At the Zhongguancun Forum on Science and Technology Innovation and Development of Hydrogen Energy Industry held on April 28, Ouyang Minggao, an academician of the CAS Member and a professor of Tsinghua University, said that in recent years, the cost of hydrogen fuel cell systems has continued to decline. At present, the cost of hydrogen fuel cell systems in China is approximately 2000 yuan/kilowatt. It is expected that the cost of hydrogen fuel cell systems will decrease from 20000 yuan/kW in 2018 to 1000 yuan/kW by 2025, and to 500 yuan/kW by 2030. At this point, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will have the same competitive cost as internal combustion engine vehicles.
Ouyang Minggao further stated that "the cost of hydrogen refueling stations is too expensive now, and we are working on a new business model to mimic the battery swapping of heavy trucks." Replacing hydrogen cylinders instead of refueling, that is, hydrogen cylinder leasing, needs to be staggered from pure electric vehicles, at least 500-800 kilometers, and short distances are meaningless and cannot compete with pure electric vehicles. If hydrogen cylinder leasing is done well, hydrogen fuel vehicles will be cheaper. "Ouyang Minggao revealed that his Tsinghua New Energy team is working with Toyota to create a hydrogen energy demonstration county, which can achieve long-distance non refueling and significantly reduce the cost of hydrogen fuel vehicles.
As of the end of 2023, China has promoted a total of 21000 fuel cell vehicles, with demonstration operations covering diverse scenarios such as cities, logistics, transportation, engineering, ports, and industrial parks, making it the second largest fuel cell vehicle market in the world after South Korea. "In addition to automobiles, the application scenarios of hydrogen fuel cells are expanding, including wind solar energy storage, cogeneration, energy storage vehicles, aerospace, etc." Ouyang Minggao said.
Ouyang Minggao believes that hydrogen electrolysis tanks are the fourth new energy product that China may export in large quantities, following batteries, photovoltaics, and electric vehicles. Ouyang Minggao suggests that the commercialization of the entire hydrogen energy industry chain should be driven by green hydrogen production and fuel cells as the leading forces. Among them, we should promote low-cost hydrogen production from surplus green electricity resources as the source, and drive the development of the entire green hydrogen energy industry chain with diversified and large-scale commercial demonstration application scenarios as the leading force.
However, Ouyang Minggao also emphasized that currently, the recognized value of hydrogen energy is strategic value, the value that urgently needs to be developed is commercial value, the core is cost-effectiveness, and the source is the cost of green hydrogen.