SAIC wants to end electric cars in every generation?

On April 4th, PLUG Energy, the leader in US hydrogen hydrogen stocks, announced that it has acquired ReliOn Assets, a hydrogen fuel cell stack technology and fuel cell system development company headquartered in Washington State, USA.

Six days ago, SAIC and Volkswagen have just signed a joint statement in Germany to carry out fuel cell technology cooperation. Japan's two major car makers Toyota and Honda have also announced that they will open up a new "battlefield" in 2015 - the development of fuel cell vehicles to the market, each product is planned to sell 1,000 vehicles a year.

The hydrogen fuel cell returns to sight overnight.

China's carbon emissions from electric vehicles are higher than traditional cars

SAIC is currently an automaker that is currently conducting research and development of hydrogen energy. “Hydrogen energy vehicles are the ultimate goal of new energy vehicles.” General Manager of SAIC New Energy and Technology Management said frequently that hydrogen fuel cells can solve the problem of excessive weight in pure electric vehicles compared with the now hot pure electric vehicles. , poor stability and other issues. With the hydrogen source problem solved, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will eventually replace pure electric vehicles.

“Hybrid power is a short-term goal, pure electric vehicles are medium-term targets, and hydrogen fuel cells are the ultimate goal of new energy vehicles. It was SAIC Motor’s early determination in the 12th Five-Year Plan for new energy vehicles.

In an internal speech, Frei believed that Tesla had a revolutionary aspect, but it was not a revolution at all. Although Tesla does bring a lot of fresh practices to the automotive industry, such as design concepts, vehicle structure, marketing strategies, and so on. But Tesla still can't break through the bottleneck that electric car generally meets.

“Although it can achieve greater driving range, it sacrifices safety and economy. In order to increase driving range, Tesla has increased the amount of batteries. Tesla uses nickel-cobalt-aluminium lithium-ion batteries instead of China. Lithium iron phosphate batteries commonly used by enterprises, more than 7000 battery packs weighing more than 500 kilograms, the vehicle weight up to 2.1 tons.”

In addition, Tesla in China is not an environmentally friendly car. Dry frequency told the reporter, "Tesla's average power consumption per kilometer is about 0.18 degrees, according to the United States nuclear power, it emits about 122g of carbon dioxide per kilometer. But in China's coal power environment, it emits 175g per kilometer - 190g. And now the domestic traditional car is only 150g to 160g, it is higher than the conventional car carbon dioxide emissions." Dry frequency said.

Therefore, in the eyes of the SAIC R&D team, Tesla cannot play the role of subverting the entire automotive industry. It is not enough to play this important role. In SAIC's plan, the next car to subvert the entire automotive industry is hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Get together to engage in hydrogen fuel cells

SAIC began investing in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles eight years ago. It has invested more than RMB 1 billion in succession. At present, SAIC has more than 100 teams specializing in the research and development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and plans to achieve small batch production in 2015.

SAIC's investment and scale are not too large. Toyota's hydrogen fuel cell research and development team has more than 1,000 people. Toyota, the leader in hybrid vehicles, is also preparing to take a lead in hydrogen fuel cells. Toyota plans to launch a new fuel cell car in Japan, the United States and Europe in 2015. And hope that this model's annual sales will reach 10,000 vehicles by 2020.

In addition, there are Honda and Mercedes-Benz. A fuel cell car being developed by Honda is expected to be on the market in November 2015. The car can run for about 310 miles (about 500 kilometers) on a single charge, which is twice the current range of electric vehicles. The sales target set by Honda is to sell 5,000 vehicles in five years. The sales target markets are mainly in Japan, the United States, and Europe.

And Mercedes-Benz Motors plans to launch a new hydrogen fuel cell car in 2017. Hyundai is also in full swing to create a new ix35 hydrogen fuel cell model.

The working principle of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is to generate electricity through hydrogen: Pure hydrogen is injected into a tank and mixed with oxygen in the air to produce water, which also produces electricity. The generated electric energy drives the electric motor to work and then drives the mechanical transmission structure of the car.

Compared with pure electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cells have unparalleled advantages, not only clean, but also light weight, fast filling.

For example, if a vehicle has a 400km time scale, it only needs 50kW of fuel cell stack, about 5kg of hydrogen can be added, and the same pure electric vehicle runs 400km. The required lithium battery weighs about 700kg.

At the same time, hydrogen fuel cells can also solve the problem of long charging time for pure electric vehicles. For example, Mercedes-Benz currently develops models based on Class B F-Cell. The power system is jointly developed by parent companies Daimler, Renault-Nissan, and Ford. The carbon fiber hydrogen tank can be full of gas within three minutes.

How to break the cost problem
The government's promotion of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is much larger than pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles. In the "Development Plan for Energy-saving and New-energy Automobile Industry" issued by the State Council, it is mentioned that during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, China will continue to carry out the demonstration of fuel cell vehicle operation, and promote the development of hydrogen preparation, storage, transportation, and injection technology, making China's fuel The development of battery autos, automotive hydrogen energy industry and international development. At the consumer level, if consumers purchase hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, they can receive up to 250,000 yuan in subsidies.

Before 2006, Chinese auto companies also started to invest in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. However, apart from SAIC, almost all auto makers of the brand have withdrawn from the research on fuel cell vehicles. At present, research and development projects for fuel cell vehicles are mainly undertaken by universities such as Tongji University and Jiaotong University.

The reason why auto companies withdraw from research on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is that hydrogen fuel cells are out of production. The biggest problem that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles currently face is the cost and service life of fuel cell stacks. If the power of 100 watts is equivalent to a 1.8-liter displacement of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, the cost of a hydrogen fuel cell stack alone is close to one million yuan; and hydrogen fuel cell stacks tend to shorten the service life in frequent high-low-speed rotations. In addition, the source of hydrogen is also a problem. The cost of hydrogen production is higher than that of oil refining and power generation.

In 2007, SAIC took a stake in Xinyuan Power, a company specializing in automotive hydrogen fuel cell systems. In the hydrogen fuel cell vehicles jointly developed by SAIC and Xinyuan Power, an extended range fuel cell vehicle is being developed. That is short-distance electricity, long-distance use of hydrogen fuel cell stack power generation, the purpose is to solve the problem of cost and service life. Because pure electricity is used for short distances, the fuel cell stack is used only for long distances. Therefore, the power of the fuel cell stack can be reduced, thereby reducing the cost; at the same time, the fuel cell is used only when it is running at a high speed in the long distance, and the high and low speed rotation is also reduced. Impact on fuel cell stack life.

Toyota also revealed that the zero-emission fuel cell vehicles launched in 2015 will cost less than US$100,000 (`). Toyota plans to reduce the cost of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles to 3 million to 5 million yen by the year 2020 (approximately RMB 182,700 to 300,500).

After acquiring ReliOn's assets, Pratt & Grain's President and Chief Executive Officer Andy Marsh stated that one of Prager's goals in mid-2014 was to expand the company's fuel cell stack technology patents in order to enhance product performance.

As for the source of hydrogen, dry frequency believes that as the technology matures, it becomes possible to obtain low-cost hydrogen. The industrial by-product hydrogen, which is the collection of coke and coal-produced hydrogen, is sufficient for tens of millions of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. After the popularization of wind power, solar energy, and nuclear power, the cost of hydrogen production will be lower.