In the distant 19th century, electric vehicles used to be juxtaposed with the steam engine and the internal combustion engine, and the latter two were equally divided, but later, with the rapid development of internal combustion engine technology and the inherent limitations of other two power technologies, the internal combustion engine dominated the automobile industry for more than a hundred years.
However, with the arrival of the wave of automobile electrification, new energy technology has become the general trend of automobile development, and electric vehicles seem to have ushered in the opportunity to counterattack, but it turns out that electric vehicles are not the only answer to the wave of automobile electrification. The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a major report on hydrogen fuel in June, which pointed out that the world should rise to the challenge of promoting the use of hydrogen fuel as a potential zero-emission energy source, and Japan is already at the forefront.
There were four major problems that once plagued the development of hydrogen fuel vehicles, namely the manufacturing cost of hydrogen fuel vehicles, the production cost of hydrogen, the safety of hydrogen and the popularity of hydrogen refueling stations. In response to these four problems, after 20 years of research, the Japanese government has mastered 83% of the world's hydrogen fuel cell technology patents, in an absolute leading position.
1. The manufacturing cost of hydrogen fuel vehicles. Because hydrogen does not burn directly, but instead undergoes a redox reaction to produce an electric current, a large amount of precious metal platinum is required, which makes the cost of hydrogen fuel vehicles high. Toyota and other companies through patented technology, reduced the use of platinum by 90%, and each hydrogen energy vehicle national and local government subsidies amount of about 100,000 yuan, the current Toyota hydrogen-powered mirai in Japan after subsidies price of only 260,000 yuan, relative to Japan's income level, the price is not high.
2, for the production cost of hydrogen. Japan has developed a method of hydrogen production using solar energy, which, together with the addition of a gas reforming process, has been able to produce hydrogen at a lower cost. Coupled with the hydrogen fuel cell energy conversion efficiency of up to 60 to 80%, 2 to 3 times that of the internal combustion engine, the same unit of hydrogen is longer than gasoline mileage, Honda's hydrogen fuel vehicles can already achieve 750km endurance. At present, Japan can travel 650km for 3 minutes at a time with hydrogen, which costs less than 300 yuan, which is comparable to the price of gasoline in Japan, and the cost per kilometer is less than 0.5 yuan. And Japan has proposed to achieve a hydrogen price of 30 yen per cubic meter in 2030, which is less than 2 yuan and 1,000 liters of hydrogen.
3. For the safety of hydrogen. In recent years, Norway, South Korea, the United States has had hydrogen station explosions, but Japan, which has the largest number of hydrogen stations, has never had a hydrogen explosion accident, in fact, many people have "demonized" the safety of hydrogen, gas stations will have explosion accidents every year, but why has no one ever said to boycott gas stations?
Many people don't believe it, but in fact, the danger of hydrogen is much lower than that of gasoline. Because the diffusion rate of hydrogen is 3.8 times that of natural gas, once the diffusion will quickly escape, it is difficult to reach the explosion concentration, and gasoline is easy to stagnate to cause the explosion; and the explosive energy of hydrogen is also the lowest in common gas, only 1/22 of gasoline. For example, the leakage test of hydrogen fuel vehicles and gasoline vehicles in the following figure. Moreover, in the process of hydrogen transportation and storage, Japan designs a full set of protective measures, in addition to high-pressure storage tanks, but also set up rupture disc devices, pressure gauges, thermometers, safety interlocking devices, conductive static devices, etc., whether in transit or parked, are subject to all-round monitoring.
In the safety of hydrogen fuel vehicles, Toyota Mirai's gas tank can withstand 70MPa pressure, as well as over-temperature protection, low-pressure alarm, fire protection, over-pressure protection, over-current protection, experimental results show that the bullet penetrated the hydrogen cylinder when no hydrogen explosion occurred.
4. For the construction of hydrogen stations. In 2017, the Japanese government issued the Basic Strategy for Hydrogen Energy, which was the first case in the world. The strategy sets out Vision 2050 and action plans for 2030, with detailed targets for the supply and use of hydrogen. At present, Japan has sold about 5,000 hydrogen fuel vehicles, has built about 100 hydrogen stations, and basically built several agglomeration areas in Kanto, Chubu, Kansai and Kyushu, while the Japanese government aims to reach 900 hydrogen refueling stations by 2030 and build more than 10,000 hydrogen refueling stations worldwide within 10 years.
Regarding hydrogen and electric vehicles who is the future of new energy vehicles, the industry has been controversial, but there is no doubt that hydrogen fuel vehicles will be the one with a higher upper limit, its charging time is short, less affected by temperature, and the emissions in driving are zero, as for the production of hydrogen, there are a large number of hydrogen by-products in mainland industrial production, and can make full use of the trough period of electricity consumption, once the production cost of hydrogen is greatly reduced, the popularity of hydrogen fuel vehicles will be unstoppable. If I had to choose between the two, I'd rather believe that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are the farther future. However, if you overtake in another corner, is it still too late?