At the end of 2021, Akio Toyoda, the head of Toyota Motor, who has repeatedly shelled electric vehicles, announced his entry into the field of electric vehicles and launched fifteen new cars in his Odaiba showroom. In this regard, many media have carried out relevant reports with the title prefix of "Toyota Akio hit the face". In fact, for Toyota Akio's repeated shelling of electric vehicles, the author believes that its main purpose is to win more time before toyota's key research and development of hydrogen energy vehicles achieve large-scale mass production, so as to achieve a direct leap between hybrid vehicles and hydrogen energy vehicles.
Hydrogen energy vehicles are difficult to popularize!
Unfortunately, a study published in Nature some time ago poured a basin of "cold water" on Toyota, which is in full swing to carry out the research and development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. According to the study, hydrogen fuel cells have three major disadvantages in commercialization, and at the end of the report, the conclusion that "hydrogen fuel cells have completely lost opportunities in commercialization" is put forward. Perhaps many readers will wonder when they see this conclusion, what are the disadvantages of hydrogen fuel cells, so that the authors set this conclusion? Specifically, the three major disadvantages mentioned in the report are as follows:
First, the accelerated development of power batteries has directly squeezed the living space of hydrogen fuel cells. As we all know, since entering 2022, the subsidy policy for new energy vehicles has declined again, for example, pure electric vehicles with a pure electric mileage of more than 400km have been subsidized by 5400 yuan after the decline. Judging from the increasingly stringent subsidy requirements for new energy vehicles, pure electric vehicles with a cruising range of more than 400km have become the norm in the market, and even pure electric vehicles with a range of 1000km have begun to appear on the market. At the same time, 800V supercharge has also begun to be installed on the vehicle, which can realize 15 minutes of charging and 200km. In this context, the advantages of hydrogen energy batteries that originally had long endurance and fast energy replenishment began to weaken.
Second, the popularity of hydrogen energy vehicles is slow. Compared with the popularity of pure electric vehicles, hydrogen energy vehicles can almost be called "turtle speed". According to the data released by the Association of Passenger Vehicles, the retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles reached 2.989 million units in 2021, an increase of 169.1% year-on-year, and the market penetration rate was 14.8%. By the beginning of 2022, the number of pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid models in the world has reached 15 million. In contrast, the number of hydrogen energy vehicles in early 2021 was only 25,000. It can be seen that there is not much time left for the development of hydrogen energy vehicles, which may be why Toyota motor will choose to join the electrification sequence.
Third, hydrogen energy vehicles can not be networked to be improved. In the report, the author put forward a point of view, completely subverting the author's understanding of electric vehicle charging facilities. In the view of the author of the "Report", electric vehicles can not be built on the global grid infrastructure, which also means that the socket connected to the power supply can become a charging pile for electric vehicles. Compared with pure electric vehicles that cannot be simple, the development of hydrogen energy vehicle infrastructure not only has the characteristics of high construction costs, but also has technical problems in the transportation and storage of hydrogen fuel.
Really hopeless?
I have to say that the research that can be listed in "Nature" is extremely authoritative and reference. As soon as the study was released, everyone turned their attention to Toyota. It is understood that Toyota Motor has been conducting research and development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles since 1992. Toyota motor in 1996 launched the first hydrogen fuel cell concept car FCHV-1, followed by more than a dozen hydrogen fuel cell concept cars or modified models.
Based on the data obtained at this stage, Toyota has sold about 12,000 vehicles by 2020 since the start of sales of the Toyota Mirai in December 2014. It should be noted that Toyota Motor, as a car company that has absolute right to speak in the field of hydrogen energy vehicle technology, has always been unable to accept the hydrogen energy vehicles launched by toyota, which also shows that hydrogen energy vehicles are difficult to be optimistic about the market. So is there still a chance for hydrogen energy vehicles to "flip"?
I am conservative about the development of hydrogen energy vehicles, because it is difficult for us to imagine how far the future of technology will develop. However, what we can be sure of is that hydrogen energy vehicles will not be able to achieve large-scale popularization in the short term. Combined with the performance of new energy vehicles, according to the information predicted by experts in the automotive industry, the penetration rate of China's new energy vehicles in 2025 is expected to reach about 20%. It should be noted that this estimated penetration rate is based on the prediction made on the basis of a "small opening" that took fifteen years in China to tear open the new energy vehicle market, coupled with the promotion of the capital market and other aspects.
In contrast, hydrogen energy vehicles, only from the start of toyota motor research and development, after about thirty years of development time, the global cumulative sales scale is still only five figures. It can be seen how difficult it is to promote the development of hydrogen energy vehicles. In this regard, the author believes that hydrogen energy may become one of the power sources of automobiles in the future, but there are still many difficulties in replacing pure electric vehicles, which may be why Akio Toyoda hastily led Toyota to transform to electrification.
summary
The battle between hydrogen energy vehicles and pure electric vehicles has lasted for many years, and perhaps in the eyes of many people, hydrogen energy vehicles are more "advanced" than the power source of pure electric vehicles. However, if we combine the entire automobile production chain of the two models at present, whether it is a hydrogen energy vehicle or a pure electric vehicle, there is "pollution" in the production and manufacturing process. Therefore, compared with hydrogen energy vehicles, the author will be more inclined to pure electric vehicles, after all, compared with hydrogen energy vehicles, the potential energy replenishment facilities of pure electric vehicles seem to be more attractive.