"In 2024, Tesla will switch from batteries to hydrogen!" On April 1, Musk sent out a rather heavy tweet, admitting that he had been wrong about "fuel cells = fool sells."
However, Musk quickly deleted the tweet, combined with the news he posted on April 1 every year, such as "Tesla has completely bankrupt" and "Dogecoin will be put on the moon", indicating that this is more like another April Fool's joke by Musk.
Musk has been dismissive of hydrogen fuel cells for years, and Volkswagen GROUP CEO Diess also believes that hydrogen fuel cells are not practical for cars because they are "too expensive, inefficient, slow, and difficult to promote and transport".
In fact, the debate over who is the end of the new energy vehicle for hydrogen and lithium has been going on for decades.
Due to the zero carbon emissions of hydrogen fuel cells, high energy density, fast charging speed, coupled with the support of governments, the "hydrogen" party is full of confidence in it, firmly believe that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will replace lithium battery vehicles, and it is only a matter of time before the cost drops sharply.
There is a lot of controversy, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in it, experienced the promotion in Japan, the low tide after the explosion of the Norwegian hydrogen refueling station, and then today's vigorous onslaught of commercial vehicles, has gradually come to a new stage.
"Judging from the scenes of demonstration operations in various places, the comprehensive development of hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicles has entered the multi-scenario demonstration application of commercial vehicles." On March 26 this year, Wan Gang, vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology, made this judgment at the 8th China Electric Vehicle 100 Forum.
On March 23, the National Development and Reform Commission also issued the "Medium and Long-term Plan for the Development of hydrogen energy industry (2021-2035)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Planning"), which for the first time defined hydrogen as a low-carbon and green secondary energy, making it clear that hydrogen is an important carrier of energy transformation, coupled with the use of nearly 1,200 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the previous Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games, which further boosted the enthusiasm of all parties for the investment layout of the hydrogen energy industry.
It is worth noting that many projects have begun to launch the technical solution of "hydrogen energy heavy truck + automatic driving".
However, from the perspective of commercial applications, autonomous driving technology and hydrogen energy heavy trucks are not yet fully mature, is it valuable to integrate the two now? What practical advantages and landing difficulties will you encounter? Is the combination of hydrogen fuel cells and autonomous driving technology necessary or a kind of radicalization?
Hydrogen energy self-driving trucks, early adopters
In the past two years, a number of autonomous driving companies have been laid out in the field of hydrogen fuel cell trucks, and some fuel cell companies have quietly invested in autonomous driving companies.
For example, Xiongtao shares have vigorously developed hydrogen fuel cells in recent years, and have laid out the upstream, middle and lower reaches of hydrogen fuel cells, and have also successively obtained some supporting orders for hydrogen fuel cells, which is a leader in the domestic hydrogen fuel cell industry.
In April 2020, Xiongtao Co., Ltd. announced the completion of a strategic investment in self-driving enterprise Xijing Technology, and plans to jointly develop unmanned hydrogen energy vehicles in ports with the port as the entry point.
In September 2020, Shenlan Technology announced that it had reached a strategic cooperation with Shanghai Qingneng, a subsidiary of Qingneng Co., Ltd., to cooperate with the AI intelligent fuel cell vehicle system platform and use artificial intelligence technology to optimize the overall energy consumption and energy management of mass-produced fuel cells.
In February 2021, Shenlan Technology also received a large order for hydrogen fuel cell autonomous driving heavy trucks, saying that it plans to complete the delivery of more than 1,000 automatic driving hydrogen energy heavy trucks within 2 years.
Qingneng co., Ltd. is also one of the first enterprises to start the research and development and production of fuel cells. In 2020, Qingneng co., Ltd. established a hydrogen energy vehicle company Hyzon Motors in the United States, the main product is hydrogen fuel cell commercial vehicles, and then, Hyzon Motors was listed on the NASDAQ, which attracted the attention of US stock investors.
In 2021, Hyzon Motors announced a partnership with british autonomous driving company AIDRIVERS to jointly develop and produce autonomous hydrogen fuel cell trucks, and the first trucks are expected to be delivered in 2022.
Great Wall Motors is also eyeing hydrogen energy, in addition to releasing the hydrogen energy vision, it also established if technology in 2021, according to media reports, in the landing scene, if the technology chooses a hydrogen fuel cell self-driving truck.
The Gansu Expressway commercialization project, which will be built in a few years, which is only open to self-driving trucks, also adopts the "driverless technology + hydrogen energy heavy truck" technology scheme, and the new intelligent driving has previously been exclusively detailed: "Stirring up the car road to cooperate with the rivers and lakes!" The first truly commercial highway for driverless vehicles is coming.
Yutong Bus with their self-driving hydrogen fuel bus debuted at this year's electric vehicle 100 people meeting, according to the introduction, Yutong's bus uses electric hybrid system, with automatic acceleration and deceleration, automatic steering, vehicle-road coordination and other functions, to achieve L3 level automatic driving capabilities.
In addition, there are also hydrogen fuel cell autonomous driving heavy truck Xingsuo No. 1 released by Guangzhou Hanhe Automobile in 2020, and the unmanned hydrogen-powered concept truck TrailerDrone displayed by Hyundai Motor in 2021, all of which claim to be driverless, driving nearly 1,000 kilometers after a single hydrogen charge.
For example, Huang Chendong, former senior vice president of Weilai Automobile, founded Qianchen Automobile, and also explored the direction of hydrogen fuel cell autonomous trucks in the early stage, and DeepWay, an autonomous driving truck company co-incubated by Baidu hand in hand with Shiqiao, adopted a hydrogen-electric platform modular design in its products, indicating that it can be compatible with hydrogen fuel cell drives.
Huang Chendong revealed to the media that the team's original intention of doing hydrogen fuel cell autonomous driving heavy trucks at that time, and also obtained angel round financing, "(its) technology content is very high, but commercialization is not easy to sell, from investors and users to get two completely different feedback." Users feel that this car will take a while to use, investors feel that it is very good to do this, with fuel cells and automatic driving, the threshold is very high. ”
In addition to investor optimism, the important reason why companies choose the "automatic driving + hydrogen energy heavy truck" scheme is that it can save the cost of the vehicle to a certain extent and improve the efficiency of fuel cells.
For example, Ding Kaiwen, vice president of Jiangling Heavy Duty Truck Technology Development Research Institute, once said that the price of a hydrogen energy heavy truck is more than one million yuan, mainly transporting goods, so the safety acceptance of new technologies is higher, "for car companies, the new technologies equipped with them have more room for development."
In addition, due to the high cost of hydrogen energy heavy trucks, and automatic driving technology can save drivers' labor expenses, and is not affected by operating time, which makes hydrogen energy heavy trucks expected to become a new business model with economy.
Chuancai Securities believes that since automatic driving and hydrogen energy heavy trucks have considerable matching degrees in application scenarios and development stages, "the integration and application of two new technologies of automatic driving and hydrogen energy heavy trucks will strengthen the cost reduction advantage brought about by hydrogen energy utilization, and is expected to accelerate the commercial landing of hydrogen energy heavy trucks."
On the other hand, if hydrogen fuel cells want to be mass-produced on commercial vehicles, there are still a series of problems such as insufficient durability, power density and high cost.
Li Jianqiu, dean of the School of Vehicle and Vehicle Transportation at Tsinghua University, found that intelligent network technology will be one of the key technologies to solve the heat dissipation problem of hydrogen fuel cells.
For example, on the highway, if two cars are driven in a row, when the distance is 4 meters, the first car can save 18.9% of the wind resistance coefficient compared with the single car, and the second car can save 75% of the wind resistance coefficient.
"If three vehicles are driven together, its energy consumption is only 75% of each vehicle driving alone, that is, energy saving efficiency can reach more than 25%."
Li Jianqiu believes that through the intelligent fleet and intelligent driving technology, the power of the fuel cell engine can be greatly reduced, thereby solving the problem of heat dissipation of the whole vehicle.
Technical implementation is not difficult, commercial landing is not easy
"We expect that by around 2025, if the wind resistance coefficient of heavy trucks is reduced to 0.35, the efficiency of fuel cells will be increased from the current 45% to 52%, then due to the technology of queue driving and intelligent driving, at the speed per 100 kilometers per hour, the energy consumption of bicycles will drop from the current 13.87 kg to 6.8 kg in the queue driving environment."
This means that by 2025, 14 kilograms of hydrogen will be able to run twice the distance it has today, and the mileage will be increased by 100%, and the effect is very significant.
Li Jianqiu said that commercial vehicles need technological change, and this technological change will be the basis for promoting the development of new energy intelligent commercial vehicles in the future.
However, it should be noted that the original electronic and electrical technology of heavy trucks lags behind passenger cars, and diesel engines are also used, if you want to use the "hydrogen fuel cell + automatic driving" technology solution on heavy trucks, it will make the vehicle to complete the transformation of electrification and intelligence at the same time, which is not difficult to do in technology, but it is not easy to achieve mass production commercial landing.
Tan Changyu, chief engineer of DeepWay, told New Smart Drive that in terms of the underlying drive of the car, hydrogen fuel cells and lithium batteries are the same.
According to Bosch's classic five-domain classification, the vehicle can be divided into power domain (safety), chassis domain (vehicle movement), cockpit domain/intelligent information domain (infotainment), autonomous driving domain (assisted driving) and body domain (body electronics).
Among them, the traditional power domain of the automobile refers to the transmission device from the engine to the drive wheel, which is generally composed of clutch, transmission, transmission shaft, main reducer, differential and half shaft, etc., which is the basic guarantee for the car to carry out various actions (acceleration, deceleration, reversing, turning, etc.).
Composition of automotive transmission system Picture from the paper "Research on Electronically Controlled Electric Shift mechanism and drive technology"
"The traditional truck still provides a certain amount of torque and speed power through the engine, and then reduces it through the gearbox, and then decelerates it through the drive shaft to drive the wheels, which is all traditional machinery."
Tan Changyu believes that with the development of electronic electrification of trucks, the axles of cars will be driven by electricity, "and the energy forms that provide electricity at the front end can be various, such as hydrogen, methanol or lithium batteries, etc., but their underlying driving logic is the same."
From the perspective of the reaction principle of hydrogen fuel cells, hydrogen fuel cells mainly use hydrogen as a reducing agent, oxygen as an oxidant, and generate electrical energy and generate water after redox reaction.
According to the different electrolytes, fuel cells can also be divided into different categories, and the current development of more rapid proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC), a single PEMFC mainly includes bipolar plates, proton exchange membranes and catalysts, etc., water is the only by-product of hydrogen fuel cell reaction.
The picture comes from the paper "Research on Optimal Matching and Control Strategy of Energy and Power System of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car"
Because hydrogen fuel cells are applied to electric vehicles, there will be some problems such as slow start, slow dynamic response, and inability to recover braking energy, in addition, if the output conditions of the PEMFC fluctuate significantly with the load, it will also reduce its service life.
Therefore, in the actual application of automobiles, in order to overcome the above problems encountered, the most feasible solution is generally to combine auxiliary energy sources such as batteries and capacitors with PEMFC to supply power together with a multi-energy system.
In the vehicle hydrogen-electric platform developed by DeepWay, according to Tan Changyu, the hydrogen fuel cell and the power battery on the car are parallel systems, "The hydrogen fuel cell can generate electricity directly to drive the electric drive axle or distributed drive bridge system of the car, and can also be driven by hydrogen fuel cells and lithium batteries at the same time; the electricity generated by hydrogen can also be stored in the power battery, and the power battery is controlled and driven." ”
Therefore, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and lithium battery vehicles, in addition to the modules of the power system part are different, from the overall drive architecture, they are no difference, which is also one of the underlying logics of DeepWay's attempt to achieve hydrogen-electric platform design.
In addition, from the perspective of research and development costs, if a lithium battery car platform has been developed, and then a hydrogen fuel cell platform is developed on this basis, the development cost will not increase much.
"The cost of developing a hydrogen-powered same platform and a pure lithium battery platform and compared to the original increased by only 10-20%." Tan Changyu said.
The automatic driving system has higher requirements for the accuracy, reliability and real-time nature of the vehicle steering system, so when the hydrogen fuel cell system is integrated with the automatic driving technology, will the technical realization be further difficult?
In this regard, Tan Changyu said that hydrogen fuel cells or lithium batteries actually only affect the power domain in the vehicle architecture, and the automatic driving technology in the intelligent driving domain of the car can communicate with the chassis and power system itself.
"Hydrogen fuel engines, which have their own independent algorithms, when the car's smart driving domain needs to be accelerated, it only needs to provide sufficient power, which can be achieved through protocols and software."
Tan Changyu believes that whether it is the use of hydrogen power, lithium batteries or diesel to achieve automatic driving, from the technical difficulty, there is not much superposition of things, "for example, DeepWay's Xingtu 1 generation, if it is an automatic driving system verified on the tram, if you want to change to the hydrogen fuel cell system application, what you have to do may be just some adaptive calibration, rather than saying that you have to develop it again from scratch." ”
However, the biggest problem of "automatic driving + hydrogen energy heavy truck" lies in the commercialization of the program.
Like the aforementioned Huang Chendong, at the beginning of the business also tried the "automatic driving + hydrogen energy heavy truck" technology solution, "at that time we also got the angel wheel money, but then felt a little farther away from the market, so we temporarily gave up."
Hydrogen fuel cells entering the passenger car market?
In the field of transportation, the domestic application of hydrogen energy presents the characteristics of the first development of hydrogen fuel cell commercial vehicles and the development of hydrogen fuel cell passenger vehicles, and the main demonstration applications of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are concentrated in logistics, buses and other fields.
According to Li Jianqiu, in the heavy-duty truck sector, pure electric heavy-duty trucks below 500 kilometers have basically achieved commercialization, so the market that can be left for the key strategies of hydrogen fuel cells is only the heavy-duty truck market of more than 800-1000 kilometers.
This market segment is quite sensitive to vehicle prices and battery life, and most of the current prices of diesel heavy trucks are concentrated in the range of 380,000 yuan to 500,000 yuan.
However, in general, from the upstream production of green hydrogen, hydrogen transportation, hydrogen storage, hydrogenation, to the research and development, production and application of hydrogen fuel cells and systems in the middle and lower reaches, the entire industrial chain of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is still immature in China and is still in the stage of product introduction.
Therefore, as mentioned above, companies that plan to produce autonomous hydrogen energy heavy trucks are currently in the research and development stage, or only prototypes/concept cars are displayed, and the cost of bicycles is high.
According to an industry insider, the current price of an autonomous hydrogen energy heavy truck is at least more than 2 million yuan.
"At present, the price of 1,000 watts of hydrogen fuel cells is about 5,000 yuan, and for long-distance trunk logistics heavy trucks, it is basically necessary to match 240 kilowatts of hydrogen at a time, close to 240 yuan." We have calculated that the cost of a hydrogen fuel cell engine is close to 1.2 million yuan. ”
Even if the government subsidizes enterprises by 35 yuan per kilogram of hydrogen, he calculates that from the perspective of vehicle operation, the current diesel heavy truck runs for every 100 kilometers, the cost is about 210 yuan, while the cost of hydrogen energy heavy trucks is about 350 yuan for every 100 kilometers.
"The full life cycle of a heavy truck can operate about 1.2 million kilometers, if you operate a hydrogen fuel cell heavy truck now, from the calculation of the entire life cycle, compared with the diesel heavy truck, the cost will increase by more than 1 million yuan."
The high cost makes the commercialization of hydrogen fuel cell heavy trucks not progress smoothly.
According to the statistics of the Hydrogen and Electricity Research Institute (GGII) of The High Industry, Industry and Research Institute, by the end of 2021, there are 243 hydrogen refueling stations under construction and construction nationwide, and the sales of fuel cell vehicles in 2021 are only 1894 (traffic insurance data), far less than expected.
However, due to the frequent emergence of industrial subsidies and state support policies, since last year, the capital market's attention to the hydrogen energy industry has increased significantly, and the financing cases in the market have also increased significantly.
According to the statistics of Shi Yingzhe, deputy director of the Securities and Futures Research Institute of the Central University of Finance and Economics, from 2019 to 2021, a total of 391 hydrogen energy-related policies have been proposed across the country, but the number of hydrogen energy policies released by various localities last year alone reached 279.
"In addition, the data can be seen that from 2015 to 2018, the scale of the domestic hydrogen industry fund is about 22 billion yuan, but in the years from 2019 to 2021, more than 63 billion yuan has been invested, in fact, the relevant financial support has become more and more powerful recently."
Therefore, combined with the hydrogen energy development goals of local governments, Shi Yingzhe expects that the output value of the domestic hydrogen energy industry is expected to reach 800 billion yuan by 2025, the output value is expected to reach 1.55 trillion yuan by 2030, and the sales volume of fuel cell vehicles is expected to reach 76,000 units, and it is expected to exceed 200,000 units by 2030.
The automotive team of Tianfeng Securities predicts that the cost of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will decline with the advancement of technology and the maturity of the industry, and by 2030-2050, its life cycle cost will gradually surpass pure electric models in the field of logistics vehicles, buses, heavy trucks and passenger cars.
The technical team of the Transportation Planning and Design Institute of CCCC First Highway Survey and Design Institute Co., Ltd. is also quite optimistic about the prospects of hydrogen fuel cell commercial vehicles.
They now have several projects in their hands that plan to build road infrastructure with hydrogen fuel vehicles as the core, "today's hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are like lithium battery cars a decade ago." Hydrogen projects are now being done not for profit, but for the sake of taking the lead in five years and recovering costs in ten years."
According to the introduction, about 60% of the current carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation industry come from about 63 million medium- and heavy-duty trucks, which are driven by today's diesel power systems and carry goods many times heavier than themselves and travel hundreds of kilometers a day. These characteristics make cargo transportation a key link in the transportation industry that is difficult to reduce emissions.
The technical team of CCCC No. 1 Public Court believes that the conversion of new and old kinetic energy for highway infrastructure projects with hydrogen energy as the core is crucial to accelerating the formation of a green and low-carbon transportation mode.
The team told the new intelligent driving that the lithium battery, as the power source of the car, is not a big problem for the passenger car, but for the electric heavy truck that pulls the goods, it cannot work in extremely cold working conditions, and the battery life is also a big problem.
Trunk logistics exists in the national road network, which requires a more universal source of power, which hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will have more promotion value than lithium battery vehicles.
"For example, if you change the heavy truck, you can only run 100 kilometers with a full load, which is still in the case of a suitable temperature, and the initial construction cost of this program plus the operation and maintenance cost in the later stage is not as good as the traditional diesel vehicle program."
In addition, for the same load of 40 tons, the need for 800 kilometers of endurance, lithium battery car energy storage required weight of 11040 kg, while hydrogen fuel vehicles only need 88 kg, so they believe that in the long-distance, large-load characteristics of commercial vehicle scenarios, lithium batteries in terms of weight and volume is not the optimal solution.
"Lithium batteries are more suitable for short-distance travel in the passenger transport field or around the city, it replaces gasoline vehicles, and the ultimate power solution for trunk logistics heavy trucks is hydrogen fuel cells, which replace diesel vehicles." The team analyzed that it will be difficult for hydrogen fuel cells to enter the passenger car market, and it is not necessary or economically feasible.
Tan Changyu believes that in the long run, hydrogen fuel cells will replace lithium batteries, but in the short and medium term, the two are co-existing.
summary
Like lithium batteries, hydrogen fuel cells are not a new invention, but why is the commercial development of the latter far less than the former?
In 1839, William Robert Grove of the Royal Society proposed the idea of reverse use of hydrogen-oxygen combination power generation based on the principle of water electrolysis, and the world's first hydrogen fuel cell appeared.
In 2013, Hyundai developed the world's first mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell vehicle fucson ix, and in 2014, Toyota followed the release of the world's second mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, and the Japanese government also attached great importance to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, but commercialization has been slow for many years.
Will this phenomenon be repeated domestically?
An industry driven by policies is the most noteworthy thing to pay attention to is also the change in the wind direction of policies.
The founder of an investment institution that has long been concerned about the automotive industry pointed out to the new intelligent driving that although the domestic industrial subsidies and support policies for hydrogen energy have risen recently, compared with the support for lithium battery vehicles in the policy 10 years ago, it is still cautious and inferior.
"The core key technologies of the hydrogen energy and fuel cell industry, such as stack technology, are not controlled by the country, but by Toyota, and the current domestic industrial subsidies and support policies are more to encourage research and development, not to vigorously commercialize it."
The investor analyzed that if one day the core key technologies in the hydrogen energy and fuel cell industry in China can make breakthroughs and lead, it will be the stage of policy and industrial subsidies to vigorously support its commercial development.
There is a Russian proverb: "If you want to be the wife of a general, you must first marry a lieutenant and live with him for twenty years on the border, in the forest, in the desert." ”
The commercial development of the "automatic driving + hydrogen energy heavy truck" technology program may take a long time to get out of the laboratory and come to the real world to face the wind.
Resources:
3. Tiantian Zhao, Research on Electronically Controlled Electric Shift Mechanism and Drive Technology, 2015 - Dalian University of Technology: Precision Instruments and Machinery
4. Wen Yanbing, Research on Optimal Matching and Control Strategy of Energy and Power System of Hydrogen Fuel Cell Car, 2016-Shandong University of Technology
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