What are the advantages and disadvantages of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles compared to electric vehicles?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles compared to electric vehicles?

10:51 PM

What are the advantages and disadvantages of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles compared to electric vehicles?


As early as ten years ago, when I was still studying, with the advantages of zero pollution, renewable, fast hydrogenation, and sufficient life, hydrogen fuel cell technology theoretically extinguished oil and lithium batteries, and were praised as vehicle energy. The "ultimate form".

The fly in the ointment is that the industrialization of hydrogen fuel cell technology has been slow, and it has been delayed. It is often discussed in the “vision” of this scale in 2050. So we teased:

H2 is the perfect technology for the future, but it will only exist in the future!



In the past decade, hydrogen fuel cell technology has been overly scorned due to the rapid advancement of lithium battery technology and industrialization. In the last one or two years, hydrogen fuel cells have once again attracted attention. One of the reasons is that pure electric vehicles have encountered two hardcore problems:
  • Endurance card breakthrough in next-generation lithium battery technology: With the rapid rise of the electric vehicle industry, consumers have more choices, and correspondingly, the battery life will gradually increase under the requirements of daily use. Assuming that a pure an electric car can last up to 800 kilometers, this may depend on a breakthrough in next-generation lithium battery technology.

  • The energy density card is at the limit of physical chemistry: the energy density of the lithium battery is too low. If the battery life is increased by a multi-stack battery method, it will cause too much energy to be wasted in the transportation battery itself, which is neither economical nor reasonable. In the past ten years, the energy density of lithium batteries has increased by 2.5 times, can you not give a little more force, and then increase it by 2 times? The answer is very difficult, because this kind of thing involving the principles of physical chemistry, it is impossible to follow Moore's Law, and then the promotion touches the safety limit, and performance and safety cannot be combined. To solve this problem, we have to work hard on the technical route of lithium solid-state batteries.

The East is not bright and the West is bright. Consumers’ expectations for pure electric cruising range and charging time are not the best for hydrogen fuel cells? In many respects, hydrogen-fueled vehicles avoid the shortcomings of pure electric vehicles, but they are similar to the characteristics of traditional fuel vehicles, such as:

Hydrogen has a higher energy density than fuel and is hundreds of times higher than lithium batteries. We all know that fuel and hydrogen release energy is an oxidation process, either carbon with an atomic weight of 12 or hydrogen with an atomic weight of 1. Gasoline and diesel are all hydrocarbons, and hydrogen contains only hydrogen, so the energy density is even higher. Of course, the situation will be different considering that the hydrogen storage system is much more complicated than the fuel tank.

Both hydrogenation and refueling take only three to five minutes. In this way, the owner does not have to find a charging pile everywhere, eliminating the need to wait for charging. Of course, hydrogen refueling stations are not like gas stations everywhere, and infrastructure construction is a problem.

In this way, in terms of battery life and recharge, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and traditional fuel vehicles are like! Only one is burning oil and the other is burning hydrogen. Since this is the case, why not develop a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle instead of using a conventional fuel vehicle? The answer is that, compared to traditional fuel vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles also have the properties of new energy vehicles that save energy and reduce emissions.

Emission reduction: The reaction equation for hydrogen fuel cells is very simple, hydrogen + oxygen → water. Not only is there no toxic gas like nitrogen oxides, even carbon dioxide! Of course, this is similar to the controversy over the carbon emissions of electric vehicles. From the perspective of the whole life cycle, hydrogen production is inevitable. The current mainstream view is that even considering 70% of thermal power, pure electric vehicles have better carbon emissions than fuel vehicles, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are comparable or better than pure electric.

Renewable energy: Relative to diesel gasoline, the biggest The advantage of hydrogen energy is renewable. In addition to hydrogen produced by industrial by-products, it can also produce hydrogen through coal-based hydrogen production, using valley electricity to electrolyze water, etc., and the energy efficiency of the whole life cycle is better than that of gasoline and diesel. Back 10,000 steps, energy efficiency is not as good as gasoline and diesel, but hydrogen energy as a renewable energy source is still an attractive option for China and Japan, which have a strong dependence on oil.

Compared with electric vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles continue to fly and hydrogenate faster; compared with traditional fuel vehicles, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have the property of energy-saving and emission reduction. Although there is an advantage over both sides, it is generally believed that the industrialization process of fuel cells is 5-10 years slower than pure electric power. The reason is that there are several key issues to be solved:

On-board hydrogen storage technology: Regardless of the same weight, the energy density of hydrogen is not low. However, gasoline and diesel are liquid under natural conditions, and hydrogen is compressed into a liquid, and to ensure safety, a large hydrogen storage system is needed. At present, the 70-megawatt hydrogen storage system has an energy density of 800 Wh per liter.

Fuel cell technology: mainly membrane electrode and air compressor technology. One is the problem of longevity. The domestic can only achieve thousands of hours of durability. Toyota in Japan can already do tens of thousands or even tens of thousands of hours. The other is the supply chain problem. Many parts are still dependent on imports, and the cost is greatly increased.

Hydrogen station infrastructure construction: Pure electric vehicles are currently facing infrastructure problems with inconvenient charging, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can't escape, even more severe. Although the pure electric car is slow to charge, in addition to the super fast-charging station, it can be slowly charged at home and in the unit, and it can barely be used. If the travel characteristics are relatively regular, it is even quite convenient. After all, charging at home also saves the need to run a gas station, and the cost of using the car is also lower.

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can't be hydrogenated at home, they can only rely on hydrogen refueling stations; the cost of hydrogen refueling stations is very high. If users don't get up, they have to continue to operate at a loss. This chicken has eggs and eggs. The problem is very difficult to solve. Therefore, it is generally believed that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles should be first applied to commercial vehicles. Because the routes of commercial vehicles are relatively regular, the demand for the number of hydrogen refueling stations is relatively small.

Also, the current industrial by-product hydrogen is not sufficiently pure and cannot be directly used in hydrogen fuel cell systems until further purification.

Are electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles the opposite?

For most people, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles may enter public view for the first time in 2018. Some media will visit the Japanese Toyota incident to over-interpret, saying that the domestic electric vehicle technology route will be changed, and hundreds of billions of subsidies have been flooded with imaginative imagination. This is the opposite of the two technical routes of hydrogen fuel cells and electric vehicles. Is this the case?



First, let's look at the working principle of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.

Hydrogen fuel cell engines, although called engines do not directly output torsion. More precisely, it is a "generator" that outputs electrical energy to drive the motor and also charges the lithium battery.

How does this structure map seem familiar? By the way, isn't this a tandem hybrid car? Indeed, including Toyota Mirai, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are a mixture of "lithium battery" + "fuel cell engine", the difference is only who has a few more ingredients, who is less.

If the battery is bigger and can be externally charged, then it will not become an extended-range electric car. Is it similar to Li Xiang’s ideal wisdom? It is almost the same, except that Li Xiang’s extended program is oil-burning, and the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle’s range extender is “burning” hydrogen, which is the main difference.

Therefore, in many cases, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are also extended-range electric vehicles. Since the two have such deep roots like technology, it is unreasonable to rashly put the two technical routes in a tit-for-tat position.

The rational point of view is that the electric vehicle route and the hydrogen fuel cell technology route are complimentary and complementary. The long-term auto companies will certainly not oppose these two routes. Take Toyota, let's not look at it now to push the hydrogen fuel cell, the patents are freely disclosed, and the heart of the heart is coming out quickly, but in its strategic planning, the share of hydrogen fuel cells is only about the same as pure electric.

To give another example, the hydrogen fuel cell technology is not very enthusiastic about Audi (which can represent the idea of the Volkswagen Group to a certain extent), and in its strategic planning, it is also a place for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

A plug-in hybrid, hybrid, pure electric, silly points are not clear?

When talking about electric vehicles, people who eat melons can immediately think of a series of brands such as Weilai, Weimar, Xiaopeng, and Roewe. But when it comes to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, I am afraid that there is still no impression. So here is a brief introduction to three typical related companies.

The first is a state-owned enterprise, which is the largest and most comprehensive SAIC in China. SAIC started the hydrogen fuel cell project earlier and cooperated with universities such as Tsinghua University and Tongji to start trial operation at the World Expo. In 2016, the company launched the only Roewe 950 hydrogen fuel cell passenger car in China and adopted an advanced 70 MPa hydrogen storage system.

The second one may be a little unexpected. This is a new force in the car - Ai Chi.



Gumpert Nathalie, the German subsidiary of Ai Chi Gongbo, is a methanol fuel cell sports car. The sports car was designed by Roland Gumpert, the father of Audi Quattro, with an acceleration of 2.5 seconds per 100 kilometers and a 1,000-kilometre life.

It is worth mentioning that Gumpert Nathalie is a methanol fuel cell, not a hydrogen fuel cell. There are two types of methanol fuel cells:
  • One is methanol-reforming to produce hydrogen, which is equivalent to adding a methanol hydrogen production unit before the hydrogen fuel cell system. The advantage of this methanol fuel cell is that the reaction temperature is high.

  • The other is to directly replace methanol with hydrogen as a fuel for fuel cell systems.

Ai Chi Gumpert Nathalie uses a technical solution for methanol-reforming to produce hydrogen, which seems to increase the complexity of the system, but there is no timetable for solving the related industrial chain problems such as hydrogen production, transportation, and storage. It is an excellent solution for quick and confusing.

The technical scheme for hydrogen production from methanol-reforming is actually to take the production, transportation, and storage of hydrogen into the work of the company. Although it can run faster without relying on the industrial chain, system integration The challenge with verification is also higher. Recently, Aichi Auto invested in Blue World Technologies, a developer of methanol fuel cell systems in Denmark, which will greatly accelerate the pace of research and development.



At about this time last year, I saw Gucci Nathalie launched by Ai Chi, and I thought that the new forces of the car would have limited resources. How can I also concentrate on the "only future" fuel cell technology? At that time, the entire industry was still pessimistic and even indifferent to hydrogen fuel cells. I did not expect that after a year when the time came to work, the hydrogen fuel cell tends to become the focus. It can only be said that the strategic vision of Ai Chi is still very sharp.

The third company is not a vehicle manufacturer, but a fuel cell core component supplier Yihuatong.

Yihuatong was established in 2004 by Tsinghua University, focusing on hydrogen fuel cell technology for more than a decade. Over the past decade or so, the overall situation of hydrogen fuel cell technology has been sluggish, and Yihuatong has been faltering but has always insisted on technical research and development. I have had an intersection during my reading, but I have not been very optimistic...

However, when the hydrogen fuel cell technology is in the operation, it coincides with the opening of the science and technology board, which may become a story of keeping the cloud open and seeing the moon.







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