Ushering in a big limit for big carbon emitters? New energy heavy trucks start "endurance war"

Author: Ma Jichao

Of the country's 3 million cars, who are the real big carbon emitters?

On the morning of June 6, at the global launch of the "Born for Business" Yutong commercial vehicle technology brand held in Zhengzhou, Sun Fengchun, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and professor of Beijing Institute of Technology, gave the answer.

"3% of heavy trucks 'contribute' 50% of CO2022 emissions." Sun Fengchun said that by the end of 3, there were about 19 million cars in China. Among them, commercial fuel vehicles represented by heavy trucks are the largest carbon emitters, accounting for about 60% of all vehicle carbon emissions.

In fact, commercial fuel vehicles are major carbon emitters globally. Therefore, how to replace commercial fuel vehicles with commercial new energy vehicles as soon as possible has also become a "carbon reduction" choice for many countries.

At the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other eight departments jointly issued the Notice on Organizing and Carrying out the Pilot Work of the Pilot Zone for the Comprehensive Electrification of Vehicles in the Public Sector. The notice mentions that the promotion and application of new energy heavy goods vehicles in specific scenarios such as short-distance transportation, urban construction logistics and mining sites will be encouraged, the scrapping and replacement of old vehicles will be accelerated, and the full electrification of vehicles in the public sector will be accelerated.

Driven by the incentive policy, from January to March 2023, the cumulative sales of new energy commercial vehicles in China were 1,3 units, a cumulative increase of 50960.16% year-on-year. However, some industry pain points of traditional new energy heavy trucks have also become constraints to further expanding market share.

In an interview with First Finance and Economics, it was found that due to the large load capacity, many electric heavy trucks are equipped with batteries, even if they are often more than 200 degrees (kW•h), but the cruising range in actual operation is mostly only 100~150 kilometers. This means that if there is no charging and swapping station in the middle, an electric heavy truck can only travel to and from the transportation route within 50~75 kilometers one way.

In actual operation, the problems that an electric heavy truck may encounter are not only the problem of cruising range. In the view of Li Gaopeng, president of Yutong Group's new energy research institute, in addition to insufficient battery life, low efficiency, insufficient power, low attendance, poor stability, difficult management, (cost) inferior to oil vehicles, etc., are all practical problems affecting the further popularization of electric heavy trucks.

How to solve these pain points? Li Gaopeng said that in response to the lack of endurance, Yutong launched a new large-power bottom replacement product, and equipped with a 513-degree (kW•h) bottom battery, which increases the cruising range to 400 kilometers. In this way, electric heavy trucks can get more alternatives to traditional fuel heavy trucks by covering medium and long-distance transportation scenarios.

"At the beginning of this year in Kazakhstan, we witnessed a pure electric bus with a rated range of 350 kilometers, completing the extreme endurance challenge of 27 kilometers at an ultra-low temperature of -320 degrees Celsius, and the cruising range has hardly decreased." Li Gaopeng said.

According to Li Gaopeng, Yutong is currently developing and building the Ruikon E platform. The Ruikon E platform is the first electric exclusive platform in the commercial vehicle industry that integrates software and hardware, including two cores and seven assemblies.

The so-called two cores are the self-developed C architecture of four controllers of "central computing unit, power domain, intelligent cockpit, and assisted driving", and the other is the YOS of Yutong commercial vehicle operating system built by the drive layer, system layer and service layer.

The so-called seven assemblies are batteries, all-in-one power domain controllers, a new generation of efficient and lightweight integrated electric drive axles, multi-source ultra-low temperature heat pumps, high-efficiency energy replenishment technology including both fast charging and supercharging systems, intelligent cockpit, integrated control technology using "one core and multiple screens", Yutong intelligent network cloud platform, etc.

The reporter inquired about public information and found that it is not only Yutong who hopes to increase market share by cracking the pain points of the industry. Heavy-duty truck manufacturers, including FAW Jiefang, Sany Heavy Truck, Zoomlion, Foshan Feichi, Nanjing Golden Dragon, Dongfeng Liuqi, etc., all hope to strengthen their competitive advantage in electric heavy truck products by accelerating research and development.

Taking Sany heavy trucks as an example, the company recently announced that it will release an electric heavy truck with a vehicle of 1165 kWh (kW•h) and a range of more than 800 kilometers.

FAW Jiefang also claimed in response to investors' questions that the fuel cell range of the company's Jiefang-brand tractors can last up to 500 kilometers.

Sun Fengchun said that although China has accumulated some advantages in the field of new energy vehicles, in the future, in the second half of the development of the industry, Chinese enterprises still need to work hard in the fields of independent innovation in technology, independent and controllable in industry, and independent construction in ecology in order to maintain their leading edge internationally.