TECO 2030 and AVL to conduct feasibility study for fuel cell system for heavy-duty trucks
12 February 2023
TECO 2030 and AVL List have signed a contract for a feasibility study of developing and industrializing a Fuel Cell System for heavy-duty (HD) trucks. The feasibility study starts immediately and is expected to be completed in 2 months. After successful completion, TECO 2030 plans to industrialize this heavy-duty fuel cell system and manufacture them at the Innovation Center and gigafactory in Narvik, Norway.
Through the feasibility study and development of the HD fuel cell system, TECO 2030 aims to have a solution for truck fleet owners who wish to upfit their existing and new fleet. The market for HD trucks is enormous and estimated to be millions of trucks across Europe and the US alone.
TECO 2030 estimates that there needs to be deployed roughly one million new zero emission HD trucks in Europe and the US alone by 2030, in addition to the existing trucks which can be upfitted with a HD fuel cell System.
The average lifetime of a truck is 13 years, which means there are also many existing trucks that can be fitted with new propulsion technologies. The HD fuel cell module can also be deployed in other heavy-duty on- and off-road applications as well, for example mining trucks, rail, buses.
We have already received huge interest from several stakeholders in the automotive space, and this will strengthen our zero emission technologies portfolio with a new space efficient HD fuel cell module, purposely made-to-fit Class 8- and 40-ton truck chassis. This also brings us closer to our partner AVL and contributes to increasing our leading presence in the fuel cell market for HD applications.
—Tore Enger, Group CEO, TECO 2030
I am really excited to see the TECO 2030 stacks perform in an additional HD application other than marine. With the carbon plate stack design, we laid the foundation for pretty much everything heavy duty and it is absolutely key to find these common denominators across industries. This is the only viable way to make sure that our customers like TECO2030 succeed and are able to utilize their upcoming Narvik plant for additional needs besides their main business. Customers looking for off-the-shelf solutions will be very happy to see that a this world class facility can support their heavy-duty product in a timely manne
—Falko Berg, Manager and Technical Product Responsible PEM Systems at AVL List
Separately, TECO 2030 announced that the HyEkoTank project, which was awarded a €5-million grant under the European funding scheme HORIZON EUROPE, has started, together with Shell and the other consortium partners. The project, which started 1 February, is planned to last for 3 years, with the ultimate goal of eliminating emissions during voyage and in port.
TECO 2030 aims to retrofit six 400 kW Fuel Cell Modules in a container solution, and demonstrate power supply for both propulsion and auxiliary loads using hydrogen with zero emissions as fuel.
Retrofits are a great way to decarbonise rapidly at minimal cost.
Toyota's approach has been to use the same stack in different applications, in an effort to drive down cost by volume.
I find more specialist approaches for heavy duty use more convincing, from a layman's POV, as for a heavy truck, much marine usage and so on, you need durability of a totally different order, which is still being worked on although the figures for FCEV buses where we have a lot more experience are very encouraging, although not all the way there.
No doubt Toyota's engineers are well aware of the issues though, so they must have something in mind!
' Durability—Fuel cell applications generally require adequate performance to be maintained over long periods of time. DOE has set ultimate targets for fuel cell system lifetime under realistic operating conditions at 8,000 hours for light-duty vehicles, 30,000 hours for heavy-duty trucks, and 80,000 hours for distributed power systems.'
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/fuel-cells
Back in 2018:
' El Dorado National (ENC) is the first bus manufacturer to complete the rigorous 12 year / 500,000-mile life cycle Altoona testing of a hydrogen fuel cell transit bus.
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/07/20180717-enc.html
You would really like a million miles in the rather different duty cycle of a heavy truck, but this was some time ago and is certainly encouraging.
Posted by: Davemart | 12 February 2023 at 01:04 AM