Abstract:

This study focuses on the research of Chinese city application readiness status and improvement countermeasures of fuel cell logistics vehicles (FCLVs), which have become the vehicles with the largest scale of promotion and the highest degree of commercialization among all three fuel cell vehicle (FCV) types. The study is done from the perspective of hydrogen energy terminal consumption and based on summarizing the practical path and development trend of the promotion and application of FCVs in China. First, the study introduces main vehicle models and application scenarios of FCLVs, and investigates and compares the application status and key influencing factors of some representative Chinese cities from all four kinds of the country’s city-classes. Second, five dimensions including local conditions, policy environments, supporting facilities, vehicle operation and maintenance, as well as market promotion and their sub-level factors are constructed into the evaluating index system for city readiness of FCLVs by using methods of AHP, gray correlation, and Delphi. Deploying the established evaluation model, readiness of typical cities such as Shanghai and Foshan are measured and analyzed. The result shows that the overall level of city readiness of FCLV application in China is not high. Among the four classes of cities, the prefecture-level cities are the most active but the provincial capital cities are the weakest. Common challenges behind the low city readiness include intensive but weakly-targeted and implementable policies, and low expandable market promotion mode. Countermeasures and suggestions for different kinds of cities are put forward to improve their readiness of FCLV application, including optimization of the selection strategy of appropriate matching FCLV models with application scenarios, usage of renewable energy for hydrogen production according to local conditions and acceleration of the layout and construction of hydrogenation stations, enhancement of supporting policies such as the right of way and parking of FCLVs, and support of business model innovation and innovative operators.

Key words: hydrogen energy, fuel cell, fuel cell logistics vehicle, promotion and application, city readiness