Humour: News in Cartoon

Infographic: GDP Per Capita, by G7 Country (2019-2029F)

Source : Visual Capitalist

China, Leader in EVs, Could Overtake the World in Hydrogen Mobility Too

Mandar Bakre wrote . . . . . . . . .

China might be stealing a march on the world yet again. The government is targeting to build at least 1,200 hydrogen refueling stations for mobility across the country by 2025, which would mean that it would have more hydrogen stations than the rest of the globe currently boasts.

The country already has the maximum number of hydrogen refueling stations in the world, although their exact numbers are not that clear. Jiang Lijun, vice president of the Chinese Renewable Energy Society, says the China has built more than 400 stations, of which 280 have begun operations. Other experts estimate the total number of active hydrogen refueling stations at 250.

The boom is prompted largely by the success of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the Middle Kingdom, and by government plans to accelerate their adoption. China is forecast to have 12,000 to 18,000 fuel-cell vehicles (FCVs) plying its roads in 2024. This success in FCVs is generating demand for hydrogen refueling stations, and even the country’s local governments have now begun to include in plans and regulations.

Research by Interact Analysis shows that 29 local authorities have issued policies or plans with 2025 targets for construction of hydrogen refueling stations. Taken together, the number exceeds 1,200. Five authorities plan to build 100 or more stations each: Guangdong aims to reach 200 stations, while Hebei, Shaanxi, Jiangsu and Shandong have set targets for 100 stations each.

These targets are set dynamically. As FCV deployments and refueling stations have progressed, authorities have been adjusting targets based on the actual pace of construction and FCV deployments. Statistics show several local governments have adjusted their targets over the past two years. Jiangsu, Chongqing, and Hebei, for example, revised their 2025 targets – all three of them doubled it – to 100 stations, 30 stations and 100 stations, respectively.

In contrast, Guangdong and Shanghai lowered their 2025 targets to 200 stations from 300, and 70 stations from 78. Crucially, provinces and municipalities outside China’s hydrogen pilot have also shown interest in setting up hydrogen refueling stations, both in response to the country’s national plans and to increase the adoption of FCVs in their own areas.

Among them, Shandong has said it would build 100 stations by 2025, while Jilin and Guangxi province have said they would accelerate hydrogen station rollouts during the 2025-2030 five-year period.

The first few steps

China, a global leader in the e-mobility sector, rolled out subsidies to companies developing hydrogen mobility in 2020, besides offering special funds to local authorities seeking to promote hydrogen vehicles.

The government began to consider hydrogen as a fuel for mobility in the early 2000s when policymakers noted that the country’s booming auto sector was a source of strategic vulnerability: it required the country to increase import of fossil fuels (increasing its dependency on foreign suppliers) and also contributed to urban air pollution.

The country’s Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle Technology Roadmap, released in 2016, aimed to have over 50,000 FCVs and 300 hydrogen refueling stations by 2025, and 1 million FCVs and 1,000 stations by 2030. By the end of 2020, the country had become the third largest FCV market in the world – and the largest for fuel-cell trucks and buses – with 8,400 FCVs across the country.

In 2021, the government launched 35 projects related to fuel cells, FCVs and hydrogen refueling stations. Among them, the central government announced a pilot city cluster project for FCVs, starting with Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Shanghai, and Guangdong provinces as the first approved clusters. First year results weren’t encouraging: the national NEV monitoring platform showed that Beijing was the only cluster out of five to have achieved its targets. Shanghai had reached two-thirds its aim, but the other three languished with a ~25 percent achievement or worse, according to Integral Energy.

Now, as the program nears conclusion in 2025, the numbers look better. Today, the government offers incentives through tax reduction and subsidies in the range of $3,200 to $7,900, depending on the type of vehicle and the capacity of its fuel cell.

The country’s outlook for hydrogen-fueled mobility is stronger today. According to the New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan, issued in October 2020, the country will have 2,000 hydrogen refueling stations by 2035.

Since refueling stations form the infrastructure backbone of any vehicle adoption scheme, the number of active hydrogen refueling stations will have a direct impact on China’s adoption of hydrogen cars and achievement of a government target to have 50,000 FCVs by 2025. This “H-mobility” could also account for a significant portion of hydrogen consumption in the Middle Kingdom.

The China Hydrogen Alliance estimates the country’s hydrogen energy industry will become a $14 billion sector by 2025. It estimates the country will need 43 million tonnes of the fuel by 2030, and green hydrogen – derived from power generated from renewable sources such as solar and wind – will meet 10 percent of this energy demand, up from a miniscule 1 percent in 2019.

In fact, experts say China’s interest in hydrogen was directly sparked by its interest in hydrogen-fueled mobility. If that is true, then the wheel will have come full circle in 2025.

Source : ETN

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China Unveiled Green Hydrogen Development Plan 2021-2035 . . . . .

Chart: Julian Assange – A Timeline of Events

Source : Statista

Young Chinese Have Almost No Concerns About AI, Survey Finds

He Qitong and Li Dongxu wrote . . . . . . . . .

Young Chinese hold overwhelmingly positive attitudes toward the rise of generative artificial intelligence and are mostly concerned about how to profit from the new technology, a new survey has found.

Unlike in the West, where public skepticism toward AI runs deep, China’s younger generations appear to be embracing generative AI with few reservations, according to the report by the research institute Just So Soul.

Just So Soul — which is run by Soul, the Chinese social app with over 40 million monthly users — polled nearly 3,500 young Chinese about their views toward generative AI for the report, which was published on Thursday. Around 80% of the respondents were from Gen-Z, the company said.

Over 60% of the young Chinese surveyed said they either “like” or “love” generative AI, while fewer than 3% said they “dislike” or “hate” it. That’s an even more positive response than Just So Soul received in a similar survey last year, when 43% of respondents said they either “like” or “love” the technology.

Young Chinese are regular users of generative AI products, according to the study. Only 4.8% of respondents said they’ve never used generative AI, while over 90% said they have used it.

Younger people were the most likely to regularly use AI products, with 18% of respondents born after 2000 saying they use generative AI “almost every day.” Text generation tools such as ChatGPT are the most popular generative AI products in China, the survey found.

Over half of the young people surveyed said they either already make money using generative AI tools or have plans to do so. The people already using AI to generate income were most likely to work in professions including advertising, communications, and the arts, according to the report.

Though overseas generative AI products aren’t easily accessible in China, a shadow market has quickly emerged in the country in which vendors offer to help users gain access to foreign software tools.

As early as 2022, Chinese vendors were offering to share invitation codes to platforms still under testing. On Xianyu, an online marketplace owned by Chinese tech giant Alibaba, users offer to generate images according to clients’ specifications using overseas tools such as Midjourney for as little as a few dollars.

An illustrator named Yang Qian told domestic media that she had started offering to create images using generative AI in 2022, receiving her first commission from a cosmetics company just a month later.

According to the report, the top reason young Chinese cite for favoring generative AI is its ability to improve their work efficiency. The main reason cited for opposing the technology is the prospect of AI replacing humans in the workplace.

Aside from using AI to earn money, young Chinese also expressed an open attitude toward socializing with AI. Around one-third of respondents said they were willing to make friends with an AI bot.

“This is a surprising finding,” Just So Soul said in its report. “It indicates that our social network isn’t just limited to chatting with real people, but we can also find emotional companionship via AI.”

Younger people were the most likely to be willing to use AI companions, with 32.8% of respondents born after 2000 saying they enjoyed chatting with AI bots. People said that AI bots made good conversation partners because they didn’t make them feel awkward, responded quickly, and were willing to chat about anything.

A majority of young Chinese agreed that generative AI could be useful in alleviating people’s loneliness. Only 8% of respondents said they completely disagreed with that idea.

The concept of AI companions has gained widespread attention in China in recent years, with the Microsoft-developed AI girlfriend Xiaoice attracting millions of users. Services offering to bring back dead relatives as “griefbots” have also spread quickly on Chinese platforms.

Source : Sixth Tone