With the cost dropping significantly, hydrogen fuel cells are booming!

At the 2024 International Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Vehicle Conference held on June 5, Zhang Xiaoqiang, director of the Senior Expert Advisory Committee of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges and former deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that last year, my country's fuel cell vehicle sales reached 5,800 units, a year-on-year increase of 72%. Among them, fuel cell heavy trucks sold 3,653 units, a year-on-year increase of 48.2%, accounting for more than 10% of all new energy heavy truck sales, a record high. At the same time, last year, my country built a total of 407 hydrogen refueling stations, 62 of which were built that year, ranking first in the world.

At the 2024 International Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Vehicle Conference, Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that China has now formed a complete industrial ecosystem covering the entire industrial chain of hydrogen production, storage, transportation and refueling. Ouyang Minggao pointed out that from 2020 to 2024, the performance of my country's commercial vehicle fuel-electric system will be greatly improved in terms of rated power, maximum efficiency, mass power density and other indicators. High-power and high-efficiency systems will continue to emerge, and the system life will be increased from 10,000 hours to 20,000 hours, and the system cost will be greatly reduced by about 50%. Ouyang Minggao predicts that the sales volume of fuel cell vehicles in my country this year is expected to be close to 10,000 units. By 2025, it is expected that the number of fuel cell vehicles in operation will reach more than 50,000, and by 2035, it will exceed 1 million.

From the perspective of cost, the core part of the fuel cell system is the fuel cell stack, which accounts for nearly 50% of the cost. In the fuel cell stack, the catalyst occupies a very important position, accounting for more than 50% of the cost. The catalyst of the fuel cell stack is mainly platinum metal, and the domestic consumption is much higher than that of foreign countries. The high cost has become a huge bottleneck restricting the development of fuel cells; the second is the bipolar plate, which accounts for more than 20% of the cost.

With the breakthrough of technological breakthroughs, the system cost of fuel cell vehicles is also continuously decreasing, driving the replacement rate of fuel cell vehicles in various typical application scenarios to continue to increase. According to the data of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the system cost of fuel cell will drop to 3,000 yuan per kilowatt in 2023, a decrease of 80% from 2020.

Many industry insiders who attended the 2024 International Hydrogen Energy and Fuel Cell Vehicle Conference believe that the reason why my country's fuel cell vehicle market penetration rate continues to increase and the degree of commercialization is further strengthened is that breakthroughs and iterations have been continuously achieved at the government level, supply chain costs, product technology, etc. "The application scenarios of fuel cell vehicles in my country have expanded from the early single public transportation field to passenger buses, urban logistics, cold chain transportation, slag transfer, municipal sanitation, short-distance transportation, official vehicles, shared travel and other scenarios."