Nissan and Honda “retreat from difficulties”, BMW, Hyundai and Toyota are still clinging to their teeth. Editor’s note: This article comes from ”
future car Daily “(micro-channel public number ID: auto-time), Author: Jiaoman Ting.
Author | Jiao Manting
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According to Electrek, Mercedes-Benz announced that it has canceled plans to develop hydrogen fuel cell passenger cars because the manufacturing cost is almost twice that of electric vehicles.
Mercedes said that it has been developing hydrogen fuel cells for more than 30 years. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have the advantages of only 3 minutes for hydrogenation, long driving range, and only emit water vapor. However, hydrogen fuel cells are still at a disadvantage compared with electric vehicles.
Therefore, Mercedes-Benz will stop its current hydrogen fuel cell model GLC F-Cell, which was developed in 2013 in cooperation with Ford and Nissan. Due to the high cost, only a few hundred vehicles have been produced so far, and it is mainly used for commercial promotion, and has not been sold to the mass market.
Benz GLC F-Cell models Source: Daimler official website
Markus Schäfer, the research and development director of Daimler Group, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, specifically stated in January this year, “The key issue for fuel cell vehicles to operate well is cost, and scale must be considered. , Which requires the sale of a large number of cars. ”
Mercedes abandons only the passenger car market, but will continue to develop hydrogen versions of commercial models such as heavy trucks. Mercedes-Benz believes that “hydrogen vehicles do not have an advantage in the field of passenger cars, and it does not mean that they will not work in the field of trucks. They will work with Volvo to develop hydrogen trucks.” (Martin Daum) said, “The 200 million euros (about 1.531 billion yuan) invested by the two companies are definitely not enough to put this technology into mass production.”
In addition to Mercedes-Benz, other car companies have given up on the development of hydrogen-fueled electric vehicles.
In June 2018, Nissan announced that Nissan has suspended plans to develop fuel cell vehicles in cooperation with Daimler and Ford, focusing on the development of electric vehicles. In the same month, Ford Motor also issued a statement saying that it cooperated with Daimler’s fuel cell in Burnaby, British Columbia.The company will be closed in the summer of 2018. In November 2019, Honda Motor, which has been full of confidence in hydrogen-powered vehicles, officially announced plans to terminate the research and development of fuel cell passenger cars.
At the same time, BMW, Hyundai and Toyota are still struggling to develop hydrogen-fueled electric vehicles.
Chen Qingtai, former deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, once discussed the relationship between the two technical routes of pure electric and hydrogen fuel cells: “The industrial chain of energy storage battery electric vehicles has matured and infrastructure has basically been formed. The production cost has begun to approach the market’s acceptable level, and has generally entered the stage of large-scale industrialization development. While fuel cell vehicles have entered the stage of demonstration production and application, the production costs of weak links in the industrial chain are relatively high, and infrastructure is also under construction There is still a distance to the development of large-scale industrialization. “
Chen Qingtai said that judging from the known strategic layout of major global countries and major automobile companies, before 2030, the main body of electric development of passenger cars will still be energy storage battery vehicles. By 2030, the capacity of large companies’ energy storage battery car platforms will reach one million, even millions. The fuel cell vehicles are still tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of vehicles.
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