The adoption of hydrogen as a source of fuel for net zero road transport is “lagging way too far behind electricity,” FleetCheck is warning. The fleet management software company says that visible signs of progress are almost non-existent and that Government strategy appears to be drifting.
Peter Golding, managing director, said: “The Government’s hydrogen strategy, released last year, stated that hydrogen would have a key role to play in road transport in the future but how that would develop was unclear. It’s difficult to know what is meant by that.
“Other European countries are seeing substantial action at an infrastructure level – with a new commitment to a tenfold increase in electrolyser manufacturing capacity by 2025 by the European Commission in partnership with private enterprise – but there is little comparable action here.
“What seems to be happening is that current strategies and funding in the UK are directed almost entirely towards vehicle electrification. Of course, the attention that is being given to the EV transition is laudable but hydrogen has an important or even crucial role to play and is simply being allowed to lag way too far behind.”
It was already apparent, Peter said, that hydrogen had the potential to be the fuel of choice when it came to commercial vehicles above around three tonnes.
“There are unresolved questions surrounding electrification in this part of the market including the massive batteries that would be needed to operate larger commercial vehicles and the impact on charging times and facilities, as well as much-reduced payload.
“Hydrogen has the potential to solve these problems and the first larger vans are now starting to enter production but the refuelling infrastructure to support them in the UK, especially in terms of green hydrogen, is almost non-existent. Unless you are a return-to-base fleet that installs its own refuelling facilities, the potential for adoption is very, very low.
“The fact is that a massively upgraded refuelling infrastructure, concentrating first on urban areas and motorways, is urgently needed. Even if we could work towards a hundred hydrogen stations over the next couple of years, that would be a major step forward.”
Peter added that it was interesting to look at the case of JCB, which had concluded that electrification was largely unsuitable for its own production vehicles and was forging ahead with its own hydrogen strategy.
“They are taking an ultra-pragmatic approach, with the use of hydrogen in converted ICE engines being the first step, before later moving to fuel cell models. This seems like a sensible approach that also maps out how fleets could move to hydrogen. Indeed, there is a parallel for taking this route in fleets in the recent past with the use of LPG in vans.”
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