Great Wall's big hydrogen dreams
Tuesday, 16 April 2019
Great Wall Motors, with offshoot Haval, dominates China's exploding recreational vehicle sector and is backing hydrogen as the ultimate alternative environmentally friendly technology for the electric vehicles of the future.
Since they're powered entirely by electricity, fuel cell vehicles are considered electric vehicles - but unlike other EVs, their range and refuelling processes are comparable to conventional cars and trucks.
GWM is developing fuel cells, in which technology combines hydrogen and oxygen to produce electricity to power an electric motor, for all manner of vehicles, from small cars to big trucks.
It also wants to develop its own fuel cell vehicles and has suggested to New Zealand media visiting their research facility in China that the first might be mere months away.
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Converting hydrogen gas into electricity produces only water and heat as a byproduct means fuel cell vehicles don't create exhaust pipe pollution, a major issue in China, especially in the region where Haval bases.
Baoding, a city of eight million, was rated in 2014 as having some of the worst air pollution in the world.
Government mandate requires 25 percent of all cars on China's roads in 2025 to be electric. Even before that edict passed China already had more electric vehicle makers than any other country but all purely serve the domestic market. Year-on-years of battery-powered vehicles in China have increased by 80 percent, with almost 600,000 sold in 2018.
GWM's Wey premium brand has a plug-in hybrid and another subsidiary, Ora, focusses on fully electric fare. The hydrogen research and development centre is at the Ora assembly plant.
Ambition to hit the road with hydrogen will give GWM opportunity to compete in a very select sector.
So far just Toyota, Honda and Hyundai have created production FCV vehicles and though some are in public hands they're mainly for trials.
GWM has just invested NZ$220 million on research and development for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, with the intention of having a fleet ready for the 2022 Winter Olympics to be held in Beijing.
GWM's big spend also covers the costly business of conversion, electrolysis and the converting of hydrogen into electricity.
Even though China is rich in coal and natural gas, GWM intends to follow the most challenging path - creating hydrogen from water, through 'hydrolysis'.
Expensive metals including platinum, titanium and carbon fibres go into producing the fuel cell; that cost inevitably transfers to the vehicle's on-road cost.
That the development is being undertaken in Baoding could be called redemptive and allies with a regional initiative to clean up after a dirty past by making the city a 'green hub'.
In the past few years around 170 companies related to renewable energy have located. Near Haval's plant is one of the world's largest makers of mega-sized wind turbine blades. Another produces solar panels to similar scale.
The city and surrounding areas were almost permanently engulfed in a milky haze during our stay. It seems hard to believe conditions could be worse. Yet it has been.
The 'airpocalypse' of 2014 was so bad the local weather bureau recorded just a handful of properly clear days. At its worst, the pollution was a dark grey haze so thick people would lose each other in the street and traffic lights were hard to see. Unsurprisingly, air quality then exceeded World Health Authority worst case counts.
Even today, the air carries enough of a metallic tang to suggest enough lung-lodging particulates linger to be unhealthy. A lot of people wear masks and the almost complete absence of birds is confronting. It's not a place you'd want to spend a lot of time in.