? ?
Fuel cell technology was originally used in aerospace, military and other fields. From the perspective of the technology itself, it is relatively mature and does not present any major difficulties.
However, precisely because it is used in aerospace and military fields regardless of cost, the technical threshold of fuel cells is actually very high. When expanding to the civilian field, how to reduce costs becomes the key.
Whether domestic or foreign, one of the core factors restricting the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is the energy source hydrogen itself.
On the user and government side, the understanding of fuel cell vehicles is very insufficient, and there are many doubts about their safety. At the same time, regulations and standards are not perfect, and Toyota also encounters difficulties in Japan: when hydrogen fuel cell vehicles enter confined spaces such as underground parking lots, there is no authoritative third party that can prove that there are no safety risks.
Zhang Jinhua has previously stated that many officials still equate hydrogen with unsafeness, so it is crucial to popularize science.
Thankfully, the policy is being relaxed. Lan Qingsong, vice president of SAIC, revealed that starting this year, Shanghai will no longer define hydrogen as a hazardous chemical, but will convert it into a fuel. "It will be managed as a fuel. This is a huge change in policy."
But the problems don’t end there. As an energy source in the transportation field, the supply scale and price of hydrogen energy are not enough to support large-scale commercial promotion. The filling of hydrogen fuel is difficult and expensive.
The hydrogen energy industry chain is divided into hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, hydrogen transportation and hydrogenation.
Take the final hydrogenation station as an example. The equipment inside includes compressors, hydrogenation machines, sequence control cabinets, gas unloading cabinets, etc. Fang Peijun, chairman of Shanghai Hydrogen Energy Technology Co., Ltd., said, "Many equipment in hydrogenation stations are from foreign brands. At present, it is difficult to reduce the (proportion)."
Those who purchase foreign equipment The cost will be passed on to the terminal hydrogenation price. At present, the price of hydrogen is still too expensive for consumers.
A senior hydrogen fuel cell engineer at SAIC told HD Automotive Business Weekly, “Hydrogen may only cost a few yuan when leaving the factory, but after desulfurization, purification, pressurized transportation, and gas station storage, it may be It also needs to increase the pressure, and the cost of the gas filling station may account for 40-50%. The comprehensive cost is very expensive.”
HD Auto Business Weekly observed a refueling at a hydrogen refueling station in Anting recently. During the hydrogen demonstration, the machine screen showed that you need to pay 25 yuan to refill 0.35 kilograms of hydrogen, which means that the filling price of hydrogen per kilogram exceeds 70 yuan.
However, relevant sources revealed that the agreement they signed with the hydrogen refueling station is far less expensive, less than 40 yuan per kilogram.
However, the industry generally believes that only when the price of hydrogen reaches 20-25 yuan can users have a good experience. Now the price of hydrogenation is easily 60 to 70 yuan per kilogram, and it is around 40 yuan after subsidies. Compared with The unit price of hydrogenation for cars is more expensive than refueling or charging. Therefore, it is difficult to promote it through purely market-oriented behavior in the short term.
Going back to the production and manufacturing of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, from a global perspective, the industrial chain of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is hardly mature.
“Toyota, Honda and Hyundai mostly rely on the consortium behind them to build a fully closed system and do it themselves.” Zhang Ruiming, general manager of Guangdong Tyros Automotive Power System Co., Ltd., revealed to HD Auto Business Weekly that many people now Core materials and components such as catalysts and proton membranes are in the hands of a few companies, and costs remain high.
Lu Bingbing, general manager of Shanghai Jie Hydrogen Technology Co., Ltd., pointed out that catalysts, proton exchange membranes, carbon paper, etc. are the key technologies and components that are "stuck" in the field of hydrogen fuel cell stacks.
Take proton exchange membranes as an example. The conditions for large-scale mass production of proton exchange membranes with a perfluorinated structure are stringent. On the one hand, fluorine chemical materials are very special, highly corrosive and explosive, so they require an industrialized and stable production platform, which requires time to accumulate. On the other hand, manufacturers also need to carry out test evaluations with car companies. "Without test evaluations, no one will dare to use your film."
What is even more worrying is that the research and development of perfluorinated proton exchange membranes is still in the cost-burning stage. According to Zhang Yongming, chief scientist of Shandong Dongyue Group, "This film has been losing money, tens of millions every year. Most companies are not willing to do it, and only companies that are willing to be responsible can do it."
The country also Discover these issues. At the TEDA Forum on September 5, 2020, Song Qiuling, a first-level inspector of the Economic Construction Department of the Ministry of Finance, explained the changes in financial subsidies for fuel cell vehicles, "The core goal of the post-transformation demonstration policy is to support enterprises to accelerate breakthroughs in key core technologies and create Independent and controllable industrial chain."
Nowadays, all aspects of hydrogen energy have not been truly connected, and the key core technology of fuel cells is not in our own hands. These are two key issues that are blocking the necks of Chinese companies.
There are even contradictions between the two, including the price conflict between fuel cell systems and hydrogen - "Those who make hydrogen think the stack is expensive, and those who make the stack think hydrogen is expensive", and there are also hydrogen fuel cells There is a contradiction in quantity between cars and hydrogen refueling stations - "Cars think there are no (hydrogen refueling) stations, and stations think there are no cars."
The crux of the problem is "scale". One million vehicles?
As of August 2020, my country has promoted more than 7,200 fuel cell vehicles, with a cumulative operating mileage of nearly 100 million kilometers, and 72 hydrogenation stations have been built. But this is not enough.
“The number of fuel cell vehicles must reach one million by 2035. If not, there will be risks.” Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor at Tsinghua University, said bluntly.
Western countries will have a "valley of death" from a company perspective, that is, after successful technology development, commercialization will have to overcome difficulties such as investment scale, rate of return, and risk control. However, China now has a national level It has built a bridge for enterprises and we must make good use of this opportunity.
“China’s fuel cell market is currently booming and its policy direction is very obvious, which is a good thing.” An expert who has been deeply involved in the fuel cell market for decades told HD Automotive Business Weekly.
Unfortunately, many domestic companies only focus on immediate profits and spend money on production for state subsidies rather than improving technology. Therefore, the subsidy policy should not only take into account the current situation, but also encourage independent patent research and development and promote technological progress. This year's policy change of "replacing subsidies with awards" also coincides with this reason.
After all, on the basis of policies, active investment by enterprises is the force that promotes industry progress.
Zhang Tong, director of the Fuel Cell Vehicle Technology Research Institute of Tongji University, said bluntly, "Due to various factors, domestic enterprises still have insufficient investment, and it is difficult for the industry to develop." On the other hand, Toyota, General Motors and other car companies, in terms of fuel Decades of investment have been made in batteries, and R&D costs have reached hundreds of millions of dollars per year in recent years.
However, Zhang Tong said that SAIC is an exception in this regard. As China's first automobile company to develop fuel cell technology, SAIC launched the Phoenix One fuel cell vehicle project in 2001. The fuel cell division was formally established in 2006. From vehicle integration and system integration to now making breakthroughs in stack technology, the company has been investing in research and development, and has successively launched fuel cell passenger cars Roewe 750 and 950 and commercial vehicles Maxus FCV80. , EUNIQ?7 and other models.
During this period, many fuel cell-related companies either closed down or transformed, and SAIC was certainly affected.
Chen Xuesong, then director of the Fuel Cell System Department of the Forward-looking Technology Research Department of SAIC, told HD Automotive Business Weekly, "Everyone is dead outside, but SAIC has also questioned internally, is this the right direction? In the end, it persisted Come down."
Now more and more domestic car companies are joining in. SAIC Maxus EUNIQ 7 is planning to target the mid-to-high-end business travel field and enter the personal consumption market, and commercialize domestic fuel cells. Start to accelerate the breakthrough.
At the same time as the release of MAXUS EUNIQ 7, SAIC also released a "hydrogen strategy": before 2025, at least ten fuel cell vehicle products will be launched, and SAIC Jet Hydrogen Technology will reach a market value of tens of billions, establishing A fuel cell R&D and operation team of more than 1,000 people has been established to form a production and sales scale of 10,000-level fuel cell vehicles, with a market share of more than 10%.
“Fuel cell passenger cars are subject to greater infrastructure constraints. At present, it is more suitable to be used in the field of commercial vehicles, operate around hydrogenation stations, and be used in public transportation, logistics and It will take the lead in urban travel and other fields,” said Lan Qingsong.
At this year's TEDA Forum, Song Qiuling said: "This demonstration focuses on promoting the industrial application of fuel cell vehicles in the field of medium and heavy-duty commercial vehicles, with an emphasis on heavy-duty trucks."
Indeed, compared to passenger cars, buses and trucks have lower technical requirements for fuel cells. The scale of commercial vehicles can cultivate a number of suppliers of energy supplies, parts and even materials, build China's independent industrial chain, and then Gradually improve the technical level and then expand into the field of passenger cars.
As Zu Shijie, vice president and chief engineer of SAIC, said, fuel cells must first be applied on a large scale in the field of commercial vehicles, and scale will drive a virtuous cycle in the industry.
For a long time in the future, combined with hybrid, passenger cars will continue to adhere to the pure electric route, and the commercial vehicle fields such as buses and trucks will increase the proportion of fuel cell technology. "Double advancement" will be the new energy source Automobile development trends.
More problems are yet to come. After commercialization, companies must also consider "the tolerance of fuel cell problems", that is, how to provide after-sales service. Fan Qinbo, chief scientist of China Energy Engineering Corporation, pointed out that this was the main problem that caused the failure of many U.S. fuel cell companies in the past and will also be a difficulty that Chinese companies must face in the future.
“Are you awake?” Fan Qinbai said, he hopes all practitioners will ask themselves this.
-END-
This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.