After the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the development of the hydrogen energy industry will enter the fast lane, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will also officially enter the key development plans of several major economies around the world.
Following the Tokyo Olympics, the Beijing Winter Olympics once again blew a "hydrogen energy whirlwind". Among the many products, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are undoubtedly the most eye-catching, and the aggregation effect of the Olympic Games will also boost the industrialization process of this "new species" in a great intensity.
The star of the Beijing Winter Olympics
The history of the development of hydrogen energy vehicles can be traced back to the 19th century, but it was not until 2017 that Toyota launched the world's first hydrogen energy car Mirai, that it really took the step of industrialization. After nearly a decade of development, there are only 50,000 hydrogen energy vehicles in the world, and as many as 2,000 hydrogen energy vehicles have appeared on the stage at the last two Olympic Games. Among them, there are more than 600 units at the Tokyo Olympic Games and more than 1200 units at the Beijing Winter Olympics. The two Olympic Games have provided a large-scale fuel cell vehicle demonstration site worldwide, and the Beijing Winter Olympics have surpassed Tokyo in the total number of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles invested, battery power, performance, etc.
According to the data released by the Beijing Winter Olympic Organizing Committee, the Beijing Winter Olympics demonstrated the operation of more than 1,000 hydrogen energy vehicles, including hydrogen fuel cell buses, hydrogen fuel cell cars, hydrogen fuel cell special vehicles, etc. These cars mainly come from domestic brand car companies. Beiqi Foton supplied 649 hydrogen fuel cell buses, Yutong Bus 100 buses, and China FAW's 5 Hongqi H5 hydrogen fuel cell passenger cars. In addition, Geely Interstellar Bus and others joined the "hydrogen car show".
As a global sponsor of the Olympic Games and the owner of the highest technical level of hydrogen energy passenger cars in the world, Toyota delivered 140 hydrogen fuel cell passenger cars Mirai and 107 hydrogen fuel cell welfare vehicles COASTER to the Games.
In addition, the Winter Olympics are equipped with more than 30 hydrogen refueling stations to ensure the supply of hydrogen energy during the competition.
Advantages of hydrogen energy vehicles
"New energy vehicles" mainly include lithium battery vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. After more than ten years of development, the global industrial chain of lithium battery vehicles has been relatively mature, and the current number of lithium battery vehicles has reached 10 million units.
In contrast, the development of hydrogen energy vehicles is still in its early stages. Compared with lithium batteries, hydrogen energy vehicles have obvious advantages in terms of low temperature resistance, endurance and charging time. These advantages were fully reflected in the Beijing Winter Olympics.
There are three venues in Beijing, except for the Beijing Stadium, Yanqing and Zhangjiakou are both mountainous and face an extremely cold climate in winter. In view of this, the "Beijing Winter Olympics Low-carbon Management Report (Pre-competition)" put forward the principle of "electricity in plains and hydrogen in mountains" to build a low-carbon transportation system for the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Hydrogen fuel cells have superior low temperature performance, which can achieve -30 °C low temperature start and -40 °C low temperature storage. The mileage of the bus loaded with the domestic brand hydrogen fuel cell is about 300 kilometers, and the mileage of the group car can reach 500 kilometers, and the refueling can ensure the normal driving of the vehicle for one day. In terms of key technical performance, the current density of domestic stacks and the volume power density of stacks have been improved, ensuring that the vehicles equipped with them have enough power to drive normally in mountainous and steep slope terrain environments. In terms of hydrogen refueling time, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles only need 10-15 minutes to fill up, while lithium batteries often take more than three hours.
Hydrogen: The ultimate energy source
The above characteristics have made fuel cell vehicles play a big role in this Beijing Winter Olympics. The demonstration practice of the Winter Olympics has made people full of greater hope for the future development of fuel cell vehicles, because fuel cells have more strategic value in "low carbon" than lithium batteries.
After years of development of lithium battery vehicles in mainland China, the treatment of the first batch of end-of-life batteries has been put on the agenda. According to statistics, the number of power batteries that need to be decommissioned in mainland China will reach 200,000 tons in 2020, and this number is expected to rise to 800,000 tons in 2025. The emissions of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are water, and there is no problem of disposing of waste batteries, so it is called the "ultimate energy".
There are three types of hydrogen production, "gray hydrogen" is hydrogen production through fossil fuels, and "blue hydrogen" adds carbon capture and carbon storage technology in the process of hydrogen production by petrochemical materials, but both hydrogen production methods involve carbon emissions. The cleanest way is "green hydrogen", also known as electrolyzed water to produce hydrogen. The biggest problem with green hydrogen is that electricity consumption is large, if the use of wind, photovoltaic and other renewable energy generation, you can ensure that the hydrogen used in fuel cell vehicles from the source is clean and pollution-free, is the best way to achieve low-carbon environmental protection.
The emission reduction effect of hydrogen energy vehicles is obvious. Taking buses as an example, ordinary fuel vehicles consume 35 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers, and carbon emissions per 100 kilometers are 94.8 kilograms. For example, fuel cell buses reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 94.8 kg per 100 kilometers per vehicle.
Tokyo Olympics premiere "Hydrogen Car Show"
If China's hydrogen energy industry has only exploded in the past two or three years, Japan's hydrogen strategy has been "planned for a long time". The Tokyo Olympics were seen by the government as a strategic opportunity to demonstrate Japan's new technological transformations.
In order to get rid of the long-term economic downturn and take off the hat of "lost thirty years", the Japanese government vigorously developed new energy, and once adopted a "two-foot strategy" of nuclear energy and hydrogen energy. After the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2013, he focused on the innovation and development of hydrogen energy, hoping to lead the global "fourth energy revolution" and return to the peak of world science and technology. In the past decade, the Japanese government and enterprises have invested heavily in the hydrogen energy industry, and the research and development budget is the second largest in the world, second only to the European Union, ranking first in the world among individual countries.
By the end of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Japan has gone from leading the world in the construction of hydrogen energy infrastructure systems, and completed the development of the whole industry chain from green hydrogen manufacturing to terminal applications. In terms of hydrogen production, Fukushima Prefecture has built one of the world's largest solar hydrogen production bases; in terms of storage and transportation, Japan uses organic liquid storage and transportation, ammonia carrier, liquid hydrogen storage and transportation methods to import hydrogen from Brunei, Saudi Arabia and Australia; in terms of application, at least 40,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have been put into use, of which, Toyota Mirai has sold 18,000 units worldwide, including 7,000 local sales, and by the end of 2021, Japan will have 157 hydrogen refueling stations in operation, making it the world's largest network of hydrogen refueling stations. And has sold 420,000 units of household hydrogen fuel cell equipment Ene-Farm.
At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Toyota launched a total of 3,700 vehicles, including about 500 hydrogen fuel cell passenger car Mirai and more than 100 hydrogen fuel cell bus SORA, which is the first large-scale demonstration of hydrogen energy vehicles.
The Olympic effect fueled the industrial revolution
Looking at the history of the development of the Olympic Games, it is also a history of the development of scientific and technological revolution, and each Olympic Games will bring about technological changes and productivity improvements. After the 1964 Olympic Games in Japan, Japan's high-speed rail, represented by the Shinkansen, entered a golden period of development. Some experts believe that after the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, the development of the hydrogen energy industry will enter the fast lane, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will also officially enter the key development plans of several major economies around the world.
As early as the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, China began to try to invest in hydrogen fuel cell buses, but only 3 vehicles were launched, and the scale of application demonstration was limited. Two years later, at the Shanghai World Expo, the number of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles put into demonstration operation increased to 196. The Beijing Winter Olympics provide a larger platform for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and domestic car brands are dominant. Although the technology of many fuel cell core components still relies on imports, the rise of domestic stack companies such as Yihuatong and State Power Investment marks the rapid growth of China's hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry.
Toyota provided 2,205 vehicles to the Beijing Winter Olympics, including 140 Mirai and 105 Costa, which is the first time Toyota has introduced the second-generation Mirai hydrogen fuel cell passenger car to the Chinese market and achieved large-scale practical application. The Costa Hydrogen Engine is a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle specially developed for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, and it is also the first time that Toyota Motor has realized the localization of hydrogen fuel cell technology from research and development to production overseas.
At present, the global hydrogen energy industry is still in the early stage of industrialization, there is no mature business model, and almost all of them have to rely on subsidies to develop. However, public opinion believes that the demonstration role of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, coupled with the official rollout of the domestic hydrogen fuel cell vehicle demonstration city cluster project, 2022 or will become a turning point in history, especially to boost the development of China's hydrogen energy industry.
According to incomplete statistics, at present, 30 provinces and more than 150 cities in the country mention hydrogen energy development in their "14th Five-Year Plan", and more than 50 cities have issued special plans for the development of local hydrogen energy industry. Among the listed companies in China, more than 120 companies have planned hydrogen energy related content in their business development. It is expected that by 2025, more than 1,000 hydrogen refueling stations will be built nationwide and more than 54,000 hydrogen fuel vehicles will be promoted. Its ownership will increase to 1 million units by 2030. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have entered the mainstream of the era of science and technology development.