Shentucar original
Author | Zhou Jifeng
Edit | dawn
The car advocate Peng in downtown Beijing is still worried about his own electric car, "As soon as the winter comes, the power is crazy, and I have to find charging piles all over the world." ”
Hundreds of buses drive in the Haituo Mountainous Area of Yanqing, 74 kilometers away. These buses have run long distances, driven warm air conditioners, replenished energy in only 6 minutes, and are still operating normally in an environment of minus 20 degrees Celsius.
What makes them different is that it is not oil, not electricity, but hydrogen that drives them.
This year's Beijing Winter Olympics, with more than 1,000 hydrogen energy vehicles in operation and more than 30 hydrogen refueling stations, is the world's largest fuel cell vehicle demonstration.
In China, pure electric vehicles are the most mainstream new energy technology route. But lithium batteries have some weaknesses, such as in the weather of minus ten degrees, the electrolyte will be frozen and completely unable to work. More than 70% of the events of this Winter Olympics are in the mountains, and the temperature on the mountains is below minus 20 degrees Celsius.
No wonder some people commented, "Hydrogen energy vehicles can be there, there is something it really is."
The question is, how come such an all-powerful, hexagonal warrior's hydrogen energy vehicle has not seen a few on the street? One day in the future, can we drive such a car without mileage anxiety?
A perfect solution
Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are known as the "ultimate form" of near-perfect vehicle energy.
Needless to say, let's pick a few key points at random.
Eco-friendly enough. Each kilogram of gasoline, after combustion, produces 2.9251 kilograms of carbon dioxide. The hydrogen energy vehicle, with the richest and most clean energy in the universe - hydrogen as the energy source, emits only water and does not produce any polluting substances.
Energy is inexhaustible. Hydrogen energy is a well-known renewable energy, in addition to the production of hydrogen with industrial by-products, it can also be produced by hydrogen from coal and by electrolysis of renewable energy such as photovoltaics and wind power.
highly efficient. The energy density of hydrogen energy is 3 times that of gasoline and 150 times that of lithium batteries. Vehicles that rely on this ultra-high energy density drive can easily reach or even exceed existing fuel vehicles. The new Toyota Mirai model sold in the North American market has a measured cruising range of 1,003 kilometers in overseas tests.
Perfectly avoid the shortcomings of pure trams - not afraid of low temperatures, energy replenishment takes only a few minutes. The hydrogen energy vehicles put into use during the Winter Olympics have been able to achieve a cold start below -30 degrees Celsius.
Source / Visual China
In order to achieve this ultimate form, European car companies began to lay out hydrogen fuel cells 20 years ago, and Japan and South Korea are still immersed in research and development today.
Friends who have studied chemistry know that hydrogen and oxygen react chemically to produce energy and water. This is also the basic working principle of hydrogen energy vehicles.
On the specific path, hydrogen energy vehicles have currently derived two technical routes. Since hydrogen is a combustible gas, it can naturally be used through combustion by the internal combustion engine, which has given birth to a special research and development of hydrogen energy internal combustion engine. But direct combustion of hydrogen is very dangerous.
The market is more about choosing the route of hydrogen fuel cells. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles rely on the electrochemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen in hydrogen fuel cell stacks to generate electrical energy.
To sum up, compared with pure trams, hydrogen energy vehicles have a long endurance, fast hydrogenation, and no mileage anxiety; compared with fuel vehicles, hydrogen energy vehicles are clean and environmentally friendly enough.
The flaw behind the halo
Theoretically, hydrogen energy vehicles represent the future, and hydrogen fuel cell technology is enough to explode oil and lithium batteries. However, the harsh reality is that hydrogen energy vehicles are rubbed on the ground by electric vehicles and hybrid fuel vehicles.
In 2021, Tesla alone sold 936,000 electric vehicles. As for hydrogen energy vehicles, the global total is not as good as a fraction of Tesla's sales.
In 2020, a total of 9,006 hydrogen energy vehicles were sold worldwide, including 937 in the United States, 1,177 in China, and 5,823 in South Korea. Statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers show that from 2016 to 2020, the cumulative sales volume in China in five years is only 7100 units.
The more than 1,000 hydrogen energy vehicles running at the Beijing Winter Olympics are only demonstration pilots.
After so many years, the development of hydrogen energy vehicles has been as slow as a turtle speed. Companies that once bet on the hydrogen energy route are now fleeing.
On April 23, 2020, Daimler-owned Mercedes-Benz announced that it will terminate its plans to develop hydrogen fuel cell passenger cars and will stop producing the only fuel cell model, the GLC F-CELL. In June 2021, SAIC Motor issued an announcement to terminate the research and development of the fuel cell vehicle forward-looking technology project.
In the 1970s, Japan had already invested in hydrogen energy. However, toshiro Mibe, the new CEO of Japanese car giant Honda, has backed off on his own: Honda had determined 10 years ago that hydrogen fuel technology would not become mainstream.
Chen Qizhong, founder and chief engineer of Deqing Power, told Shentu: "The biggest problem in the development of hydrogen energy vehicles lies in the high cost - the cost of the whole life cycle. ”
Electric vehicles were also expensive at that time, especially the price of lithium batteries, which accounted for 40% of the cost, remained high. However, with the large-scale mass production, the high cost of research and development and production costs have been shared. The cost of electric vehicles is gradually decreasing.
Source / pexels
But hydrogen energy vehicles are different. Hydrogen does not exist alone in this world, it requires four processes of hydrogen production, hydrogen transportation, hydrogen storage, and hydrogenation, and the cost of each link is not low.
The price of hydrogen is too high, the current price is about 60-80 yuan / kg. Taking the 10.5-meter-class hydrogen fuel cell bus as an example, if the price of hydrogen is 60 yuan / kg, a hydrogen fuel cell bus spends at least 302,000 yuan per year on the purchase and use of hydrogen.
Hydrogen is active, and transporting and storing hydrogen is also a problem. Domestic hydrogen is mainly stored and transported in a gaseous manner. This way the cost is lower, but even then the transportation cost is as high as 10 yuan / 100km. Moreover, in the transportation link, the 40-ton long-tube trailer can only transport about 400kg of hydrogen, which is extremely inefficient.
Infrastructure facilities such as hydrogen refueling stations are still very imperfect. At the end of 2021, there will be only 12 hydrogen refueling stations in the UK, far less than the number of gas stations and public charging points. According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, by the end of 2020, the cumulative number of hydrogen refueling stations built in China has just exceeded 110.
Excluding hydrogen, the cost of a hydrogen energy vehicle is equally expensive. Like electric vehicles, the core structure of hydrogen energy vehicles is a hydrogen fuel cell system. The system is mainly divided into four parts: the stack, the hydrogen supply system, the air system and the thermal management system. Stacks are the most expensive.
In fuel cell stacks, platinum is needed as a catalyst – platinum, yes, platinum, which is rarer than gold. Adding such a precious metal is difficult to think of as expensive as it is. At present, the price per kilowatt stack is: about 2,000 yuan for graphite plates and about 3,000 yuan for metal plates.
"The higher cost of fuel cells leads to higher purchase costs for hydrogen energy vehicles." Chen Qizhong said.
In December 2020, Toyota announced the official launch of the second-generation Mirai, with a minimum price of 5.7 million yen (about 357,100 yuan).
"Insufficient capital investment is also another objective reason for restricting the development of the industry." Chen Qizhong added. The development of the new generation of energy vehicles has two directions, one is the direction of lithium battery electric vehicles, and the other is the direction of hydrogen energy vehicles. But few OEMs choose to walk on two legs, after all, every technical route is very expensive. At present, only a small number of OEMs have chosen to continue to develop hydrogen energy.
When can I drive a hydrogen energy car?
So will people still have a chance to buy a hydrogen energy vehicle with a long battery life and zero emissions?
Enough choking.
Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen Group, directly dismissed hydrogen energy passenger cars: "You will not see any hydrogen energy passenger cars, and the idea of applying hydrogen fuel cell technology in a large-scale market is too optimistic to be possible in 10 years, because the physics behind this is unreasonable." ”
This is not because Dis can't eat grapes and say that grapes are sour, on the contrary, Dis sees it very clearly.
As mentioned earlier, hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, hydrogen transportation, hydrogenation and battery costs, each link is a big mountain in front of mass production.
More importantly, the electric vehicle market has exploded, and it is difficult for hydrogen energy vehicles to catch up.
Tsinghua University professor Ouyang Minggao once pointed out: "Fuel cell cars, if you want to compete with pure electric cars, it is unlikely. Now that the pure electric car market has exploded, it is unlikely to change to hydrogen fuel in the medium and long term. But there is a local market, such as the fuel cell car with good performance now, it is possible to sell 10,000 vehicles in the next 5 years, after all, there are many fans of fuel cell cars. ”
"Therefore, the consensus of the industry is that hydrogen energy is more suitable for long-distance transportation scenarios, while electric vehicles are more suitable for urban distribution, city buses, and regional transportation." Chen Qizhong pointed out.
After all, the range of pure electric vehicles is limited, the battery pack weight is too large, and the charging time is too long. However, hydrogen energy has no mileage limit, and the energy replenishment time is short, which is naturally suitable for long-distance transportation.
For example, heavy trucks, whose routes are relatively fixed, are mainly highways. Then people only need to build a few hydrogen refueling stations on a fixed route, and there is no need to spread hydrogen refueling stations across the country like electric vehicles. The investment in hydrogen refueling stations is much smaller than that of passenger cars, and the cost will be reduced a lot.
But there is still a long way to go if hydrogen-powered trucks and long-distance buses are really running on the road.
Chen Qizhong gave two solutions: First, reduce the cost of hydrogen, which needs to wait for a period of time, about 5-10 years. Second, improve "fuel cell" technology. For example, to broaden the adaptability of fuels, fuel cells should technically allow the direct use of other fuels such as natural gas and gas in addition to using hydrogen as fuel, avoiding the impact of high hydrogen prices. In addition, the product rating is improved and fuel efficiency is improved.
"The improvement or improvement of fuel cell technical indicators can make fuel cell technology commercially available on a large scale." Chen Qizhong concluded.
Looking back at the original question, can hydrogen energy vehicles call electric vehicles?
From a worldwide perspective, lithium batteries have occupied the mainstream, and hydrogen energy vehicles are difficult to become the "next electric vehicle". But hydrogen energy is indeed an outlet, but this wind blows towards commercial vehicles. More graphically, they all start from the "carbon emission reduction" site, and now driving on different tracks, the technical route of electric vehicles runs faster, but hydrogen energy has gradually found its own rhythm and gameplay.
*The caption image is from Visual China.