China Progress on Renewable Energy Vehicles: Fuel Cells, Hydrogen and Battery Hybrid Vehicles

Abstract

Clean, renewable energy for Chinese cities is a priority in air quality improvement. This paper describes the recent Chinese advances in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) hydrogen-fuel-cell-battery vehicles, including buses and trucks. Following the 2016 Chinese government plan for new energy vehicles, bus production in Foshan has now overtaken that in the EU, USA and Japan combined. Hydrogen infrastructure requires much advance to catch up but numbers of filling stations are now increasing rapidly in the large cities. A particular benefit in China is the large number of battery manufacturing companies which fit well into the energy storage plan for hybrid fuel cell buses. The first city to manufacture thousands of PEM-battery hybrid buses is Foshan where the Feichi (Allenbus) company has built a new factory next to a novel fuel cell production line capable of producing 500 MW of fuel cell units per year. Hundreds of these buses are running on local Foshan routes this year, while production of city delivery trucks has also been substantial. Results for energy consumption of these vehicles are presented and fitted to the Coulomb theory previously delineated.