The bottleneck of fuel cell "three core materials" is expected to break through the heat of hydrogen energy industry next year.

Under the background of "double carbon" goal, the trend of dual-route layout of "pure electricity + hydrogen energy" is becoming more and more obvious, and the hydrogen fuel cell track has become more and more lively.

On October 28, Jethydrogen Technology, a subsidiary of SAIC, launched its first fuel cell stack platform, the M4 stack platform, and the M4H fuel cell stack and P4H and P4L fuel cell systems based on this platform. Among them, the M4H stack is completely designed and developed independently, and the degree of autonomy and localization rate of 44 first-class parts have reached 100%. It is estimated that the supply of independent fuel cell stacks / systems of JH Technology will exceed 4000 units / sets this year and next.

Just a day earlier, both Yihuatong and Toyota announced that the joint venture set up by Yihuatong, Toyota and other companies would begin to sell the TL Power 100, the first fuel cell system to be developed and produced for commercial vehicles in China.

"there has been a lot of good news that the hydrogen fuel cell car market has reached the eve of the outbreak." In the view of industry insiders, with the establishment of the dual-carbon goal, compared with lithium, hydrogen fuel cells with higher energy density and more environmentally friendly recovery and disassembly have increasingly become the technology path that mainframe factories rely on. "although the development of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is slow at present, it is indeed a 'big cake'."

On October 26, the State Council issued the carbon Peak Action Plan before 2030. The plan proposes to vigorously promote new energy vehicles, gradually reduce the proportion of traditional fuel vehicles in the production, sales and ownership of new vehicles, promote the electric replacement of urban public service vehicles, and promote heavy freight vehicles powered by electric power, hydrogen fuel and liquefied natural gas.

"it is expected that by 2026, the cost of fuel cell vehicles will be lower than that of pure electric vehicles and lower than that of new energy vehicles around 2027." In terms of procurement costs, Deloitte expects fuel cell system costs to fall by nearly 50 per cent over the next decade, according to a Deloitte report.

However, the development of hydrogen fuel cell still faces some problems that need to be solved urgently. In the view of Li Fengjun, CEO of Sinochem, the bottleneck of fuel cell application industry at present is mainly new technologies such as catalyst, gas diffusion layer, proton exchange membrane, carbon and so on, as well as production and testing equipment can not meet the needs of hydrogen fuel cell development.

"the first outstanding problem [of fuel cells] is cost." Li Fengjun said that the cost of the membrane electrode accounts for 70% of the stack cost, while the three core materials of catalyst, gas diffusion layer and proton exchange membrane account for 95% of the membrane electrode. "80% of the exchange membrane needs to be imported, which restricts the development of the fuel cell industry."

The corresponding "good news" followed. "the bottleneck of the 'three core materials' is expected to be resolved by the end of next year or 2023." Lu Bingbing, general manager of JH Technology, told reporters, "in addition to the three core materials of catalyst, gas diffusion layer and proton exchange membrane, all the electromechanical-related parts in the fuel cell stack have realized the process of localization and have a better performance-to-price ratio."

Thanks to the high performance-to-price ratio brought about by mastering the core technology, Jethydrogen Technology has now achieved about 60% of the external supply of products. According to the "hydrogen strategy" put forward by SAIC, at least 10 fuel cell products will be launched by 2025, and Jethydrogen Technology will reach a market capitalization of 10 billion, forming a production and sales scale of 10,000 fuel cell vehicles, with a market share of more than 10%.

According to the "Energy Saving and New Energy vehicle Technology Roadmap 2.0" issued by the China Society of Automotive Engineering in 2020, the number of fuel cell vehicles in China will reach about 1 million by 2035, and commercial vehicles will achieve hydrogen power transformation. and built about 5000 hydrogenation stations.

With energy advantages such as high energy efficiency and zero emission, hydrogen fuel cell will become the core incremental application of hydrogen energy in the field of transportation. " Guolian Securities Research News pointed out that in the context of "2060 carbon neutralization", hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will help transportation to achieve deep decarbonization, and will be the first to be applied in commercial vehicles, especially in the field of heavy trucks, and to achieve differential scene layout with pure electric vehicles.