Hydrogen engine manufacturers in Beijing and in the vicinity say that the presence of the new national hydrogen vehicle testing center in the capital city greatly faciliates testing of prototypes, significantly saving them the transportation cost from sending engines for test to other cities with a qualified testing center.
The establishment of the new testing center is part of China's broader plan to push for rapid development of its hydrogen energy sector.
The effort involves continuous improvement in hydrogen refueling station facilities, fuel cell systems, vehicles and applications throughout the industry chain.
The National Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle Quality Inspection and Testing Center is located in the Daxing International Hydrogen Energy Demonstration Zone in southern Beijing, a pilot zone that boasts a well-established public testing platform and mature application scenarios.
At the beginning of this year, the first phase of the National Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle Quality Inspection and Testing Center was put in operation, and the second phase is expected to be officially unveiled by the end of this year.
As an authoritative service platform in north China, it provides more convenient core component testing services for hydrogen energy companies in Beijing and surrounding areas.
"Previously, national engine certification tests could only be done in cities like Tianjin and Chongqing, where there are national inspection and testing centers. Our company is headquartered in Beijing and we had to send our engines for test to Tianjin or Chongqing previously. As a result, the labor cost and transportation cost were high. After the establishment of this national-level testing center in southern Beijing, we can easily send our engines for test here," said Bao Jianpeng, director of Beijing SinoHytec, a developer of hydrogen fuel cell engines.
"Since its establishment, the Daxing International Hydrogen Energy Demonstration Zone has been committed to promoting energy conservation, emission reductions and the development of environmental conservation in an effort to promote a high-quality development of transportation," said Xie Tao, director of the industrial service department of the demonstration zone.
The China Hydrogen Alliance predicts that by 2025, China's hydrogen energy industry will be valued at one trillion yuan (over 138 billion U.S. dollars), and by 2050, hydrogen energy is expected to account for more than 10 percent of the country's overall energy system.
Beijing's new hydrogen vehicle testing center facilitates timely testing for manufacturers in vicinity
Shanghai, a leading force for Chinese modernization, is accelerating the pace of building itself into a science and technology innovation center with global influence.
The tech-savvy metropolis is now speeding up the transition from structure building to function strengthening. Taking strengthening the capability of fostering original sci-tech innovations as the main task, it is pursuing both sci-tech innovation and institutional innovation to significantly improve its comprehensive strength in science and technology as well as the overall effects of innovations.
Over the past 10 years since Shanghai began building itself into an international science and technology innovation center, it has reaped fruitful results in sci-tech innovation, which has pushed the metropolis' GDP across the 4-trillion-yuan (about 570 billion U.S. dollars) mark.
In 2023, Shanghai's total research and development expenditure accounted for 4.4 percent of its GDP, and the city's fiscal expenditure on science and technology rose by 36.7 percent to 52.8 billion yuan (about 7.47 billion U.S. dollars).
Driven by science and technology advances, Shanghai's industrial transformation has sped up. The combined scale of the three leading industries of artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, and biomedicine in the city has reached 1.6 trillion yuan (about 226 billion U.S. dollars).
At the National Local Joint Humanoid Robot Innovation Center in Shanghai's Zhangjiang Science City, Qinglong, an open-source general-purpose humanoid robot with a height of 182 centimeters and up to 43 active degrees of freedom, is being trained to pick up oranges.
"After some training, the robot will be able to complete this move by itself when it encounters a similar scenario in the future," said Shi Zhihua, trainer of robot Qinglong.
Thanks to an advanced control software, Qinglong can skillfully perform fast walking, avoid obstacles, go uphill and downhill, and resist impact.
"We plan to build a venue that can simultaneously train 1,000 robots by 2027," Shi said.
The Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF), a third-generation medium-energy synchrotron light source facility with 46 laboratories, has been operating around the clock to serve researchers from around the country, whose experiments cover a wide range of fields such as life sciences, materials science and chemical catalysis.
"We are using the SSRF's light to observe the phase change process of this material when it's heated to 1,100 degrees Celsius," said Song Shuang, a PhD candidate of Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
"Our team is developing materials for the energy sector," said Miao Zhikai, a researcher of Tianjin University.
"We are developing cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries," said Li Guodong, a researcher of Fudan University.
Though the laboratories at the SSRF have been running at full capacity, researchers still have to apply for them months in advance, reflecting the vibrancy of innovation in Shanghai.
Shanghai blazes sci-tech frontiers to boost innovation-driven modernization
