The commercial operation of hydrogen vehicles is accelerating. According to media reports, Shanghai will launch 31 hydrogen fuel cell buses in Jiading, Jinshan, Fengxian and Lingang recently, and eight hydrogen refueling stations have been equipped, which is also the first time that hydrogen energy buses are used for commercial operation.
It is understood that the above fuel cell bus is positioned as a pilot, mainly because there is a certain gap between the stability, economy and reliability of fuel cell bus and the actual demand compared with pure electric bus. Although it is a pilot, the first commercial operation means that the development of hydrogen fuel cell bus industry has reached a new level.
On the other hand, recently, the action plan for accelerating the development of hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicle industry in Jiading District (2021-2025) has also been officially released. The scheme proposes that by 2025, the total number of fuel cell demonstration and application vehicles in Jiading District will not be less than 3500.
It can be seen that under the promotion of policies, the pilot implementation of hydrogen energy vehicles is accelerating, and the hydrogen fuel cell industry is different.
Driven by the “double carbon” goal, hydrogen energy has also received more attention from the capital market. In the past 2021, the average and median annual increases of 60 stocks in the fuel cell sector were 41% and 30% respectively, of which the share prices of 11 stocks doubled.
The fuel cell sector rose significantly better than the main stock indexes, reflecting the market’s expectations for industrial development. Under high expectations, what will be the focus of A-share hydrogen energy in 2022?
policies continue to add hydrogen fuel vehicles
As a clean secondary energy, hydrogen energy has many advantages, such as convenient production, high efficiency and environmental protection, optimizing energy structure and so on. Although the industrial development potential is large, there are also factors restricting its development, such as weak related technologies.
At present, in order to promote the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, hydrogen energy industry support policies at the national level have been intensively introduced, and the status of hydrogen energy has been continuously improved. In Shanghai, recently, several policies of Jiading District on continuously promoting the development of automobile “new four modernizations” industry and the action plan of Jiading District to accelerate the development of hydrogen energy and fuel cell automobile industry (2021-2025) were officially released.
The plan proposes that by 2025, the total output of the whole industrial chain of hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicles in Jiading District will strive to exceed 100 billion yuan, realize more than 100 fuel cell vehicle industry headquarters enterprises, high-tech enterprises and enterprise technology centers, the total number of fuel cell demonstration and application vehicles will not be less than 3500, strive to build 18 public hydrogen refueling stations, and guide the retail price of hydrogen to not exceed 35 yuan / kg.
It is worth noting that this is the version 2.0 update of the above two policies in Jiading District. In July 2019, Jiading District first issued opinions on encouraging the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry in Jiading District (for Trial Implementation). At that time, the policy proposed that by 2025, the annual output value of the whole industrial chain of hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicles in Jiading would exceed 50 billion yuan.
Two years later, Jiading District will increase the total output value of the whole hydrogen fuel cell industry chain from 50 billion yuan to 100 billion yuan in 2025. Although the statistical caliber of the two policies is different, the huge adjustment of the target value reflects that the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in China is not what it used to be.
Not just Shanghai. At present, more than 10 provinces including Beijing, Shandong, Chongqing and Tianjin have issued plans to clarify the development objectives of hydrogen energy industry. Local governments formulate and implement industrial development incentive policies to develop hydrogen fuel cell industry according to local conditions, avoiding the previous “flood irrigation” subsidies. The new deal will promote upstream technological breakthroughs Drive downstream applications and infrastructure development.
what do A-share hydrogen cars look at?
2020-2025 is considered to be the initial period for the development of hydrogen fuel vehicles. Like the initial stage of the development of photovoltaic and new energy vehicles, policy support is the main driving force for the development of hydrogen energy vehicles at this stage.
At present, the production and application penetration of hydrogen fuel vehicles are still low. After the expected heat speculation, can the intensive release of policies form a driving force for the hydrogen fuel vehicle sector in the A-share market with real performance growth?
“Different from the previous two years, all localities have made clear development goals, making the industrial development slowly turn to market-oriented driving. Pure electricity and hydrogen fuel have their own advantages. Considering the cost relationship, commercial vehicles or electric vehicles related to urban construction have comparative advantages in the short term. In the short and medium term, household passenger vehicles are still the world of traditional fuel and electric vehicles, and electric vehicles have slowly changed consumers’ habits.” An insider engaged in investing in the hydrogen fuel cell industry told reporters.
“Due to the advantages of fast hydrogenation and sufficient endurance, light and heavy trucks and buses with fixed route and high load are the first pilot application scenarios of hydrogen fuel vehicles, such as freight vehicles and cold chain vehicles. They are the early stage of industrial development integrating a number of high-end technologies. More significance of small-scale demonstration and promotion lies in trying to slowly promote economic and large-scale development through technical path practice.”
The core system of hydrogen fuel cell is stack. The core of stack system is catalyst and proton exchange membrane, in which catalyst accounts for more than 40% of the cost of fuel cell stack. Among them, the catalyst is mainly expensive platinum based, and China has not yet achieved mass production, but with the arrival of the high demand stage of fuel cells in the future, the mass production of platinum based will play a key role.
The data show that at present, the degree of localization of relevant technologies is about 70%. Core components such as electric stack, membrane electrode, air compressor and hydrogen circulation pump can be controlled independently, and core materials such as gas diffusion layer, catalytic layer and proton exchange membrane are also accelerating research and development.
“We believe that this round of development of hydrogen fuel vehicles does not just stay at the conceptual stage. The scale expansion in the pilot stage has brought real performance growth of enterprises. Although this growth is very obvious compared with 1-2 years ago, it is still relatively small compared with electric vehicle enterprises. Generally speaking, it takes 2-3 years for new products from sample delivery test to large-scale mass production. From 2020, hydrogen fuel cells The localization process of is expected to promote the rapid development of relevant enterprises. ” The above industry insiders said.
Taking the hydrogenation station as an example, hydrogenation is the main downstream link of the hydrogen fuel automobile industry chain. According to the Haitong Securities Company Limited(600837) Research Report, by the end of 2020, about 544 hydrogenation stations have been built in the world, including 128 in China, accounting for about 23.5%
“In the early stage of development, the competition pattern of the industry is not clear. We believe that there are many and complex points to pay attention to at this stage. The simultaneous promotion of scale and technology will reduce the cost of relevant links. However, the focus is still on the technological breakthrough in the core links. After the scale reaches a certain stage, it is more difficult to further reduce the production cost.” He added.
(First Finance)
