Comprehensive competitiveness assessment of ammonia-hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles and their competitive routes

Recently, green ammonia has attracted growing attention due to its high energy density, environmental friendliness, and safety, and is gradually being tested or demonstrated in vehicles. However, the knowledge and understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of fuel cell electric vehicle with on-board ammonia cracking for hydrogen production and other commercially available vehicles are insufficient. This study evaluated 12 technical routes (Electricity, Gasoline, Hydrogen, Ammonia) from technical, environmental and economic perspectives and compared the comprehensive competitiveness by coupling carbon emissions, energy consumption, and costs indicators using the entropy weighting method. The results show that although the renewable energy-based technical routes reduce carbon emissions and energy consumption, they have relatively high economic costs. Considering energy consumption, carbon emissions and total costs, battery electric vehicles have the best comprehensive competitiveness at room temperature. However, ammonia-hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles can be applied in special scenarios. Their comprehensive competitiveness is essentially equal to that of battery electric vehicles when the electric consumption of battery electric vehicles increases by more than 35 % under low temperature conditions. In addition, large-scale, long-distance transportation of ammonia is economically advantageous compared to hydrogen transportation, especially when hydrogen/ammonia is transported over distances of more than 500 km.