Lightweight of body-in-white (BIW) can effectively achieve energy saving and emission reduction, is an important component of automobile lightweight, and how to ensure better economy while lightweight has attracted wide attention from industry and academia. This study deeply analyzed the stages of the full life cycle of internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) and battery electric vehicle (BEV), deconstructs the stages where the weight of BIW has a greater impact on the two, and introduces the concept of full-cycle closed-loop flow of materials to establish universal “Energy-Environment-Economy” Evaluation Model, also called 3E assessment model for auto components. In addition, the 3E-PSI model is established in combination with the PSI method, which further makes up for the shortcomings of the general 3E model that cannot select the optimal solution by considering energy consumption, emissions, and economy comprehensively. The 3E-PSI analysis of material lightweight of BIW is conducted, which takes the ICEV and BEV on the same platform as an example. The results show that in terms of energy consumption, the magnesium alloy BIW of the ICEV is the lowest, however, the aluminum alloy BIW of the BEV is the lowest. In terms of environmental emissions, magnesium alloy BIW is the lowest in both ICEV and BEV, which are 57% and 59.56% of ordinary mild steel BIW respectively; As far as economy is concerned, the ICEV have break-even points for all lightweight materials in the total mileage during lifetime, and the BEV only has a break-even point, that is, driving 78625.68 km, the cost of high-strength steel BIW is lower than ordinary low-carbon steel. In addition, the comprehensive optimal scheme of ICEV is BIW of magnesium alloy material, and the comprehensive optimal scheme of BEV is BIW of aluminum alloy material.

Fuel cells, as key carriers for hydrogen energy development and utilization, provide a vital opportunity to achieve zero-emission energy use and have thus attracted considerable attention from fundamental research to industrial application levels. Considering the current status of fuel cell technology and the industry, this paper presents a systematic elaboration of progress and development trends in fuel cell core components and key materials, such as stacks, bipolar plates, membrane electrodes, proton exchange membranes, catalysts, gas diffusion layers, air compressors, and hydrogen circulation systems. In addition, some proposals for the development of fuel cell vehicles in China are presented, based on the analysis of current supporting policies, standards, and regulations, along with manufacturing costs in China. The fuel cell industry of China is still in the budding stage of development and thus suffers some challenges, such as lagging fundamental systems, imperfect standards and regulations, high product costs, and uncertain technical safety and stability levels. Therefore, to accelerate the development of the hydrogen energy and fuel cell vehicle industry, it is an urgent need to establish a complete supporting policy system, accelerate technical breakthroughs, transformations, and applications of key materials and core components, and reduce the cost of hydrogen use.

With the support of policies, the power battery industry has already been in the initial stage of high-quality development. However, it is difficult to effectively judge the development potential and competition situation of enterprises only through the overall installed capacity, while it is impossible to effectively use the “supporting the excellent and strong enterprises ” industrial policy and targeted industry funds. In this research, a power battery enterprise competitiveness evaluation model was constructed by considering two dimensions of technical competitiveness and market influence. Taking China’s mainstream power battery enterprises as the research object, the validity of the model was verified and the long-term competition of power battery enterprises was predicted by the bias value of lithium iron phosphate. The results show that: when the bias value of lithium iron phosphate is 0.3, A2 is the market chaser, A5 is the technology chaser, A3 performs well in both technology and market, but there is still a big gap by comparing with A1. When the bias value of lithium iron phosphate is 0.7, in terms of competition landscape, A3 and A5 become technical catchers, especially A3 with more obvious advantages, while A2 and A4 become market catchers, especially A2 with more obvious advantages; in terms of enterprises, the ranking of leading enterprises is almost unchanged, but there are major changes among those enterprises ranked in the middle and rear position. The research results can support the scientific use of industrial policies and industrial funds and promote the power battery industry to move into a high-quality development stage. In the next step, it is required to consider the huge impact of new system battery on the industrial structure and improve the robustness of the model.

The development of fuel-cell vehicles is an important opportunity and inevitable choice for China to cope with the challenges of energy security and industrial upgrading and then achieve the “Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality” goal. Taking fuel-cell medium-and-heavy trucks as the research object, this paper builds a multi-dimensional analysis framework of policy, market and technology, further discuss and analyze the development potential of fuel-cell medium-and-heavy trucks in China by sorting out the current situation and studying the development trend of the industry. The analysis results show that China’s fuel-cell medium-and-heavy trucks not only have policy support, market demand and technical support, but also are an important path for the development of fuel-cell vehicles. The research results can be used as a reference for the formulation of industrial policies related to fuel-cell vehicles and have a high reference value for the strategic selection of enterprises’ products in the industry.

Under the background of the continuous strengthening of green manufacturing, the automobile industry, as a typical representative of the industry, will be an important battlefield for the green development of China’s industry. In addition, with the emergence of new alternative materials for automobiles, the selection range of materials for automobile parts is gradually expanding. Literature from year 2009 until year 2019 were collected which is focused on related automotive material selection. It’s worth noting that the concept of “green manufacturing” was proposed in 2018. It is found that the selection criteria of automobile materials have been expanded from only focusing on mechanical properties to economic performance, technological performance and environmental performance. The multi-attribute material selection method is emerging because of the more complicated material selection caused by the increase of environmental attributes, which also brought manifest divergences in the selection of secondary indicators and the setting of weights. According to the practical application, the optimization measures related on the selection basis of secondary indicators and setting weights from the perspective of producers and consumers in the whole life cycle were proposed.