21st Century Business Herald Hu Lin, a researcher at Information Communications, comprehensively reported that hydrogen energy has ushered in a "rising voice" with its advantages of zero pollution, high energy, rich resources, and wide range of uses. Since the beginning of this year, the hydrogen energy sector has risen by nearly 50%.
The same is energy, hydrogen energy is inevitably compared with lithium batteries. This year's lithium battery scenery is unlimited, can hydrogen energy accelerate the anti-super?
Everbright Securities believes that in the field of transportation, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have a long driving range, fast energy replenishment speed, comfortable and quiet, integrating the advantages of fuel vehicles and electric vehicles, and in the long run, fuel cell vehicles are expected to become an important part of the automobile market.
Fuel cell support policies have been introduced
Globally, North America, Europe, Japan and South Korea and other countries and regions have been committed to the research and development reserves of hydrogen energy and fuel cell technology, and have successively released hydrogen energy development roadmaps. In the context of the "double carbon" goal, China has intensively introduced hydrogen energy-related policies, guiding opinions and industry standards from the national to the local level.
In April this year, the National Development and Reform Commission released six future industries, hydrogen energy and energy storage is one of the important directions, and the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry is an important application area for hydrogen energy development.
In September this year, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other five departments issued the "Notice on Launching the Demonstration Application of Fuel Cell Vehicles", which clearly pointed out that the three urban agglomerations of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong have become the first batch of key areas selected as hydrogen fuel cell vehicle demonstration city clusters. Previously, the five departments said that they would adopt the method of "replacing compensation with awards" to reward the shortlisted demonstration city clusters according to their goals.
The local government level is more active. In November this year, Zhejiang released an implementation plan to accelerate the development of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry, Zhejiang has begun to lay out the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry, and plans to promote the application of nearly 5,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the fields of bus, port, intercity logistics and other fields by 2025, and plan to build nearly 50 hydrogen refueling stations.
On December 17, the "Shenzhen Hydrogen Energy Industry Development Plan (2021-2025)" proposed to lay out a number of technical research projects around key materials and core components such as proton exchange membranes, gas diffusion layers, bipolar plates, sealing materials, connectors, etc., to further enhance system integration capabilities, improve performance, reduce costs, and promote large-scale application of fuel cells.
Minsheng Securities pointed out that under the background of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, various regions have successively issued a series of policy documents, increased support for the fuel cell industry and fuel cell vehicle-related industries, clarified the development goals of fuel cell-related industries in the future, and the landing of industrial policies on the one hand clarified that the development of the industry space is relatively broad, on the other hand, it will also help the development of the industry into the fast lane.
To solve the "mileage anxiety", hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have a strong endurance
At present, the lithium battery industry chain is more perfect and popular. Everbright Securities believes that compared with hydrogen fuel cells, the current lithium battery technology is less difficult, the design is simple and easy to mass production, the industrial chain is perfect, and the popularity of infrastructure such as charging piles also makes the application of lithium batteries more popular and the market demand is large.
In terms of performance, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can solve the "range anxiety". In terms of battery performance, if the technology and cost of hydrogen fuel cells are temporarily ignored, compressed hydrogen energy has the core advantage of high energy density. Ping An Securities pointed out that hydrogen fuel cells have four obvious advantages:
Pollution-free: The electrochemical reaction product of a hydrogen fuel cell is only water.
High efficiency: The power generation efficiency of fuel cells can reach more than 50%, and there is still room for improvement, which is determined by the conversion properties of fuel cells, which directly convert chemical energy into electrical energy without the need for intermediate transformation of thermal energy and mechanical energy (generator).
Excellent mileage: Taking the Toyota Mirai as an example, the maximum power mileage can reach more than 550km.
Hydrogen filling time is short: hydrogen fuel filling can be completed in 3-5 minutes, and the filling form is similar to that of gasoline vehicle refueling.
Fuel cells are expected to enter a period of accelerated growth
In recent years, downstream car companies have begun to deploy hydrogen energy strategies, and many companies have released hydrogen energy strategies and hydrogen energy vehicle products.
In terms of commercial vehicles, in 2020, Weichai Power launched its hydrogen energy buses, and as of June 2021, it has put more than 300 vehicles into trial operation in many cities. In the passenger car field, in 2021, SAIC Maxus launched the hydrogen energy MPV model EUNIQ7; Hongqi developed a new FCEV model in its H5 model, with a range of 520 kilometers.
In the first three quarters of this year, the production and sales of fuel cell vehicles soared. In September 2021, the production and sales of fuel cell vehicles reached 155 and 173 units, respectively, an increase of 50.7 times and 172.0 times year-on-year, respectively. From January to September, the production and sales of fuel cell vehicles reached 879 units and 906 units, respectively, an increase of 54.2% and 56.5% year-on-year, respectively.
According to the Hydrogen Energy Alliance and other forecasts, in the field of commercial vehicles, fuel cell commercial vehicle sales will reach 360,000 units in 2030 (optimistic scenario will reach 720,000 units); sales are expected to reach 1.6 million units by 2050 (optimistic scenario will reach 3 million units). In the passenger car segment, fuel cell passenger car sales are expected to account for 3% and 14% of all passenger car sales in 2030 and 2050.
Ping An Securities pointed out that with the improvement of the technical parameters of fuel cell vehicles and the rapid decline in overall costs, the fuel cell vehicle industry is expected to enter a period of accelerated growth.
Midstream fuel cell investment strategy
Weichai Power (000338. SZ): From 2016, it has laid out the hydrogen fuel cell technology route, strategically invested in Fersay in 2016, and integrated Ballard of Canada in 2018. Strategic cooperation with The Swiss Flying Group to further improve the core competitiveness of fuel cell powertrains. In 2020, Weichai launched the fuel cell industrial park construction project in an all-round way, and built a fuel cell engine and stack production line with a production capacity of 20,000 sets, which is currently the world's largest hydrogen fuel cell engine manufacturing base.
Xiongtao Shares (002733. SZ): Fuel cell R & D talent reserve is now more than 100 people, the core team has many years of fuel cell stack development experience, has grown into one of the leading in the field of hydrogen fuel cell, master the current stage of China's CNAS certification of the largest power hydrogen fuel cell engine, the development of mature graphite bipolar plate stack products, in product technology and quality control have reached the leading level at home and abroad.
Dayang Electric (002249. SZ): In the first half of 2021, the company has completed the development, performance and reliability verification of 110kW-120kW fuel cell module samples and core components of a number of high-power hydrogen fuel cell modules. In terms of product applications, the application of hydrogen fuel cell road vehicles has made progress, adding 3 new models equipped with hydrogen fuel cells, and expanding the application of hydrogen fuel cell products in non-road construction machinery, ships, emergency power supply and other fields in special scenarios. On May 13, 2021, Dayang Electric Hydrogen Energy Whole Industry Chain Demonstration Base officially signed a contract in Chengdu, with a total investment of about 500 million yuan, and will build a hydrogen energy whole industry chain demonstration base integrating fuel cell system and core assembly.
(Report source: Ping An Securities, Huatai Securities, Everbright Securities, Minsheng Securities; the information in this article does not constitute any investment advice, the content published is from licensed securities institutions, does not represent the views of the platform, please judge and make decisions independently)