If you listen to Mercedes-Benz Trucks, they will tell you that both hydrogen and battery electric trucks will be needed to replace diesel in long haul applications.
There is little doubt in most areas of the commercial vehicle industry that local and regional distribution will be carried out by battery electric trucks by 2040. Whether these trucks will be suitable for the long-haul applications that many continental truck operate today under diesel power remains the unanswered question.
To ensure that they have a product to meet this long-haul market, Mercedes-Benz have been investing heavily in the research and development of a hydrogen option for long haul. Making the news headlines this week is their impressive 1,000kms+ trip in a hydrogen powered GenH2 truck loaded with 40 tonnes without the need to refuel.
Powered by a cellcentric fuel-cell system and equipped with a liquid hydrogen fuel tank system, the truck completed the run fully loaded and a gross combined vehicle weight of 40 tons under real-life conditions, without emitting any CO2 during the complete run.
Ahead of the run, the Mercedes-Benz GenH2 Truck was fueled with liquid hydrogen at Daimler Truck’s filling station at the company’s development and testing centre in Woerth. During the refuelling process, cryogenic liquid hydrogen at minus 253 degrees Celsius was filled into two 40 kg tanks mounted on either side of the truck chassis. Thanks to the particularly good insulation of the vehicle tanks, the hydrogen can be kept at temperature for a sufficiently long time without active cooling.
Andreas Gorbach, Member of the Board of Management of Daimler Truck AG, Head of Truck Technology, drove the truck across the finish line in the Ministergarten in Berlin: “To decarbonize transport, we need both battery-electric and hydrogen-powered drive technologies. The sweet spot for fuel cell trucks lies in flexible and demanding long-haul transportation tasks. By cracking the 1,000-kilometer mark with one fill, we have now impressively demonstrated: Hydrogen in trucks is anything but hot air, and we are making very good progress on the road to series production. At the same time, our record run today is a reminder that decarbonizing transportation requires two other factors in addition to the right drive technologies: a green energy infrastructure and competitive costs compared to conventional vehicles.”
Production of the hydrogen systems will be carried out at a facility that resulted from the investment in a joint venture with Volvo Group called Cellcentric. The first fuel-cell trucks are expected to be tested in customer hands in the coming years, while the goal remains firmly set to introduce the series version of the Mercedes-Benz GenH2 Truck in the second half of the decade.