Commercial operations of hydrogen vehicles are accelerating. According to media reports, Shanghai will recently release 31 hydrogen fuel cell buses in Jiading, Jinshan, Fengxian and Lingang, and has been equipped with eight hydrogen refueling stations, which is also the first time that hydrogen energy buses have been used for commercial operations.
It is understood that the positioning of the above fuel cell bus as a pilot is mainly due to the fact that compared with pure electric buses, there is still a certain gap between the stability, economy and reliability of fuel cell vehicles and actual needs. Despite the pilot, the first commercial operation means that the hydrogen fuel cell bus industry has reached a new level.
On the other hand, recently, the action plan (2021-2025) for Jiading District to accelerate the development of hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicle industry has also been officially released. The plan proposes that by 2025, the total number of fuel cell demonstration application vehicles in Jiading District will not be less than 3500.
It can be seen that under the impetus of policy, the landing pilot of hydrogen energy vehicles is accelerating, and the hydrogen fuel cell industry is no longer the same.
Driven by the "double carbon" goal, hydrogen energy has also received more attention from the capital market. In the past 2021, the average and median annual gains of 60 stocks in the fuel cell sector were 41% and 30%, respectively, of which the stock prices of 11 stocks doubled.
The fuel cell sector rose sharply to outperform major stock indexes, reflecting the market's expectations for industrial development. Under high expectations, what is the focus of A-share hydrogen energy in 2022?
The policy continues to increase the number of hydrogen fuel vehicles
As a clean secondary energy, hydrogen energy has a number of advantages such as convenient production, efficient environmental protection, and optimized energy structure, and although the potential for industrial development is large, there are also factors such as weak related technologies that restrict development.
At present, in order to promote the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, the national level of hydrogen energy industry support policies have been intensively introduced, and the status of hydrogen energy has been continuously improved. In Shanghai, recently, "Several Policies of Jiading District on Continuously Promoting the Development of the "New Four Modernization" Industry of Automobiles" and "Action Plan for Accelerating the Development of Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Vehicle Industry in Jiading District (2021-2025)" were officially released.
The plan proposes that by 2025, the total output of the whole industrial chain of hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicles in Jiading District will strive to exceed 100 billion yuan, and more than 100 fuel cell vehicle industry headquarters enterprises, high-tech enterprises and enterprise technology centers will be realized, and the total number of fuel cell demonstration application vehicles will not be less than 3500, and strive to build 18 public hydrogen refueling stations, and guide the retail price of hydrogen not to exceed 35 yuan / kg.
It is worth noting that this is the 2.0 update of Jiading District to the above two policies. In July 2019, Jiading District first issued the "Relevant Opinions on Encouraging the Development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry in Jiading District (Trial)", when the policy proposed that by 2025, the annual output value of the entire industrial chain of Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Vehicles in Jiading will exceed 50 billion yuan.
Two years later, Jiading District will increase the total output value target of the whole industrial chain of hydrogen fuel cells from 50 billion yuan to a total output of 100 billion yuan in 2025. Although the statistical caliber of the two policies is different, the huge adjustment of the target value reflects that the development of domestic hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is not what it used to be.
Not only Shanghai, at present, More than 10 provinces such as Beijing, Shandong, Chongqing, Tianjin and other provinces have issued plans to clarify the development goals of the hydrogen energy industry, formulate and implement industrial development incentive policies by local governments, develop the hydrogen fuel cell industry according to local conditions, avoid the previous "flood irrigation" subsidies, and the new policy will promote upstream technology breakthroughs, drive downstream applications and infrastructure development.
What do A-share hydrogen fuel vehicles look at?
2020-2025 is considered to be the beginning of the development of hydrogen fuel vehicles. Like the initial stage of the development of photovoltaic and new energy vehicles, policy support is the main driving force for the development of hydrogen energy vehicles at this stage.
At present, the output and application penetration rate of hydrogen fuel vehicles are still low, after the expected heat speculation, can the intensive release of policies on the hydrogen fuel vehicle sector in the A-share market form a driving force with real performance growth?
"Unlike the previous two years, the clear development goals of various localities have slowly shifted the development of the industry to market-driven. Pure electricity and hydrogen fuel have their own advantages, considering the cost relationship, in the short term, urban construction-related commercial vehicles or electric vehicles have advantages. In the short and medium term, family passenger cars are still the world of traditional fuel and electric vehicles, and electric vehicles have slowly changed consumer habits," an industry insider engaged in investing in the hydrogen fuel cell industry told reporters.
"Due to the advantages of fast hydrogenation and sufficient endurance, light and heavy trucks and buses with fixed routes and high load characteristics are the application scenarios of hydrogen fuel vehicles that have been piloted first, such as freight cars and cold chain vehicles." The initial stage of the development of a number of high-end technologies. The significance of small-scale demonstration and promotion is more in trying to slowly promote economic and large-scale development with technical path practice. ”
The core system of the hydrogen fuel cell is the stack, and the core of the stack system is the catalyst and the proton exchange membrane, where the catalyst accounts for more than 40% of the cost of the fuel cell stack. Among them, the catalyst is mainly expensive platinum-based, and China has not yet achieved mass production, and the high demand stage for fuel cells in the future plays a key role.
The data shows that at present, the localization degree of related technologies is about 70%, and the core components such as stacks, membrane electrodes, air compressors, and hydrogen circulation pumps can be controlled autonomously, while core materials such as gas diffusion layer, catalytic layer and proton exchange membrane are also accelerating research and development.
"We believe that the development of hydrogen fuel vehicles is not just in the concept stage, and the expansion of the pilot stage has brought about solid performance growth of enterprises." Although this growth is very obvious compared to 1-2 years ago, it is still relatively small compared to electric vehicle companies. Generally speaking, it takes 2-3 years for a new product to go from sample delivery testing to large-scale mass production. From 2020 onwards, the localization process of hydrogen fuel cells is expected to promote the rapid development of related enterprises. The above-mentioned industry insiders said.
Taking hydrogen refueling stations as an example, hydrogenation is the main downstream link of the hydrogen fuel vehicle industry chain. According to haitong securities research report, by the end of 2020, a total of about 544 hydrogen refueling stations have been built worldwide, of which 128 are in China, accounting for about 23.5%
"In the early stage of development, the competitive pattern of the industry was still unclear. We believe that there are many points that need to be paid attention to at this stage, and the synchronous promotion of scale and technology will reduce the cost of related links. However, the focus is still on the technical breakthrough in the core link, and after the scale reaches a certain stage, it is more difficult to further reduce the production cost. He added.
![The Tiger and the Tiger greeted the Year of the Tiger, and more than 80 works by famous tiger artists were exhibited in Jiading[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)