China's new energy vehicles in the past 10 years has shown an extremely high-speed development trend, both technology and products have become increasingly mature, especially in fields such as batteries, there is a great catch-up with the performance of foreign advanced enterprises.
With the continuous development of electrification, new concepts and new technologies such as the Internet of Vehicles, automatic driving, power exchange, and hydrogen fuel have also been broken, not only in passenger cars, but also in the field of commercial vehicles such as trucks.
This paper starts from the two perspectives of technology and products, and comprehensively analyzes the development trend of domestic new energy trucks.
01The next 15 years: the "world" of lithium iron phosphate
Like passenger cars, the batteries carried by electric trucks are mainly divided into two categories: ternary lithium and lithium iron phosphate. Before 2020, due to the low energy density of lithium iron phosphate and the consideration of lightweighting, the largest domestic application scale is still ternary lithium batteries.
But ternary lithium batteries have a fatal problem: lower safety. Mainly due to its impact and low ignition point in a high temperature environment, it is very easy to cause spontaneous combustion in trucks with worse working conditions than passenger cars.
However, at present, with the introduction of lithium iron phosphate blade batteries by BYD, the technology of lithium iron phosphate is becoming more and more mature, and the energy density of battery packs can generally reach 140Wh/kg, and even more than 170Wh/kg products have appeared.
Nowadays, cobalt is scarce, and the cost advantage of lithium iron phosphate batteries is gradually emerging. It can be judged that in the next 15 years, lithium iron phosphate batteries will be the mainstream of the first choice for new energy trucks, especially pure electric trucks.
02 The trend of the times: the integration of electric drive systems
The powertrain of traditional fuel trucks is composed of engines, transmissions, transmission shafts, drive axles and other parts, and the early pure electric trucks adopted the technical route of "oil to electricity", that is to say, the same as the traditional powertrain, but the engine was replaced by a motor, and the transmission was replaced by a reducer.
The result of "changing the soup without changing the medicine" is high cost, huge weight and low transmission efficiency.
However, with the development of the passenger car electric drive platform, the electric drive assembly of the truck has also been inspired, in order to reduce energy consumption, weight and cost, there are gradually a variety of drive assembly forms such as coaxial bridges and integrated bridges.
But it should be noted that the current technology of the integrated bridge in China is not as mature as we think, the cost is still relatively high, coupled with the working conditions and road conditions of medium and heavy trucks are far more complex than small cars, so this technology can not be applied on a large scale in the market in the future in the short term, and it will still be based on direct motor drive.
03 All-in-one mainstream: high-voltage electronic control integration
There are not many high-voltage electronic control cases of three-in-one, four-in-one or even eight-in-one on new energy trucks. This is also due to the more complex working conditions of new energy trucks, but this does not prevent the all-in-one high-voltage platform from becoming one of the trends of trucks.
The biggest benefit of the all-in-one is space compression, which integrates the drive motor controller module, DC-DC voltage converter module, PDU high-voltage distribution module and OBC vehicle charger controller module into a box, making the most of the internal space of the truck that is already occupied by the battery.
This means that the overall cost can be greatly reduced, while the reliability and operational efficiency will be higher.
04The Internet of Everything: Intelligent Development of Trucks
The intelligence of trucks will be the next key technology research and development direction. Similar to passenger cars, the intelligence of new energy trucks generally refers to systems that include functions such as intelligent driving/automatic driving, vehicle network, vehicle safety, smart cockpit, and human-vehicle interaction, in addition to remote systems.
Imagine: How much can a short-haul new energy truck that doesn't require a driver bring to the industry?
When driving safety is guaranteed, driverless trucks (including driving, parking and loading and unloading goods) can greatly improve freight efficiency and reduce labor costs when applied in some special scenarios such as mines, ports, closed parks and other fields.
Not only that, when the development of intelligence is mature, combined with the Internet of Things, big data, cloud platform and other technologies, it is possible to create a new freight ecology by sharing transportation capacity and change the current logistics and transportation industry model.
05 Sanitation & Urban Logistics Vehicle: Pure Electrification
Sanitation vehicles and urban logistics vehicles are more similar, both have an average daily mileage of 150-200km, and the driving range is within the specified range. Logistics vehicles have certain requirements for speed, and sanitation vehicles have an average speed of about 50-60km/h.
Based on these characteristics, sanitation and logistics vehicles will become one of the first products to bear the brunt of the trend of pure electrification of trucks. However, the main reason for the lack of large-scale popularization at present is still that the technology is not mature enough and the cost is high.
Taking the 4.5-ton pure electric light truck as an example, its endurance is only about 200km, and it will shrink in winter, and the charging time will be extended, affecting the use efficiency. Although the price has been significantly reduced in recent years, it is still much higher than that of fuel vehicles.
Therefore, the main development direction of sanitation and urban logistics vehicle products in the future will focus on lightweight, low cost and low energy consumption, of course, this also puts forward new requirements for technology.
In addition, with the development of e-commerce platforms, logistics vehicles and sanitation have almost become rigid demand, the market volume is huge, and pure electrification is the only way to go under the dual drive of market drive and policy.
06 Urban Construction Logistics & Special Scenario: New Energy
Urban construction logistics refers to the trucks responsible for the transportation of construction waste and building materials in the city and suburbs, including dump trucks, mixer trucks, muck trucks, etc., with a maximum operating mileage of 500km in a single day, and most of them are medium and heavy trucks.
As the name suggests, port logistics vehicles serve both inside and outside the port, mainly tractors. Tractors in the port are currently operating basically 24 hours a day, but the mileage is not long, and it is operated in a closed area; the transport mileage of tractor products outside the port is uncertain.
Mine logistics vehicles are mainly dump trucks, tractors, etc., the driving route is very fixed, it is also 24-hour operation, and the average daily mileage is about 150km. It is worth noting that the infrastructure construction such as on-board charging and power exchange in mine logistics has a high degree of autonomy different from other products.
What these products have in common is an extreme focus on transport efficiency. Unlike logistics vehicles and sanitation vehicles, which can have enough charging time, if too much time is spent on charging, the cost will be too high to be estimated.
Therefore, power replacement has become a new direction for electric heavy trucks. More and more domestic manufacturers have launched pure electric muck trucks, mixer trucks, tractors and so on. Compared with the charging that takes 1.5-2 hours, the power exchange that can be completed in 5-10 minutes is more economical.
07 Long-distance heavy truck: hydrogen fuel or into a new way out
For heavy-duty trucks, the power and endurance of electric vehicles are difficult to meet their thousands of miles. However, heavy trucks are the "oldest difficulties" in the emission industry, and hydrogen energy may be a new way out for heavy trucks.
In the "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)" released in October 2020, China clearly states that by 2035, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will achieve commercial application; take fuel cell technology as one of the three verticals, lay out the vehicle technology innovation chain, and in terms of breaking through key component technologies, take hydrogen fuel application support technology as the core technology research project; and overcome hydrogen fuel cell vehicle application support technologies such as hydrogen energy storage and transportation, hydrogen refueling stations, and vehicle storage.
Hydrogen fuel heavy trucks may be the main direction of long-distance transportation in the future, but there are still hydrogen refueling stations, hydrogen battery life, high cost and other issues that need to be solved urgently. Although large-scale commercial applications cannot be achieved in the short term, the huge potential of hydrogen trucks in this regard cannot be denied.