未来商用车的动力系统：未来的氢燃料电池动力系统

1、Global Research2 January 2020EquitiesFuture Powertrains of Commercial Vehicles Transcript: Expert call on the future of hydrogen fuel cell powertrains Nel HydrogenNel highlights the future of hydrogen production, infrastructure and demand We hosted a call with Mr. Bjrn Simonsen, VP of Investor Commu

2、nications for Nel, to discuss the outlook for hydrogen powertrains for commercial vehicles (CVs). Nel, a publicly traded company in Norway with operations in the US, has a history dating back to 1927, and is a leader in the relatively narrow competitive landscape of hydrogen producers and hydrogen f

3、ueling infrastructure providers. Hydrogen is becoming more of a discussion topic now because costs to produce hydrogen are coming down, as are costs of fueling stations and fuel cells. Despite the reductions to date, total cost levels and infrastructure remain the key hurdles to adoption. Some gover

4、nments are getting involved to support the adoption by investing in the fueling infrastructure. Meanwhile, vehicle producers are increasing volumes. Nel competes with Cummins Hydrogenics.Costs are coming down and volumes are ramping up off low levelsAs a result of its long history in the sector, Nel

5、 has expertise in and offers both PEM and alkaline electrolyzers. Nel cited a 90% reduction in cost to produce hydrogen over the last decade, and sees potential for another 50% reduction as it scales up electrolyzers and increases the efficiency of production. At the front end, the 70-90% reduction

6、in the cost of renewables has supported the attractiveness of hydrogen for various applications. The market for hydrogen is still nascent, but is growing rapidly, which should lead to increased scale and even lower prices. Toyota has plans to dramatically increase production of hydrogen PVs (passeng

7、er vehicles; 10 x from 3k to 30k), and Hyundai plans to deliver 1,600 hydrogen powered trucks to Switzerland over the next 5 years. US fueling stations for PVs are expected to double over the next couple of years, and Nikola and Nel are producing the first large scale HD truck fueling stations.Infra

8、structure remains the biggest hurdle to widespread adoptionAccording to Nel, the primary obstacle to wider adoption of hydrogen fueled powertrains is the necessary infrastructure. For passenger vehicles, there is a circular problem (stations need demand and vehicle buyers need to see that theres fue

9、ling stations). Govt support will be key; CA, S Korea, Japan and Germany are leading this effort. CV applications could address this more easily via fleet ownership of the fueling infrastructure. Nel has delivered stations in the US and is in process of delivering more.Land Transportation EquipmentA

10、mericasSteven Fisher, CFAAnalyst HYPERLINK mailto:steven.fisher steven.fisher+1-212-713 8634Xingzhou Lu, CFAAnalyst HYPERLINK mailto:xingzhou.lu xingzhou.lu+44-20-7568 4820Sven WeierAnalyst HYPERLINK mailto:sven.weier sven.weier+49-69-1369 8278Wei Shen Analyst S1460518060001 HYPERLINK mailto:wei.she

11、n wei.shen+86-213-866 8897Patrick Hummel, CFAAnalyst HYPERLINK mailto:patrick.hummel patrick.hummel+41-44-239 79 23Geoff HaireAnalyst HYPERLINK mailto:geoff.haire geoff.haire+44-20-7568 8327Andrew StottAnalyst HYPERLINK mailto:andrew.stott andrew.stott+44-20-7567 9227Eugene JungAnalyst HYPERLINK mai

12、lto:eugene.jung eugene.jung+82 2 3702 8801Guillermo Peigneux LojoAnalyst HYPERLINK mailto:guillermo.peigneux-lojo guillermo.peigneux-lojo+44-20-7568 9016Markus MittermaierAnalyst HYPERLINK mailto:markus.mittermaier markus.mittermaier+1-212-713 2716 HYPERLINK /investmentresearch /investmentresearchTh

13、is report has been prepared by UBS Securities LLC. ANALYST CERTIFICATION AND REQUIRED DISCLOSURES BEGIN ON PAGE 16. UBS does and seeks to do business with companies covered in its research reports. As a result, investors should be aware that the firm may have a conflict of interest that could affect

14、 the objectivity of this report. Investors should consider this report as only a single factor in making their investment decision.UBS Future Commercial Vehicle Powertrain Conference Call - HydrogenHost: Steven Fisher, UBS Machinery / E&C AnalystSpeaker: Mr. Bjrn Simonsen, VP of Investor Communicati

15、on, NelWe present below highlights from our recent call with Bjorn Simonsen. We have edited the transcript below for clarity. Minor grammatical changes that do not impact the meaning of the content have been applied. The opinions expressed by Bjorn Simonsen herein do not necessarily reflect the view

16、s and opinions of UBS. UBS accepts no responsibility for the accuracy, reliability or completeness of the information and will not be liable either directly or indirectly for any loss or damage arising out of the use of this information or any part thereof.December 18th, 2019 9:00am ETOperator: Good

17、 day, and welcome to the Future Commercial Vehicle Powertrain Conference Call Hydrogen, hosted by Steven Fisher. My name is Sam, and Im the event manager. During the presentation, your lines will remain on listen-only. Operator instructions. I would like to advise all parties this conference is bein

18、g recorded for replay purposes.Now, Id like to hand over to Steven. Please go ahead.Steve: Great. Thanks, Sam. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Im Steve Fisher, UBS Machinery and Engineering Construction Analyst.The topic today is Hydrogen and Commercial Vehicles. Were very pleased to have wi

19、th us an excellent spokesperson for a company that operates in crucial parts of the hydrogen value chain. We have Mr. Bjrn Simonsen, from Nel Hydrogen.Nel is a publicly-traded company in Norway, and Bjrn is the Vice President of Investor Communications. Bjrn is an engineer by training, but he also h

20、as great patience in making complex technology understandable to non- engineers like myself. Well do a fireside chat format, and there will be time to ask questions. Alternatively, you can email them to me at HYPERLINK mailto:steven.fisher steven.fisher. For anyone that wants to reference slides fro

21、m the companys presentation, although were not going to be specifically going through slides, I recommend pulling up the companys Q3 slide presentation on the Investor Relations website, which is NelH/investor- relations.Before we get started, as a research analyst, I am required to provide certain

22、disclosures relating to the nature of my relationship and that of UBS with any companies on which we express a view on this call today. These disclosures are available at HYPERLINK /disclosures /disclosures. Alternatively, please reach out to me, and we can provide them to you after the call.With th

23、at, lets get started. Bjrn, thanks very much for being here with us. Maybe we can just start with a brief overview of the company and the key products that Nel provides.Bjrn: Sure. Thanks first, Steve, for the invitation to join this call. Im a hydrogen fan more than an engineer, and obviously, its

24、an exciting time to be working with this right now.With regards to the company, we both have a fairly short and a long history. Short history in the terms that weve been listed since 2014; and long history with our products dating back to 1927. Starting out at that time, we were part of a large indu

25、strial company in Norway called Norsk Hydro. They developed this technology to produce massive-scale renewable hydrogen to use as an input for their fertilizer production.That technology has been with us all along those years, our company name changing over the years until we were listed in 2014. We

26、, today, have electrolyzers and fueling stations as our products. We are a technology company, so we develop, manufacture, and sell hydrogen technologies to the market.Steve: Great. Maybe if you can go into just a little bit more detail about those specific products. How do you actually make hydroge

27、n, and maybe we can talk about some of the details of the various methodologies?Bjrn: Sure. It could be that not everyone knows what an electrolyzer is. An electrolyzer is a device that basically just splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity. Its a zero-emission process, given that th

28、e electricity you are using is from renewables, so its a very simple principle, but obviously, the trick is to do it efficiently, in a robust manner, and having a product that can last for decades. Luckily for us, we have several decades of experience already with this technology, and the core IP, t

29、he industry secrets that we also have, are related to the electrolyzer cell pack itself, which is then being operated with various components surrounding it; that is pumps, compressors, the oxidizers, etc. The core IP is the cell stack - thats what were manufacturing in-house, and then we were basic

30、ally sourcing other components from sub-suppliers.When it comes to the fueling stations, the fueling station basically consists of a high-pressure compressor, a high-capacity chiller, and a control system. You can get all of those out in the open markets, but we have seen the need for special develo

31、ped technologies within this segment, so we have designed and developed our own high-pressure hydrogen compressor and our own high- capacity hydrogen chiller, which both makes our stations more compact, but also gives us a better margin on the products.Steve: So, you basically, if maybe you can fram

32、e for people your revenue base and what are the components that drive the revenues of basically three products, two different types of electrolyzers, and the fueling stations as I understand it correctly, but maybe you can just give a sense of the breakout of whats the driver today, and where its go

33、ing.Bjrn: As I mentioned, the electrolyzers have been around for a long time, for 100 years. That started out with large-scale or even massive-scale electrolyzers for the fertilizer industry. Today, the fertilizer industry is ammonia production and is basically all served by fossil-sourced hydrogen,

34、 mainly natural gas and coal because thats a cheaper way to make hydrogen today, and has been for a long time.Electrolyzers have basically served niche industries like glass manufacturing, the food industry, diamond-making, annealing, various small-scale chemicalindustries are using hydrogen as an i

35、ngredient in their process. If you look at other electrolyzer companies out there, most of them have mainly small scale electrolyzers in their portfolio mainly because that is what the market has been asking for over the last couple decades. However, we see large scale electrolysis becoming relevant

36、 again due to various megatrends that we will probably go into later today, but the main driver being that renewable electricity, which of course, is the basis and also the majority of your total cost of hydrogen is becoming competitive with fossil alternatives. Even though there is a lot of excitem

37、ent about the new market, and we are indeed selling into that market, we are also serving the traditional industry market today, where we also see growth opportunities.Steve: Maybe just to take one step back to really level-set for everyone here, when were talking about using natural gas/coal for pr

38、oducing hydrogen, just maybe clarify what that process is. Youre actually burning these fossil fuels to create electricity, which then uses an electrolysis process, or is it something different?Bjrn: No. The fascinating thing with hydrogen or the good thing with hydrogen is that you find it in basic

39、ally everything out there. Its in water; its in natural gasthats a CH4, so you have four hydrogen atoms per carbon atom. You find it in oil; you find it even also in coal.The way you typically produce hydrogen from natural gas or coal is that you take the natural gas, then you add water, and react t

40、hat at a high temperature over a catalyst. What happens then is that the hydrogen in the natural gas combines and forms hydrogen gasthe same thing happens with the hydrogen in the water moleculeswhile the oxygen in the water molecules combines with the carbon that is either in the natural gas or coa

41、l and then creates CO2. Thats then, also the issue with hydrogen production from those sources.There are two issues with that. One is, of course, the climate impact, and the other thing is that you will have some impurities downstream of the reformer, the device that makes the fossil hydrogen. That

42、needs to be cleaned up before we can use it certainly as a fuel for vehicles.Steve: Got it. Maybe with that, maybe we can move on and talk a little bit about the value chain as it relates, as were coming at this from the perspective of ultimately some of the applications that would be using hydrogen

43、, in our case, an interest in commercial vehicles. Maybe can you talk a little bit about an overview of the value chain as it relates to hydrogen commercial vehicles, and how Nel plays a role? The way we understand it there, you have the hydrogen production, you have some storage, you have the fueli

44、ng station, and then, you ultimately have a fuel cell on a vehicle.If I understand it, Nel is the up to the point of the fueling station, and then someone else takes over on the actual vehicle fuel cell itself. Do we understand that correctly? Maybe you can just walk through that value chain, and wh

45、ere you play and where you dont play.Bjrn: Yes, that is correct. Youll find us in the value chain, where electricity is then transformed to hydrogen, and then again to the fueling station. Basically, if you have electricity and water, and want to sell hydrogen to the transport sector, we can get you

46、 everything in-between.Our products are the hydrogen production and the hydrogen fueling station. We typically team up with partners on the distribution part and the storage part. We are not involved in fuel cells on the vehicles; we are focusing on the hydrogen production and fueling.Steve: Okay, i

47、s there any particular reason why you wouldnt want to be in the fuel cell side?Bjrn: Well, one of them is obviously that our history is based off on electrolysis. We have two electrolyzer technologies, both alkaline and PEM electrolyzers, and we have the fueling stations. Even though these technolog

48、ies have been developed for a long time, there are still lots of improvements we can do.There is a high degree of R&D in our company, and we have decided that we want to be the best within those two segments. Instead of taking on yet another technology, we are rather focusing on that, and then rathe

49、r partner up with companies if we have a customer that also wants a fuel cell. Typically, the fuel cells are in some vehicles, and then more often than not the vehicle manufacturer will make that him or herself. Then, there are also other segments where the fuel cell companies today are supplying fu

50、el cells, but well let them do that, and well focus on the electrolyzers and fueling stations. Frankly, there is enough to be done on those segments going forward.Steve: That makes sense. Maybe can you just talk a little bit about the couple of different types of electrolyzers that you mentioned? Th

51、e PEM and the alkaline - differentiate them for us; maybe even just a level-set for folks to explain what PEM stands for, and then how the two technologies differ, the plusses and minuses.Bjrn: Yes. From a customer point of view, the customer just wants cheap hydrogen and reliable technology. The cu

52、stomer doesnt care what the electrolyzer is called; it just wants the electrolyzer to provide him the most amount of hydrogen for the electricity that comes in, and for the money the customer has to invest in the plant.However, there are two commercial technologies out there today. The technology th

53、at has been around for the longest is the alkaline electrolyzer. The alkaline electrolyzers are the ones that can be offered at the biggest scale that are the cheapest in terms of capex, and also the most efficient electrolyzers on the market.The PEM electrolyzer, which uses a solid electrolyte inst

54、ead of a liquid electrolyte, are more compact; they typically produce the hydrogen at a higher pressure than the alkaline electrolyzers, and they are more flexible also, in terms of the input. You can more easily connect them directly to renewables, and they are the dominating technology for small-s

55、cale plants today.Everything from 0 up to 2 MW, to 4 MW, 5 MW, PEM electrolyzers are a good solution because they have a simpler balance of the system around the electrolyzer. However, as you move from 5 MW to 10 MW, maybe 20 MW, there is a gray zone where it all depends on what the customer needs,

56、whether he or she should go for a PEM or an alkaline. However, when you go into the bigger scale systems today, alkaline is the preferred alternative.For us, as an electrolyzer company, it gives us a good advantage because were not pushing one technology on the customer. Wed rather sit down with the

57、 customer, discuss the customer needs, and then figure out what solution isbest for them. We are developing both technologies going forward. The alkaline electrolyzers are becoming more flexible, they are becoming more compact, while the PEM electrolyzers are becoming cheaper and more efficient. Fro

58、m a specification point of view, these two technologies are converging; however, we dont see today whether there will be one winner, as such, so to stay a leading company within this segment we have decided to keep and also develop both technologies.Also, we are scaling up manufacturing right now. T

59、hat has been done with the alkaline electrolyzers. Were scaling up our manufacturing facility in Norway by a factor of roughly ten so that we are able to deliver on the recent contracts we have signed.Steve: Where hydrogen is being produced today by your technology or others, is there any way to fra

60、me what percentage of it is done using renewables versus fossil, or anything else?Bjrn: Well, most of the hydrogen that is being produced out there is being produced with fossil sources, natural gas, coal, oil99% almost. That, of course, for us equates a big market opportunity, even within todays ex