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19 January 2022

What are the prospects for hydrogen-powered heavy goods vehicles for freight transport?

Heavy goods vehicles are known to produce the majority of the negative externalities linked to carbon emissions. For several years now, companies have been striving to adopt more responsible solutions in order to make their supply chain greener.

Hydrogen is becoming one of the most studiedalternative energies for the creation of clean vehicles for goods transport. As it is not used enough, there are many questions about its functioning, its deployment prospects, its advantages, its obstacles...

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On 16 February, France Supply Chain and France Hydrogène organised an event to answer all these questions. Several speakers met in order to inform and accompany the actors of the supply chain of goods transport wishing to engage or already working on the topic of the electric truck with hydrogen for goods transport.

During this event, the Mobilité Hydrogène France group of France Hydrogène presented its White Paper dedicated to the deployment of the electric hydrogen truck in France.

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Questions asked during the conference

Will hydrogen-powered electric trucks benefit from the announced subsidies of €65 million?

In principle, there seems to be nothing to prevent this, but in view of the budget and the amount of aid granted (probably around €135,000 on average per electric truck), the fund will be exhausted after 480 trucks, i.e. possibly before the hydrogen trucks are available in volume.

The new PAA "Ecosystems for Electric Heavy Vehicles" should not include support for H2 technologies in its scope.

It was set up so that electric trucks could be supported in the same way as hydrogen electric trucks are supported under the ecosystem PAAs.

To know more about it
What is the capacity of the hydrogen tanks?

We have about 1500 litres of tanks which is not a problem on a tractor as we can now extend the sets beyond 16m50.

Is compressed hydrogen acceptable in terms of autonomy and size? If it is gaseous, at what pressure?

In trucks we start with 700 bars from the first prototypes and of course also for the series for a range of 650 to 800 km.

We believe that it is possible to extend the range to 1000 km by adding an extra tank at the back of the cabin and with the expected improvement in efficiency.

Do you see a need to move towards liquefied hydrogen in future developments?

Liquid storage can provide an advantage in terms of TCO if we can avoid any release of hydrogen into the atmosphere and limit the return of vapours to the station at the time of filling up. This has yet to be demonstrated.

Are you interested in hydrogen combustion?

We have not decided to sell such a product but we are keeping an eye on this technology.

The cost of the vehicle could be lower but the energy efficiency seems more promising in the medium term with the battery, which also offers the possibility of a very quiet 100% battery mode and energy recovery during braking.

What is the price of the vehicles (trucks, LCVs, buses, coaches, MPVs, etc.) and the additional costs compared to gas and electric solutions?

For a road tractor compared to a diesel model (excluding all public aids) :

  • The extra cost of the CNG version is + 30%.
  • The extra cost of the LNG version is +45%.
  • The expected initial cost premium of the battery electric version will be around +315% with 750 kWh of battery
  • The initial extra cost of the electric version with H2 CAP will be around +360% with 65 kg of useful H2
What are the parts to have in redundancy on the H2 stations as mentioned by ELEMENT ENERGY? What are the "weak" parts of the system?
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An observation over several years of the downtime episodes of the H2 stations of the European H2ME and ZEFER projects has made it possible to draw up the following graph:

The parts for which redundancy is particularly recommended are therefore, in descending order, the compressor, the distributor (pump), and the H2 cooling equipment.

What is the lifetime in hours of the PL PAC?

We expect 20,000 hours with a maximum yield reduction of 10%.

For long-haul trucks: have you studied the competitiveness of the H2 electric truck solution in the face of improved battery performance and expected innovations?
Assuming a kg of hydrogen at 6 €HT in 2030, the battery solution can be competitive if the price per kWh in 2030 does not exceed 0.44 €HT per kWh with a charger of 1.5 to 2 mW of power (recharging in less than 30 min). In 2022, a public recharging of 175 kW of power will cost 0.46 €HT in France.

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