Recently, the General Office of the State Council issued the "New Energy Automobile Industry Development Plan (2021-2035)". The plan mentions that by 2025, my country's new energy automobile market will be significantly more competitive with power batteries, drive motors, and vehicle operating systems. Major breakthroughs have been made in other key technologies. The sales of new energy vehicles and new vehicles have reached about 20% of the total sales of new vehicles, and highly autonomous vehicles have achieved commercial applications in limited areas and specific scenarios.
Among them, it is mentioned once again that it is necessary to break through the bottleneck of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle application support technology and "orderly promote the construction of hydrogen fuel supply system." This plan is regarded as a major benefit of hydrogen fuel cells.
Today we have a chat with investment experts about domestic hydrogen fuel cells, to see what stage the domestic hydrogen fuel cells are in, and how to grasp relevant investment opportunities.
The General Office of the State Council also mentioned the development plan of hydrogen fuel cell. With the help of policy, is hydrogen fuel cell expected to replicate the lithium market? Where are the relevant investment opportunities?
The following content comes from the answerer (some of the content has been deleted): Mo Xiang, Cai Baojun, Fu Tanxi, Investment Research Notes, Asset Management Yu Dao Ren, Ruo Shui Sheng Hua, etc.
Speaking of new energy vehicles, many people must first respond to electric vehicles such as Tesla, BYD, Xiaopeng, Weilai and ideals that use lithium batteries as the power system. After all, in the past few years, they have been so prosperous that they have been deeply rooted in investors' hearts.
In fact, there is another subdivision track for new energy vehicles that is often overlooked by everyone, that is, hydrogen energy vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells as the power system.
Hydrogen fuel cell development is one of the country's strategic directions for sustainable development in terms of energy and environment, so it has been supported by relevant national policies.
In theory, hydrogen fuel cells have almost no harm to the environment, and can avoid many problems caused by petroleum and fossil energy, such as fossil energy consumption, the international environment's control and influence on petroleum and fossil fuels, and so on. The state's support for the use of clean energy such as solar power generation and wind power generation can reflect the country's emphasis on sustainable development of energy and the environment. The
industry is in the initial stage of introduction.
has developed rapidly in recent years: global hydrogen fuel cell vehicle sales from 2013 to 2017 were only 6,475, most of which were Toyota Mirai series. In 2018, sales volume increased significantly, with a total of 5,525 vehicles sold; in 2019, global sales increased to 7,500 vehicles.
stated in the "Blue Book of Infrastructure Development of China's Hydrogen Energy Industry" that it will reach 10,000 hydrogen fuel cell transport vehicles by 2020 and 2 million hydrogen fuel cell transport vehicles by 2030.
From the above data, we can see that the hydrogen fuel cell is currently in the initial stage of introduction, the industrial scale is still very small, and all aspects are not yet mature. There are still many things that need to be broken through, and the technology and talent requirements are high. The national industrial development plan pointed out and required to overcome hydrogen fuel cell vehicle application supporting technologies such as hydrogen energy storage and transportation, hydrogen refueling stations, and on-board hydrogen storage. Problems in the development of
In the past few years, because the development of the industry was in a groping period, policy adjustments were frequent, and the industry still felt fatigued. Before the fuel cell system required a rated power of 30 kilowatts, it was later developed to 50 kilowatts. In the first half of this year, it was 80-100 kilowatts. At the end of this year, customers required 110 kilowatts. This makes the entire industry a bit exhausted, and there is a lack of verification of the life of materials and parts.
costs remain high. If fuel cell vehicles are to compete with all vehicle types, including traditional vehicles and lithium battery vehicles, the cost issue cannot be ignored. The highest proportion of fuel cell cost is the stack. According to estimates by the US Department of Energy, the current stack cost is about US$120/kW. When the annual output of fuel cell engines reaches 500,000 sets, the cost of fuel cell stack and engine can be reduced to US$19/kW and US$45/kW, respectively.
If you refer to the development path of lithium-ion battery pure electric vehicles, it is probably introduced from 2009, and the production and sales will explode in 2013-2015. Therefore, it is expected that through 3-5 years of development, fuel cell vehicles are expected to pass the scale of the industry chain To achieve cost reduction in chemical production, opportunities for the domestic fuel cell vehicle
industry chain
At present, the pace of commercialization of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is accelerating.The development of the industry will drive the rapid growth of industry chain suppliers, and core component companies will also benefit from the great development of the industry. From the perspective of the industry chain, the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle industry chain includes upstream parts manufacturing, midstream system integration and vehicle manufacturing, and downstream hydrogen refueling station construction. The
upstream fuel cell stack is mainly composed of membrane electrodes (composed of catalysts, proton exchange membranes, and gas diffusion layers) and bipolar plates. Among them, the research and development of domestic fuel cell upstream related materials and related technologies is still in its infancy and requires more investment.
Generally speaking, in addition to the performance and price of graphite bipolar plates and graphite plate stacks, my country’s current products are comparable to foreign products. The other products still have a large gap. The domestic products are generally in small batches and sample stages. The main reason is the early domestic There are few companies in the industry chain; weak research and development foundation; short technology accumulation time.
At present, Shenli Technology, a subsidiary of Yihuatong, is one of the very few companies in China that has the capacity to mass produce battery stacks. Its products are used to support the hydrogen fuel cell engine system produced and sold by the parent company. The main hydrogen fuel cell system suppliers in the midstream of
include: Yihuatong, Shanghai Reshaping, Tenglong Co., Ltd. (the largest shareholder of Xinyuan Power), Vision Group, Meijin Energy, Weichai Power, etc. In addition, there are 13 enterprises with hydrogen fuel cell vehicle production qualifications, mainly Yutong Bus, Foton Motor, SAIC Group, SAIC Maxus, Shenlong Bus, Zhongzhi Automobile, King Long Bus, Dongfeng, Flying Spur Bus, Aoxin, Nanjing King Long , Youth Automobile, Shudu Bus.
downstream hydrogen refueling station. At this stage, hydrogen refueling stations are more used for buses and minivans.
The construction cost of domestic hydrogen refueling stations is high, and the investment cost of a single hydrogen refueling station (35Mpa) is about 2 to 2.5 million US dollars. The main equipment of hydrogen refueling station includes: hydrogen storage device, compression equipment, refueling equipment, station control system, etc.
As of the first half of 2020, my country has built 72 hydrogen refueling stations, and more than 30 hydrogen refueling stations are under construction. With the increase in the number of hydrogen refueling stations, economies of scale will inevitably occur, which will reduce the cost of hydrogen refueling stations.
has a layout in the field of hydrogen refueling stations. The main companies are Meijin Energy (Foshan, Guangdong has stabilized operations, and plans to operate hydrogen refueling stations in Qingdao, Jiaxing, and Jinzhong) and Xiongtao shares (participating in several hydrogen refueling companies). In addition, the listed companies related to hydrogenation equipment mainly include Snowman shares and Houpu shares.
As the number of hydrogen refueling stations in my country is still small, it is expected that commercial vehicle fuel cell applications with relatively fixed driving paths will take the lead in increasing the volume.
