Daimler AG
–
Concern Daimler (parent company Mercedes-Benz) presented a tractor unit powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The production version, which will go into production after 2025, is expected to have a range of 1,000 kilometers without hydrogen refueling. From 2023, the company plans to start testing the hydrogen truck with potential customers.
The main alternative to vehicles powered by internal combustion engines is electric vehicles. They are rapidly gaining popularity, and governments are increasingly supporting them, providing subsidies for the purchase of such machines or even allowing they drive faster than conventional cars. But all-electric cars aren’t the only candidates to replace gasoline and diesel. Most notable among other options is hydrogen fuel cell transport. The wheels in such machines also rotate from electric motors, but they receive electricity from a fuel cell, combining hydrogen with oxygen on the fly, which, due to redox processes, create an electric current.
Because of their simpler design and other reasons, purely electric cars have gained much more popularity among manufacturers, which in turn has provided much more funding for developments in this area. Nonetheless, hydrogen cars have their advantages, including quick refueling and longer range, which is why some manufacturers continue to develop in this area and prepare production models.
Daimler has unveiled a working prototype of a hydrogen truck, the production version of which is supposed to travel 1,000 kilometers at a single gas station. It has the design of a truck tractor and is designed to carry up to 25 tons of cargo. The tractor has two tanks for liquid hydrogen, each of which is designed to store 40 kilograms of hydrogen. Hydrogen enters a block of two fuel cells with a capacity of 150 kilowatts. The car also has a relatively small 70 kilowatt-hour battery, capable of temporarily providing an additional 400 kilowatts of power during fully loaded climbs and other situations. The current from the fuel cells is distributed to two motors, each of which has a constant power of 230 kilowatts and a peak power of 330.
The company showed in the video the trips of a working prototype, but it plans to begin full-fledged tests with client companies from 2023. And truck production should begin in the second half of the 2020s.
Several other manufacturers are also developing hydrogen trucks, for example, Toyota and Hyundai… Also from 2016 different versions of the hydrogen truck shows the American company Nikola, however, recently questioned its development. September 8 General Motors bought 11 percent stake in the company and announced that it will provide it with its technologies, including motors and fuel cells. Two days later, the analytical company Hindenburg Research released a large investigation, in which she accused Nikola of a lot of falsifications and the lack of technology, the development of which she claimed. The investigation also claimed that the Nikola One hydrogen truck ride demo actually used an unpowered truck that was inertial after being towed to a hill. After that the company recognized some of the claims, including those related to the commercial and the use of third-party technologies.
Grigory Kopiev
–
–
