On 23^rd April (2020), the Beijing-Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, National Development and Reform Commission jointly issued Notification of Improvement of New Energy Vehicles Popularization and Application Policy of Fiscal Subsidies (for short: Notification of 2020).Here we would like to talk about our understandings of the Notification.

Notification 2020: Innovative description about fuel cell

There are three important changes about Description of Notification of 2020:

·         Respective implementation policies of auto and fuel cell

In the decade of batteries, the vehicle subsidy policies were mainly taking auto as the main body to bring along industry chain developments. However, Notification of 2020 divide auto and fuel cell, highlighting the importance of industry chain building in promoting the development of fuel cell vehicles. This means, fuel cell component and accessory companies behind the scenes will move forward to the front.

The fuel cell system has a good performance on power density so far, but considered the cost, longevity, failure rates, consistency etc the commercial applications of engineering indexes, still need further validations or significantly improvement. This requires understanding of the two key sectors of “large-scale production” and “cost” separately.

Subsidy policies only for fuel cell vehicles couldn’t solve the above problems. Aims at industry chain, the change of industry policy from “serial processing” to “parallel processing”, will bring positive promotions to the development of hydrogen and fuel cell, which is worth expecting.

·         The role transition from central government to local government

Compared with batteries, the developments and various applications of hydrogen and fuel cell, have far-reaching significance and value. How to develop the hydrogen and fuel cell industry remains to be explored. Economic development stages, resource endowments, local government financial resources of different provinces in China differ greatly. How to adjust measures to local conditions and industries to develop hydrogen and fuel cell is a subject worthy of study.

So, Notification of 2020 means a start of new competition mode between provinces in the field of emerging industries…