H2Accelerate acquires funding for 150 hydrogen trucks

The H2Accelerate TRUCKS consortium announced the acquisition of funding leading to the manufacturing of 150 hydrogen-powered trucks, as well as 8 hydrogen refuelling stations for heavy-duty vehicles all over Europe. The H2Accelerate TRUCKS project is an innovative collaboration among three of the leading global OEMs (Daimler Truck, Volvo Group, and Iveco Group), along with research centres, international and national organizations, such as the IRU.

150 hydrogen trucks on the go

More into details, the project will fund the deployment of 150 fuel cell trucks across Europe by the mid-to-late 2020s, allowing development of the technology towards series manufacturing of the vehicles by the three major OEMs in the second half of the decade. The trucks to be deployed in the first stage are expected to be either 4×2 or 6×2, with up to 44 tonne capacity and long ranges of at least 600 km.

The trucks will be deployed with trusted customers of the OEMs and tested in real world conditions over several years in order to demonstrate and assess their technical and economic performance. Results from the project will be used to set the scene for large scale fuel cell truck deployment in the coming years.

Refuelling stations along the main TEN-T transport corridors

As for the refuelling stations, each of them will have higher capacity (>1 tonne/day) than any public stations currently in operation and aim for ultra-high levels of availability through the use of N+1 redundancy in station design (whereby key pieces of equipment are duplicated in station design to minimise downtime in the event that one component fails). Stations will be positioned along key TEN-T transport corridors, allowing easy access for truck end users driving on major highways.

H2Accelerate infrastructure members intend to complement this initial network with the further deployment of stations along strategic corridors between Scandinavia and Northern Italy in future. The stations will service the growing fleet of hydrogen fuelled heavy-duty vehicles, including those deployed by the H2Accelerate TRUCKS project.

“Hydrogen is an exciting energy vector for the sustainable future of heavy-duty vehicles, as this technology offers the best trade-off between autonomy range, payload and recharging time. Today we are proud of the work we will undertake with our partners in the ground-breaking H2Accelerate TRUCKS project, and with the support of Clean Hydrogen Partnership funding, to provide a tangible contribution in paving the way for the technical and commercial viability of long-haul hydrogen trucking”, stated Giandomenico Fioretti, Head of Alternative Propulsion Business Development at IVECO Truck Business Unit.