According to the Nikkei Asian Review, Nissan has announced the suspension of its plans to collaborate with Daimler and Ford on developing fuel cell vehicles, focusing its efforts on electric vehicles. The once-popular hydrogen fuel cell technology has encountered development obstacles in its home country of Japan.
Coincidentally, Ford Motor Company also issued a statement on June 13th, announcing that its fuel cell joint venture with Daimler in Burnaby, British Columbia, will close in the summer of 2018. However, breakups and mergers are common in business. While one company is busy ending its partnership, Audi and Hyundai announced a patent cross-licensing agreement to jointly develop hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
Compared to the technology of pure electric vehicles, why have hydrogen fuel cell vehicles sparked such great controversy internationally? To answer this question, we need to understand not only the technical problems and challenges of hydrogen fuel cells, but also the motivations behind governments' efforts to promote this technology.
Why are hydrogen fuel cell vehicles repeatedly "abandoned"?
From a technical perspective, a fuel cell is an energy conversion device. Unlike a conventional battery, a hydrogen fuel cell is an electrochemical device that combines hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity, water, and heat. The waste products generated by the reaction, besides trace amounts of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides, are mainly water. Fuel cells are 2-3 times more efficient than the simple combustion of hydrogen, and are quiet and pollution-free.
However, given its many advantages, why are fuel cell vehicles being "abandoned" by multiple automakers? This requires a discussion of the hydrogen energy industry chain.
The entire hydrogen energy industry chain comprises hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, transportation and refueling, and hydrogen application. Hydrogen production is the foundation of hydrogen energy application, while hydrogen storage, transportation and refueling are the core guarantees for its application. Different applications represent the main pathways and optimal forms of practical application of hydrogen energy. Based on their position within the industry chain, companies can be broadly categorized into three parts:
Upstream mainly includes hydrogen resource production and transportation;
The midstream segment consists of fuel cell systems, primarily fuel cell stacks and hydrogen storage equipment and accessories;
Downstream is the application sector, including hydrogen refueling stations and new energy vehicle applications.
Having clarified these three stages, let's now look at the problems and challenges faced by each part:
I. Key technologies are difficult to overcome
Those familiar with fuel cell stack components will be no stranger to the core technology of fuel cells—the proton exchange membrane (PEM). However, to date, apart from DuPont in the United States, no other company in the world can commercially supply proton exchange membrane materials for hydrogen fuel cells. There is also a company in Japan that can produce it, but for well-known reasons, this company refuses to sell the product to any country.
II. Excessive Costs
1. The relatively independent and complex power system of fuel cell vehicles directly leads to increased costs. For example, the Toyota Mirai is priced at $69,000, which is much higher than other vehicles in the same class with different power systems.
2. Data shows that currently, it costs more than 10 million yuan to build a hydrogen refueling station with a hydrogen refueling capacity of more than 200 kg. Such high construction costs are obviously the biggest obstacle to the rapid development of hydrogen refueling stations.
3. Under current technological conditions, platinum is the catalyst for hydrogen fuel cells. Platinum has a very low global production volume and is very expensive (approximately twice the price of gold). Global annual production is about 200 tons, with 60% used for jewelry. Furthermore, platinum as a catalyst requires hydrogen with a high purity, needing to reach over 99.99%.
III. Safety Issues
The refueling of fuel cells with hydrogen requires a complete hydrogen energy production and transportation network as support. Safety issues related to hydrogen itself, safety during refueling, and safety during operation all need to be addressed. Generally speaking, hydrogen storage devices at refueling stations should be able to withstand high pressure, have online monitoring capabilities, provide automatic alarms in case of danger, and be economically viable. Clearly, the initial construction costs for hydrogen refueling stations that meet these requirements will not be low.
Despite the successive introduction of supportive policies for fuel cells in China, experts remain pessimistic about their prospects.
Benefiting from favorable national policies and support, China has initially mastered the core technologies of fuel cell vehicles, power systems, and core components, and has basically established a fuel cell passenger car and fuel cell city bus power system technology platform with independent intellectual property rights. In terms of supporting industry chains, my country has initially formed a supporting R&D system for key components such as fuel cell engines, power batteries, DC/DC converters, drive motors, and hydrogen supply systems, achieving a production capacity of hundreds of power systems and complete vehicles. Currently, it possesses the technological characteristics of "power system platform adaptation to vehicles, electric-electric hybrid energy power control, on-board high-pressure hydrogen storage system, and purification and utilization of industrial by-product hydrogen."
During the 12th Five-Year Plan period, Tongji University, together with FAW Group, Dongfeng Motor, Chery Automobile, and Changan Automobile, developed fuel cell passenger cars. On June 14, 2018, Tongji University, the Jiaxing Municipal Government, and the Xiuzhou District Government of Jiaxing signed an agreement at Tongji University in Shanghai to jointly build a new energy vehicle industry base. The three parties will jointly promote the establishment of a new energy vehicle R&D and production project in Xiuzhou District, Jiaxing City. The new energy vehicle industry base includes the following four parts: (I) Tongji University (Jiaxing) New Energy Vehicle Research Institute; (II) Commercial vehicle and passenger vehicle manufacturing base; (III) Hydrogen energy industry base; and (IV) Hydrogen energy application project. Among them, the New Energy Vehicle Research Institute, as a secondary non-independent legal entity research institution of Tongji University, will have five R&D centers: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powertrain R&D Center, Intelligent Connected System R&D Center, Commercial Vehicle R&D Center, Passenger Vehicle R&D Center, and International Hydrogen Energy Cooperation R&D Center.
SAIC Motor has formulated a five-year plan for the development of fuel cell vehicles, with Sinogene Power as the fuel cell stack supplier, and has begun to invest heavily in the research and development of fuel cell vehicles. According to statistics from OFweek Industry Research Institute, from January 2017 to the present, a total of 150 hydrogen fuel cell buses have been produced nationwide, of which Beiqi Foton Motor Co., Ltd. and SAIC Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd. account for 84% of the market share.
On June 14, 2018, the Guangdong Provincial People's Government issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Innovative Development of the New Energy Vehicle Industry," which pointed out the need to vigorously promote the electrification of public transportation (including hydrogen fuel cell vehicles). This made Guangdong another province or municipality, following Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Wuhan, to release policies related to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Meanwhile, Datong, Qingdao, Yangzhou, and other cities are also developing plans to support the development of hydrogen fuel cells.
According to incomplete statistics, China's commercial orders for fuel cell vehicles reached a breakthrough of thousands of units in 2017. According to Tonghuashun Finance, almost all companies related to fuel cells, upstream hydrogen production and storage, and materials, including Foton Motor, Furui Special Equipment, Huachang Chemical, and Tongji Technology, have successively issued announcements stating that they will increase their investment in hydrogen fuel cells.
The market outlook looks very promising, and capital is showing great enthusiasm and increasing investment. However, compared with its foreign counterparts, China started too late.
my country began research and development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in 2001. The first proposed development plan for the hydrogen energy industry was outlined in the "Blue Book on the Development of Hydrogen Energy Industry Infrastructure in China (2016)," released in October 2016. The development plan for fuel cell vehicles was further explicitly proposed in the "Made in China 2025" initiative. In contrast, General Motors in the United States began researching hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in 1966, and Honda in Japan began in 1992.
Professor Zhang Cunman of the New Energy Vehicle Engineering Center at Tongji University stated, "China's hydrogen fuel cell vehicle technology lags behind developed countries by 5 to 10 years. One situation China faces is that foreign fuel cell vehicles have already overcome technical difficulties and begun to tackle cost and service infrastructure challenges, while China still faces technical problems. If the gap remains around 5 years, there is still a chance to catch up. However, if it exceeds 10 years, catching up will be extremely difficult."
While academia and industry generally agree that hydrogen energy will greatly enrich the future energy system, and countries and companies alike hold great enthusiasm and hope for the fuel cell vehicle market, the continuous purification of traditional fossil fuels and the exploration of more energy reserves will bring uncertainty to the large-scale utilization of hydrogen energy. Furthermore, the enormous costs of core technologies, vehicles, and hydrogen refueling stations, as well as safety issues, represent a formidable obstacle for governments and companies. Professor Chen Quanshi, Director of the Automotive Research Institute at Tsinghua University and doctoral supervisor, stated in a media interview that governments and automakers should collaborate with universities and other research institutions to solve fundamental problems such as membranes, catalysts, and electrode plates, rather than focusing on the quantity of vehicles produced. In his view, fuel cell technology cannot replace pure electric technology.
