Trucks
Zero-Emission Heavy-Duty Vehicles & Fleets
Trucks must meet demanding duty cycles, typically running long-days and covering many miles carrying significant loads. Ballard Motive Solutions hydrogen fuel cell powertrains enable zero-emission vehicles capable of direct replacement of diesel vehicles.
We believe that trucks are an important opportunity for hydrogen and fuel cells, probably more so than passenger cars, with cities imposing stricter air quality restrictions on businesses and the increasingly urgent drive for decarbonisation.
A hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle (FCEV) has an electric drive, just like a battery electric vehicle. As for battery vehicles, that means high efficiency and also energy recovered from regenerative braking. But on an FCEV the energy is stored as hydrogen in high pressure tanks and converted to electricity by a fuel cell.
As hydrogen stored this way has much more energy by weight than batteries, it is possible to build a zero-emission vehicle with much greater range or much longer time between refuelling without compromising on payload.
As refuelling takes approximately five minutes, the result is an efficient, high performance zero-emission vehicle that can do the job required in a busy fleet.
At a fleet level, the benefits are even greater. Hydrogen refuelling infrastructure is cost effective for large fleets and scales better than electric charging. So for a fleet operator, hydrogen means flexible vehicles, fast refuelling and practical operations - very similar to existing fleets.
Motive Solutions' A-Drive technology platform is adaptable to the performance of duty cycle requirements of a wide range of commercial vehicle classes and we are working with customers and manufacturers to bring a range of vehicle products to market, ensuring successful deployment and operation of hydrogen fleets.