[This column is jointly produced by Tencent Auto and Kung Fu Auction]
2629 words Duration to read 5 minutes.
Hydrogen energy, high heat, zero pollution, abundant reserves, can be called the light of human energy.
As early as 2000, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles were on the same starting line as lithium battery stations.
Hydrogen vehicles represent the future development direction of clean cars and have once become a consensus.
However, 20 years later, hydrogen energy has stagnated, and the new energy industry related to lithium batteries has been in full swing and has become a major outlet in recent years.
Along with a paper policy, the wind direction seems to be beginning to "shift".
Previously, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration jointly issued the "Medium and Long-term Plan for the Development of hydrogen energy industry (2021-2035)", which is also known as the most "gold-containing" plan in the industry.
After this, a large wave of hydrogen energy stocks also rose sharply.
Investment institutions also shouted, trillions of outlet is coming!
All kinds of rumors seem to indicate that hydrogen energy will become a new future for the new energy industry.
So, is the hydrogen energy industry really about to explode? After the story of electric vehicles, China's hydrogen energy story is also about to be told?
As the cost of lithium batteries continues to rise, government subsidies are gradually declining, and the cost performance of electric vehicles has dropped sharply, hydrogen energy vehicles seem to have the opportunity to replace electric vehicles.
(1) Don't think about it! This is hydrogen energy that everyone can 'not afford" for the time being!
So will people still have a chance to buy a hydrogen energy vehicle with a long battery life and zero emissions?
Within ten years, enough choking.
Herbert Diess, CEO of Volkswagen Group, directly rejected hydrogen passenger cars: "You will not see any hydrogen 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." ”
It's not that Dees can't eat grapes and say grapes are sour, on the contrary, Dees sees it very clearly.
The cost is the core barrier restricting the popularization of hydrogen energy.
From the perspective of the development process of lithium batteries, the fundamental reason why it can be popular is that it has achieved leapfrog victory at the cost reduction level.
According to Kung Fu Automobile, in the decade from 2010 to 2020, the average price of lithium-ion battery packs in the world dropped from $1100/kWh to $137/kWh, a drop of nearly 90%.
In contrast, the commercialization of hydrogen energy has still not crossed the cost barrier.
The hydrogen energy industry chain can be roughly divided into hydrogen production, storage and transportation, hydrogen refueling stations, hydrogen fuel cells and other links, in order to promote the popularization of hydrogen energy, the cost of each ring needs to be significantly reduced.
The first is hydrogen production, which is still dominated by fossil fuels in China, but this way of carbon emissions is high, which is not advisable for an industry known as "new energy".
The industrial by-product hydrogen and electrolyzed water to produce hydrogen are high costs and low efficiency, making it difficult to achieve large-scale production.
In addition to the "basic contradiction" of hydrogen production, hydrogen storage is also one of the problems.
Hydrogen storage is not only a headache for the domestic industry, but also in the world, there is no good solution.
At present, the cost of domestic hydrogen storage cylinders is about 27,000 yuan, while the price of supporting facilities is 150,000 yuan.
Benchmarking the United States, the price of hydrogen storage bottles is also around 22,000 yuan, slightly lower than china, but equally high.
Not only the preparation and storage, hydrogen energy is also "very knowledgeable" in transportation, which restricts the expansion of commercial scale.
At present, the main means of hydrogen energy transportation in China is high-pressure gas hydrogen.
High-pressure gas hydrogen transport, the single load is not high, 40 tons of long-tube trailer can only transport about 400kg of hydrogen.
The mainstream hydrogen energy buses are equipped with 35 megapascal hydrogen storage cylinders.
1 megapa is about 10kg, so in this conversion, the "stuck neck" is not hydrogen production, more like transporting hydrogen.
According to agency calculations, the current cost of different forms of hydrogen transportation is roughly 2 US dollars / kg.
In general, the sum of the costs of each link makes the end-use price of hydrogen high, and it is in a relatively disadvantaged position in the comparison with other energy sources.
In other words, the imagination space of hydrogen energy vehicles is large enough, but due to the cost, the reality is still bone for the time being.
For consumers, if they want to buy a hydrogen car, they have to answer the two questions of "affordable" and "affordable".
(2) "Lithium hydrogen" complementarity, is the ultimate attribution of China's new energy?
In theory, hydrogen cars represent the future, enough to explode oil and lithium batteries.
Cruelly, hydrogen vehicles are still rubbed on the ground by electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, and fuel vehicles.
But it is not an exaggeration to say that whether it is a car company or a country, who is the first in hydrogen energy, plays more tricks and plays well, who will have a better chance to dominate the development of future travel modes.
At this stage, Kung Fu Auto believes that hydrogen energy and lithium batteries are not a hostile relationship of "having it without me", but closer to a complementary relationship.
From the perspective of energy replenishment method and mileage, hydrogen energy vehicles are actually closer to traditional cars, and there is no series of shortcomings such as endurance and energy replenishment.
Considering the characteristics of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, it is actually very suitable for the use of long-distance transportation.
In other words, lithium trams are a good alternative to the application scenarios of traditional cars in cities.
In the long-distance transportation scene, it is the home of hydrogen energy vehicles.
After all, hydrogen energy has the advantages of high conversion efficiency and complete pollution-free, and only need to build hydrogen refueling stations along the highway to solve the problem of insufficient coverage of hydrogen refueling stations.
Therefore, hydrogen energy vehicles are the most suitable commercial vehicles at this stage.
From this point of view, hydrogen energy vehicles can achieve "step by step" development.
Focusing on the current "hot" hydrogen energy in the field of passenger cars, more or more hype factors.
Even if you focus your eyes downward on the industrial chain of the two, the starting difficulty of hydrogen vehicles is significantly higher than that of lithium trams.
Although the current lithium battery electric vehicle started faster, it is believed that with the improvement of the entire hydrogen energy industry chain, the development of hydrogen energy vehicles will gradually accelerate and usher in the spring of the industry.
After all, only when "lithium hydrogen" complements each other, people's ideal "carbon neutrality road" will be realized.
(3) About the "hydrogen energy story", is it time to start?
Although hydrogen energy technology is still far from large-scale landing, based on the "trillion market scale", there are still many people who are red in the eye.
According to Kung Fu Automobile, as of now, 26 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country have introduced hydrogen energy development policies.
It is not difficult to see that the "policy soil" has been established, and hydrogen energy vehicles are almost a "good story".
Just like the early days of lithium trams, the new forces of car-making tell stories, play with concepts, give investors space to imagine, take the opportunity to pull up stock prices, and use this routine to attract financing to complete their own development.
The root of all this is based on the future of pure electric power with sufficient imagination.
The future of hydrogen energy vehicles is even more potential for development than lithium batteries.
Underneath this, there may be no shortage of people from all walks of life flocking to try.
So, will the historical process of the development of hydrogen energy vehicles also repeat the barbaric development path of the "lithium battery story"?
This may not be necessarily true.
From the perspective of industrial development, the hydrogen energy automotive industry likes both capital and is afraid of capital.
Because the initial development of the industry without capital can not promote the industrialization process, but the profit-seeking attributes of capital, once involved, require enterprises to quickly increase the amount and quickly make a large valuation...
Some companies and some companies in order to quickly develop the listing, will also be like the early stage of the development of pure electric vehicles, such as their own purchase, their own running practices, their own operation of impulse things.
Such a development will bring a huge bubble to the industry and leave hidden dangers for the future development of the industry.
However, Kung Fu Auto still believes that although the madness of the capital market will bring bubbles, under the "limited" and "controllable" bubbles, it can trigger more innovation.
Therefore, in the future of hydrogen energy, it is more necessary to look at the power of the invisible hand of "government supervision".
At the same time, with the development experience of lithium batteries in the front, it is presumably more confident in how to make hydrogen energy vehicles more "stable and powerful" development.
(4) Kung Fu shooting
In fact, in the history of the development of new energy vehicles, it has always been "policy first".
From direction guidance, to strategic planning, to the financial backing of real money and silver, policy is the core factor to promote the development of the industry.
For hydrogen vehicles, the current policy has also made changes in subsidies that are different from electric vehicles.
For example, results-oriented, after the project evaluation and acceptance, can only get the bonus; the clear bonus can not be used for vehicle project investment and hydrogen refueling station construction, can only be used for core technology industrialization, talent introduction, etc.
Obviously, the new measures are not only more stringent, but also much more refined, avoiding the phenomenon of cheating in electric vehicles in the past.
Presumably, through the "channeling" at the policy and strategic levels, coupled with the "deep cultivation" of industry and technology, hydrogen energy vehicles will develop slowly for the time being, but they will not always stagnate here.
For the hydrogen energy vehicle industry, at this stage, there is no need to "hype the story", but also to "concentrate on cultivation".