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| Hydrogen fueled vehicles can "learn from", but will not "replicat |
| Release time:2022-12-24 10:13:01| Viewed： |
Hydrogen fueled vehicles can "learn from", but will not "replicate" the growth path of electric vehicles
Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have entered a new era of rapid development. According to the statistics of China Automobile Industry Association, in October this year, the production and sales of fuel cell vehicles were 277 and 301, up 3.7 times and 5.4 times respectively year on year; From January to October, the production and sales of fuel cell vehicles were 2651 and 2393, up 1.8 times and 1.5 times respectively year on year.
Experts and business people in the field of hydrogen energy believe that the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry is now in the period of electric vehicles more than 10 years ago, regardless of the current market size or technical level. According to the current development state, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are expected to follow the growth path of electric vehicles.
Of course, some experts said that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are more complex than electric vehicles from both the product level and the infrastructure perspective, and it may take longer to realize the scale of electric vehicles today. "I think that the current development stage of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry is closer to that of electric vehicles in 2014 and 2015, and after electric vehicles have 'crossed the road', hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are expected to develop faster than electric vehicles while learning lessons and experience." Zhang Shuai, the director general manager of Yonghua Investment, said in an interview with the reporter of China Automobile News that in the general direction, Fuel cell vehicles are expected to follow the development path of electric vehicles, but the development rhythm of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry is different from that of electric vehicles, which is relatively slow at the initial stage. Once the product, infrastructure, hydrogen storage and transportation and other supporting systems are improved and the cost advantage is highlighted, the market scale will expand faster than that of electric vehicles in the later stage.
Promotion mode
Ten Cities Thousand VS Demonstration Application City Cluster
The achievements of electric vehicles in China today can not be separated from a series of policy support. Similarly, if fuel cell vehicles want to achieve from small to large and from large to strong, they also need strong policy support. However, the policy environment faced by fuel cell vehicles has improved a lot compared to 10 years ago.
In 2009, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Finance, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology launched the "Ten Cities Thousand Energy Saving and New Energy Vehicle Demonstration, Promotion and Application Project". By providing financial subsidies, it is planned to develop 10 cities every year in three years, and each city will launch 1000 new energy vehicles for demonstration operation, striving to achieve the national new energy vehicle operation scale accounting for 10% of the car market share by 2012; In July 2010, the Notice on Launching the Pilot Program of Subsidies for Private Purchase of New Energy Vehicles was issued, which determined to launch the pilot program of subsidies for private purchase of new energy vehicles in Shanghai, Changchun, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Hefei; In June 2012, the State Council issued the Energy Saving and New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2012-2020), which clearly increased fiscal and tax policy support. As China embarked on the exploration road of "real gold and silver" subsidy for the development of new energy automobile industry, automobile enterprises, power batteries and other enterprises in the relevant industrial chain began to take action and put them into demonstration operation. Looking back on the development of new energy vehicles, especially electric vehicles, the policy undoubtedly played a huge role, not only accelerating the R&D process of new energy vehicle products to a certain extent, but also promoting the realization of scale growth, and constantly emerging business models and technological innovations.
In September 2020, the Notice on the Implementation of Fuel Cell Vehicle Demonstration Applications (hereinafter referred to as the Notice), which is known as the new version of the "Ten Cities and One Thousand Vehicles" policy in the industry, was launched, which clearly adjusted the purchase subsidy policy of fuel cell vehicles to the demonstration application support policy, and awarded the qualified city clusters to carry out the industrialization research and demonstration application of key core technologies of fuel cell vehicles. During the 4-year demonstration period, The relevant departments will give rewards to the city groups that have been selected for demonstration according to the completion of their goals.
In contrast, insiders generally believe that the incentive form of "compensation with awards" is more scientific and reasonable than the subsidy policy of that year. Results oriented, it can effectively avoid the repetition of "subsidy fraud" of new energy vehicles in 2016 in the form of subsidies. Lu Chenyu, deputy secretary-general of the National Fuel Cell and Liquid Flow Cell Standards Committee, believes that the demonstration cities should be rewarded in a result oriented way by "replacing subsidies with awards", effectively avoiding blind investment, thus improving the quality of demonstration and promotion, and encouraging those capable places or enterprises to play their own initiative to do better in demonstration and promotion. At the same time, the Notice made it clear that the incentive funds should not be used for vehicle projects and infrastructure construction. It is intended to curb the hot investment in hydrogen fueled vehicles and other issues. It restricts them from the source, which is conducive to guiding the industry to strengthen technology research and development, which really belongs to policy progress.
"Of course, it is undeniable that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles cannot be compared with pure electric vehicles in terms of both the incentive intensity and the scope of policy incentive objects. In the past 12 years, the total amount of subsidies granted to pure electric and hybrid vehicles has exceeded 150 billion yuan. By contrast, the total amount of incentives for the five hydrogen fuel cell vehicle city clusters has not exceeded 10 billion yuan. In addition, the subsidies for pure electric vehicles are targeted at vehicle enterprises, As long as the relevant technical standards and operating mileage are met, subsidies can be obtained, and the total amount can be said to have no upper limit; The direct subsidy for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is targeted at urban agglomerations, which will reward enterprises in all sectors of the hydrogen energy industry, and the incentives are basically targeted at commercial vehicles. It is obviously difficult to obtain this subsidy for fuel cell passenger vehicles. " However, this personage in the industry, who did not want to be identified, also said frankly that it may be difficult for the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry to reproduce the prosperity of electric vehicle development before 2016 to some extent. But in this way, the industry can avoid a large number of foam when it starts, and the foundation will be more solid, and the future road will also go farther and more stable.
Policy support
In fact, encouraging all regions to develop hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the form of "urban agglomeration" and post subsidy also reflects another change in the policy environment of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles: local governments are becoming the leading force to promote the technological progress and upgrading of related industries.
In August 2021, the five ministries and commissions jointly issued the Notice on Starting the Demonstration Application of Fuel Cell Vehicles, agreeing to start the implementation of the demonstration application of fuel cell vehicles in urban agglomerations submitted by Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong; In December last year, Henan and Hebei fuel cell vehicle demonstration city clusters were approved one after another, forming a "3+2" fuel cell vehicle demonstration pattern nationwide. In order to promote the rapid development of the local hydrogen energy industry, various demonstration cluster cities have issued a number of policy documents. For example, Beijing and Shenzhen have successively issued the "Fourteenth Five Year Plan" for the development of the hydrogen energy industry, Shanghai and Shandong have formulated medium and long-term plans for the hydrogen energy industry, and Guangdong and Zhejiang have issued special support policies for hydrogen fueled vehicles.
In terms of accelerating the pace of construction, the five demonstration city clusters not only intensively invest in the operation of fuel cell vehicles, but also make efforts to build infrastructure, at the same time, they have arranged the hydrogen energy industry chain and core technologies. Taking Shanghai as an example, the R&D and application of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have constantly made breakthroughs, and the technical indicators of high-power stacks and other products have reached the international advanced level. From the eight core components, such as membrane electrodes and bipolar plates, to the system integration of fuel cell vehicles, a whole industry chain development system of technology, products and applications has been formed, basically realizing the full coverage of fuel cell vehicle models.
However, it is not only these cities that actively participate in the layout of hydrogen energy. On November 11, the Development and Reform Commission of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region issued a notice on the issuance of the Development Plan of Oxygen Energy Industry in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, proposing to systematically build an innovation system for the development of hydrogen energy industry, build a green low hydrocarbon energy production system, orderly promote the construction of hydrogen energy infrastructure, actively create a diversified application ecology of hydrogen energy, and establish and improve the hydrogen energy industry support system. According to statistics, in addition to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, 22 of the 32 provinces, cities and autonomous regions in China have issued provincial hydrogen energy plans, including Hunan and Anhui, which have not been included in the fuel cell vehicle demonstration city cluster. The other 10 regions have basically issued policy documents on the development of hydrogen energy industry even though they have not issued provincial hydrogen energy plans.
"Unlike electric vehicles, which have enjoyed more central subsidy policies in the past 10 years, on the one hand, local governments are more familiar with the actual situation of the local industry and develop policy documents that are more in line with the needs of enterprises and different stages of industrial development on the basis of minimizing local protectionism; on the other hand, local governments usually plan for a longer period of time than the original central financial subsidy for new energy vehicles A change has led to such phenomena as empty window period in the market and enterprises blindly pursuing subsidies to update products too quickly in the gap of policy adjustment. " The above people said that this will enable fuel cell vehicles to develop more solidly in the process of demonstration operation. Of course, it does not rule out the possibility that cities will act independently and have repeated construction and operation problems.
market environment
In addition to policies, compared with electric vehicles 10 years ago, the market environment of fuel cell vehicles has also undergone tremendous changes.
In a market research and consumer behavior survey in 2012, 54% of the respondents believed that the performance of new energy passenger vehicles was lower than that of traditional vehicles, but they were sufficient, and 22% believed that they could not meet the requirements; For new energy vehicles, 81% of respondents think the driving range is short, and 21% think the safety is poor. Interestingly, some interviewees mentioned low-speed electric vehicles and some new energy bus brands that did not belong to new energy passenger vehicles at that time, which indicated that some interviewees had vague brand awareness and classification of new energy passenger vehicles.
Looking at a similar survey 10 years later, the 2022 China New Energy Vehicle Industry Research and Consumer Behavior Survey Report shows that the main reason for Chinese consumers to buy new energy vehicles is to save energy, accounting for 75.8%; The second is beautiful appearance and diverse functions, with the proportion of 43.5% and 42.8% respectively. When talking about the shortcomings of new energy vehicles, 41.7% of consumers mentioned poor driving ability, 39.8% of respondents thought that the maintenance costs were high, and 36.7% were more concerned about the imperfect supporting facilities.
From these two similar research reports, it can be seen that in the past 10 years, the perception of automobile consumers on new energy vehicles has completely changed, from "low performance" to "good appearance and diverse functions", and the proportion of consumers who care about driving mileage has also decreased from 80% to 40%. That is to say, even if it is at the same stage of development as the electric vehicle 10 years ago, the market acceptance and recognition of fuel cell vehicles are much higher than those of electric vehicles in that year.
However, this means that fuel cell vehicles will face more fierce market competition. According to the latest trend report of China's new energy vehicle market released by the National Passenger Vehicle Market Information Joint Conference, the output of domestic new energy vehicles from January to October was 5.59 million, with a year-on-year growth of 108.4%. The cumulative penetration rate has reached 24.7%, contributing more than 80% to the growth of the automobile market. Ten years ago, electric vehicles and traditional fuel vehicles launched a "lane changing overtaking" competition. Although consumers at that time had great doubts about electric vehicles, at least the track where electric vehicles were located was very "spacious", and enjoying the policy of "no restrictions on purchase, no restrictions on licensing" has also become a sharp weapon in competition with fuel vehicles.
In contrast, although today's fuel cell vehicles are more easily recognized by consumers and the market, the new energy vehicle race track has become extremely crowded. In terms of cost and various policies, the competitive advantage of fuel cell vehicles is not as good as that of electric vehicles. What's more, fuel cell vehicles are still in the early stage of market popularization and promotion. Product performance needs to be improved, costs need to be further reduced, and the industrial chain needs to be localized. However, the products and industrial chain of electric vehicles are becoming increasingly perfect and mature.
In this regard, Huang Quansheng, deputy director of the Environmental Resources Institute of the Ministry of Transport, pointed out that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will not replace pure electric vehicles in the short term. With the progress of the whole industry chain technology, the growth of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the gradual improvement of hydrogen refueling facilities, and the increase of hydrogen fuel injection demand, the comprehensive cost of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will gradually decline. Over time, they are expected to be economically competitive in the medium term It is expected to have market attraction and good growth in the long run.
Realistic bottleneck
In addition to different market environments, the development route of fuel cell vehicles is also different from the original electric vehicles.
"Although fuel cell vehicles, like electric vehicles many years ago, first entered the bus market of commercial vehicles, the rapid expansion of the electric vehicle market depends on the passenger car market, while the popularity of fuel cell vehicles starts with heavy trucks." In Zhang Shuai's opinion, because electric vehicles follow the passenger car route, individual consumers will be more inclusive of products, For example, the actual driving distance of a car marked with a driving range of 300 kilometers is only 200 kilometers, which has little impact on actual use. Therefore, the initial scale expansion is fast. However, it can be seen from the recent period that as the electric vehicle market has reached a certain scale, many problems have begun to emerge, such as the convenience of charging, the rise of lithium price and the impact on the power grid.
Fuel cell vehicles are the opposite of electric vehicles. Zhang Shuai pointed out that the best application scenario of fuel cells at present is mainly commercial transport vehicles such as heavy trucks. Customers of this type of automobile products are more rational, and they will directly compare new products with very mature fuel heavy trucks. They have higher requirements on the durability, economy and ease of use of the products, which directly led to the slow expansion of the initial fuel cell vehicle market.
The data is the best proof. According to statistics, in 2017, the sales volume of fuel cell vehicles nationwide was only 1275. Against the background of favorable policies across the country, the sales volume of fuel cell vehicles only exceeded 2000 in 2019, reaching 2737, and hovered between 1000 and 2000 in other years. According to the Fuel Cell Vehicle Database recently released, from August 2021 to August 2022, in the first year of the launch of the national fuel cell vehicle demonstration city cluster, the cumulative number of fuel cell vehicles in the five demonstration groups is 2590.
However, Zhang Shuai said that because the buyers of these commercial vehicles are relatively more demanding, once the preliminary preparations are completed, such as the durability and infrastructure of the products are relatively perfect, the hydrogen storage and transportation costs are reduced to an acceptable level, and the corresponding cost and efficiency problems are solved, together with the promotion of policies, customers will start to purchase in large quantities, so that fuel cell vehicles will pass through the early period of slow growth, Enter the rapid expansion period.
Practice "Double Carbon"
Looking ahead, are fuel cell vehicles expected to reach the market scale level of electric vehicles? Zhang Shuai believes that, in terms of quantity alone, electric vehicles must be more, mainly because the market space of commercial vehicles, the main battlefield of fuel cell vehicles, is much smaller than that of passenger vehicles. Of course, fuel cell technology is not useless in the field of passenger vehicles. Considering that the advantages of fuel cell vehicles are long driving range and short hydrogenation time, it is easier to break through from the first family car, SUV and other large passenger vehicles, as well as C-class cars and other market segments.
In addition, fuel cell vehicles are expected to conquer areas that electric passenger vehicles cannot reach at present. At present, the application areas of pure electric vehicles in China are mainly concentrated in the east, middle and south, and less in the north, northeast and northwest where the winter temperature is low. In contrast, hydrogen fuel cells are less affected by temperature, and the waste heat of batteries can be flexibly converted and utilized. In addition, the north, northeast and northwest regions are rich in renewable energy resources, and the supply capacity of hydrogen energy from renewable energy is strong. Therefore, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in these regions have great market potential. That is to say, under the general trend of automobile electrification, these regions are likely to become key areas for the development of fuel cell passenger vehicles.
"According to the market process of several million commercial vehicles a year and the promotion of hydrogen fueled taxis and C-class passenger cars in some regions, the overall market size of fuel cell vehicles in the future is expected to match that of electric vehicles." Zhang Shuai said frankly that if the effect of energy conservation and emission reduction is compared, fuel cell vehicles will play a greater role than electric vehicles. After all, the fuel consumption level of a heavy truck is equivalent to 50 or 60 passenger vehicles at present, This is why fuel cell vehicles have a higher position in the national energy strategy.
As Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the CAS Member and a professor of Tsinghua University, said, "The breakthrough point of hydrogen fuel vehicle technology is more than 10 years later than that of power battery, but it can be seen that the cost of fuel cell is declining rapidly now, which is the same as the rapid decline of power battery cost more than 10 years ago." It can be predicted that with the continuous support of policies, no matter whether the road of electric vehicle development can be resumed, The fuel cell vehicle industry will continue to grow in popularity and speed up its development, and eventually become an important force in China's new energy vehicle industry.
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