The three major schools of new energy: electricity, charging, hydrogen fuel, which will be the future?

The debate on charging and switching, pure electric hydrogen energy can be said to be an eternal topic in the development route of new energy vehicle technology, which I have talked about many times before. 

Conclusion From the perspective of energy, pure electricity in the passenger car sector basically completely dominated, the essence behind this is not a technical problem, but a political problem. Fuel cell passenger cars have been given a reprieve since China, the US and Europe went all out to develop pure electric passenger cars. 

You see, Japanese cars, which were the most resistant to pure electric cars, have to enter this circuit. 

However, in the field of commercial vehicles, especially heavy-haul trucks, hydrogen energy is still promising. The main reason is that heavy trucks consume too much power and battery. I will give you detailed analysis in the future. 

For energy replenishment methods, in a long period of time, power replacement and charging can not overwhelmingly overcome each other, so the pattern of "charging as the main, power replacement as the auxiliary" will coexist, which I will explain in detail later. 

First, why is the heavy truck not suitable for pure electricity? 

1.1 The current technical conditions are not enough to support the popularity of pure electric heavy trucks. 

In fact, we may have some doubts. Isn't the development of electric vehicles still good? We had 15% market share in September. Why can't we do that when it comes to trucks? 

That's because compared to passenger cars, the power consumption of heavy trucks is actually incredibly high. 

Before the calculation, I didn't think that heavy trucks would actually consume so much power. Due to the modeling factor, the wind resistance coefficient of most heavy trucks is between 0.7-1, and even if they are well made, the wind resistance coefficient is about 0.55 (not considering PPT trucks that claim the wind resistance coefficient is about 0.35), and the upwind area is about 10 square meters. 

In terms of vehicle weight, the locomotive of a single tractor is about 10 tons, and the maximum total weight allowed by domestic regulations is 49 tons, which greatly exceeds the 1.5-2.5 tons of passenger cars. 

Then the above data can be substituted into the vehicle driving equation to calculate the power consumption of the heavy truck under different working conditions

Don't see don't know, a look startled. No matter the coefficient of wind resistance is 0.35 or 0.55, the high-speed cruising power consumption of pure electric heavy truck is basically between 100-200. 

If you want the actual endurance of pure electric heavy truck to reach 400km, the battery basically needs 600-1000kwh. It may not be obvious to you that the dividing line between the 2nd and 3rd gears of the residential ladder in Shanghai is 2400kWh/ year. 

In other words, a light truck with low wind resistance can drive from Beijing to Guangzhou at 80km/h without any obstacles, and it will consume enough power for an average family for a year. 

In the field of passenger cars, the current battery energy density is about 200Wh/kg. Even if the heavy truck can maintain the same level, its battery pack weight will still be 3-4 tons.

 Considering the lack of fuel tank, transmission and engine, Pure electric heavy trucks will still generally weigh about 2 tons more than diesel heavy trucks. 

For a vehicle that is often fully loaded, two tons heavier means two tons less freight; For a vehicle that is not fully loaded, the weight of two tons means that the power consumption of 100 kilometers will rise by about 25kWh, corresponding to the electricity bill is 0.25-0.5 yuan/km. 

This is clearly not the outcome that the cardholders want to see. 

1.1.2 Heavy trucks are born to run long distances, which means that the number of energy replenishment times of heavy trucks is much higher than that of passenger cars. 

Different from passenger cars, which drive short and medium distances most of the time, heavy trucks are born to run long distances. 

Although traffic laws require a 20-minute break for every four hours of continuous driving, in practice, long haul trucks often have double drivers and keep people moving. 

Even if it is a single driver's vehicle, there will not be too much time for rest, after all, time is money, which is destined to be very conscious of the heavy truck energy time. 

Therefore, in this case, the service area must have the ability to replenish more than 600kW/h power in 20 minutes. The conversion success rate is 1800kW on average. 

By contrast, the peak power of 800V overcharging pile released by Xpeng two days ago is only 480kW. Considering current battery technology can't handle such high currents, recharging is a dead end. 

What about changing the electricity? It's not much better. Assuming that the average acceptable charging power of batteries is 200kW (which is actually quite high), it takes at least 3 hours to fill a battery. In order to ensure continuous battery supply, if three cars can be replaced every hour, then the changing station needs to reserve 9 batteries, which is a very high cost. If you look at the power of the whole station, the nine batteries together are still 1800kW.

For the busy trunk highway, under the condition that diesel heavy trucks do not need frequent energy replenishing at present, there will be a very large number of heavy trucks parked in the service area. 

If they are all pure electric heavy trucks, the number of heavy trucks in the service area will be much higher than now. The scariest part is that these cars also need to be replenished, so it's not really a good idea to replace the battery, since it still needs to be recharged. 

1.2 If calculated from the whole life cycle, pure electric heavy trucks are not as environmentally friendly as everyone thinks. 

Although the carbon emission of pure electric passenger cars in the whole life cycle is higher or lower under different calculation calibers, it is generally recognized that it will be lower than that of fuel vehicles. 

But commercial vehicles are different, both because their carbon emissions are less when they are used and more when they are manufactured. 

For an ordinary car, its comprehensive fuel consumption is generally 8L/100km, and power consumption is almost 15kWh/100km, the value is about 1:2. The heavy truck is not, the comprehensive fuel consumption of the heavy truck is generally 30-40L/100km, the power consumption is 150-200kwH /100km, the numerical ratio is about 1:5. 

As a result, if you want to reduce the carbon emissions in the use of pure electric heavy trucks, you must significantly reduce the proportion of thermal power generation in the power grid. 

But the process is not that easy, the most important reason is that zero-carbon electricity such as wind and light is relatively unstable, and the grid is not so willing to receive. 

If you want to stabilize the output, you can only store the electricity first, and this step is very difficult. This leads to the fact that the upper hand and the electricity abandoning of light are relatively many.

But if we can take that waste power and use it directly to make hydrogen, we can store it in a different way. 

In 2018 alone, China's electricity consumption reached 100 billion kWh and hydrogen production exceeded 1.8 million tons, which can meet the hydrogen demand of 12 million passenger cars. If converted into commercial vehicles, it can also meet the hydrogen demand of 500,000 to 1 million heavy trucks. 

In addition, the actual carbon emissions of hydrogen production from industrial by-products are low. 

On the other hand, the battery required by a pure electric heavy truck can be used to build 10 ordinary cars and 50 Wuling Hongguang Mini EVs, which will increase the carbon emission far more than the carbon emission of building a fuel tank. 

The hydrogen fuel cell heavy truck, however, requires only a battery pack of about 100kWh and a hydrogen fuel cell reactor, which produces much less carbon emissions. 

Therefore, in the context of carbon neutrality, the future of pure electric heavy trucks is not optimistic. 

1.3 The cost difference between pure electric and hydrogen fuel cells in commercial vehicles will not be as great as that of passenger cars. 

Previously said that the battery capacity of pure electric heavy truck is at least 600-700kW/h, and considering its harsh requirements, the cell must also be used better. 

According to UBS's estimate, the cost of power battery in 2021 is 700-800 yuan /kWh, so the cost of a pure electric heavy truck photopower battery is at least about 500,000 yuan, which is the price of a domestic high-end tractor. 

In addition, with the rapid development of global electrification, there may be a gap in the future demand for cobalt, lithium and other resources needed for power batteries. 

If heavy trucks are also electrified, this situation will be aggravated and the cost of power batteries will rise.

In fact, due to the pandemic and other factors, the price of electric vehicles has risen a lot recently. 

On the other hand, although the current hydrogen fuel cell heavy truck is still more than 1 million yuan after subsidies, higher than pure electric heavy truck. 

But hydrogen fuel cell cars are still in their infancy, similar to where electric cars were a decade ago, so their high costs are largely due to the small size of the market. 

As more and more automakers enter the fuel cell business, the cost of fuel cell systems has dropped significantly compared to last year.

In a few years, hydrogen fuel cell heavy trucks may be able to match the cost of pure electric heavy trucks, which is relatively difficult to achieve in passenger cars. 

1.4 The use environment of heavy commercial vehicles reduces the difficulty of filling station coverage. At first, energy replenishment is a nightmare for pure electric heavy trucks, but it is much easier for fuel cell heavy trucks. 

Different from passenger cars, the daily driving routes of heavy trucks are basically very fixed, either driving on national highways and expressways, or stopping at road logistics centers in various cities.

Therefore, as long as the hydrogen fueling stations are arranged in the above places, the use scenario of hydrogen energy heavy trucks can be covered 100% basically. 

Most importantly, the hydrogen fuel cell heavy truck can be hydrogenated for 10 minutes and drive for four hours, and it can be done right now. 

1.5 Summary Official Based on the above factors, the government has given great support to commercial vehicles powered by hydrogen energy. Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong have recently entered the first batch of "hydrogen fuel cell vehicle demonstration urban agglomeration". 

It is believed that with the joint efforts of the whole industry, hydrogen fuel cell commercial vehicles can be gradually recognized by the market like pure electric passenger vehicles in the next decade.

Why do charging and changing coexist? In general, power switching mainly has advantages in the following scenarios: long-distance travel; Dockless users in urban central areas; Large battery models, operating vehicles; Vehicle electric separation, flexible upgrade, battery health management... 

However, at the same time, the disadvantages of power exchange are also obvious, among which the most prominent are: relatively large investment in the early construction of the power exchange station; At present, each electric replacement system is relatively independent, poor compatibility; Vehicle development will be limited by batteries. 

This leads to the fact that neither charging nor changing electricity has an overwhelming advantage over the other, and the nature of the disagreement between Li Shufu and Lei Jun on the technical line also stems from this. 

Just a few days ago, I summarized the advantages of charging and switching, as well as how much extra money is needed for the current switching system. I also hope to help you better understand these two technical routes.