MAN to build 200 hydrogen trucks — to prove they won’t work?

Europe’s second-largest industrial truck maker goes to construct 200 hydrogen-powered semi vehicles, however stays skeptical concerning the viability of hydrogen as a transport gas.

It’s an odd announcement, so far as these items go. MAN even went as far as to reiterate its commitment to battery-electric vehicles for “most” purposes, unusual for an announcement a few hydrogen-fueled product that the corporate plans to try to truly promote to a choose variety of clients who carry extra-heavy loads like timber or components for offshore wind generators. Different hydrogen strangeness contains claims that “it is going to nonetheless be a number of years earlier than the know-how is really market-ready and aggressive.”

These claims don’t come from MAN Truck’s notoriously hydrogen-skeptical CEO, Alexander Vlaskamp, who informed reporters that it was, “impossible for hydrogen to effectively compete with battery electric trucks,” again in January. “In the present day you can’t purchase hydrogen for lower than 13 or 14 euros … and it’s not inexperienced. And when we now have inexperienced hydrogen it is going to be wanted for the heavy business of metal, cement, or plastic.”

So — if all that’s true, why is MAN persevering with to spend money on hydrogen-powered car applications?
“Only to test our hypothesis,” stated Vlaskamp (emphasis mine). “We could use hydrogen for transportation in 2035, however provided that there’s sufficient inexperienced hydrogen on the proper value and the required infrastructure is in place.”

MAN CEO expresses doubts about H

And, as famous above, Vlaskamp isn’t alone. MAN’s board member for analysis and improvement, Frederik Zohm, stated that the corporate is the one saying hydrogen nonetheless has years to go. “(MAN) continues to analysis gas cell know-how primarily based on battery electrics,” he stated, in a statement quoted by Hydrogen Insight, earlier than one other board member added that, “we (MAN) anticipate that, sooner or later, we will be able to best serve the vast majority of our customers’ transport applications with battery-electric trucks.”

So far as the hydrogen vehicles themselves go, the H2 combustion engine seems to have taken heart stage in MAN’s hydrogen product highway map, with the corporate’s beforehand acknowledged plans to place its FCEV semi into restricted manufacturing in 2025 seemingly pushed again to make means for this run.

Dubbed the MAN gTGX, the vehicles are fitted with a 56 kg tank that it says could be stuffed with hydrogen compressed at 700 bar in quarter-hour. And, with tailpipe emissions coming in at lower than 1kg of CO₂ per km, the truck will likely be categorized as a “zero-emissions car” below the EU’s highway transport rules.

MAN says its H2 combustion engine will ship a large 1800+ lb-ft. of torque (2500 Nm), sufficient to haul extra 220,000 lbs. (100 tonnes) of payload.

Electrek’s Take

This complete factor is unusual, proper? Think about RAM trucks announcing a new diesel pickup and together with quotes from a number of executives concerning the know-how being a step or two behind the electrical vehicles from Ford and Tesla. It might be weird.

That stated, the message right here appears to be that, if Europe needs to maintain spending cash on hydrogen vehicles, MAN will likely be completely satisfied to take it. That’s what I’m getting, anyway — what about you guys? Scroll on all the way down to the feedback and tell us.