Daimler Truck’s fuel cell Mercedes-Benz GenH2 prototype recently completed more than 1000km on German public roads with just one fill of liquid hydrogen.
It began the 1047km journey on September 25 with the run starting at Mercedes-Benz Truck’s Customer Centre in Wörth and finished the following morning on September 26 in Berlin.
The company says it “successfully demonstrated” that hydrogen fuel-cell technology can be the right solution to decarbonise flexible and demanding long-haul road transportation.
The truck completed the run fully loaded and a gross combined vehicle weight of 40 tonnes under real-life conditions, without emitting any CO2 during the trip.
The record drive with sealed tanks and controlled mileage was independently confirmed by an inspection document from TÜV Rheinland.
Daimler Truck head of technology and board of management member, Andreas Gorbach, says decarbonising transport will require both battery-electric and hydrogen-powered drive technologies.
“The sweet spot for fuel cell trucks lies in flexible and demanding long-haul transportation tasks. By cracking the 1000-kilometer mark with one fill, we have now impressively demonstrated that hydrogen in trucks is anything but hot air, and we are making very good progress on the road to series production.
“At the same time, our record run is a reminder that decarbonising transportation requires two other factors in addition to the right drive technologies: a green energy infrastructure and competitive costs compared to conventional vehicles,” Gorbach, says.
Ahead of the run, the GenH2 Truck was fuelled with liquid hydrogen at Daimler Truck’s filling station at the company’s development and testing centre in Wörth.
The hydrogen, supplied by Air Liquide, was of renewable origin produced from biomethane, the company says.
During the refuelling process, cryogenic liquid hydrogen at minus 253 degrees Celsius was filled into two 40kg tanks mounted on either side of the truck chassis.
Thanks to the good insulation of the vehicle tanks, the hydrogen can be kept at temperature for a sufficiently long time without active cooling, Daimler says.
Daimler says it prefers liquid hydrogen in the development of hydrogen-based drives. In this aggregate state, the energy carrier has a significantly higher energy density in relation to volume compared to gaseous hydrogen, it says.
As a result, more hydrogen can be carried, which significantly increases the range and enables comparable performance of the vehicle with that of a conventional diesel truck.
The first series-produced GenH2 Truck are expected to be handed over to customers starting in 2027.
