Toyota And VDL Groep To Convert Heavy-Duty Vehicles Into Hydrogen Fuel Cell Trucks
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Hydrogen Fuel News.
This is the first paragraph.
Toyota Motor Europe (TME) and Dutch VDL Groep have teamed up to covert VDL’s existing heavy-duty trucks into hydrogen fuel cell trucks using Toyota’s fuel cell modules, with a goal to accelerate decarbonizing the road logistics sector while also breaking into Europe’s zero-emission heavy duty H2 trucks market.
Note.
- According to their Wikipedia entry, VDL Groep seem to manufacture buses, coaches, chassis modules and vehicle components.
- In Ricardo Supports Toyota To Develop Its First UK-Based Hydrogen Light Commercial Vehicle, I wrote about conversion of the Toyota Hilux to hydrogen.
- There are a large number of companies all over the world, who will convert vehicles to hydrogen.
- It could be argued that Wrightbus and Alexander Dennis, have designed hydrogen buses, that could be conversions of existing designs.
- Cummins are selling diesel engines, that can be converted to hydrogen.
Could these points indicate, that one of the main routes to the decarbonisation of the heavier end of the commercial vehicle sector will be conversion of existing vehicles to hydrogen fuel?
And will this lead to smaller conversion kits to decarbonise vehicles like Land Rovers, Range Rovers, larger BMWs, Jaguars and Mercedes?
If you consider, that when I was growing up in the 1950s, you rarely saw a small diesel vehicle and how diesel came to grab a large market share, due to good engineering and some misguided tax changes from Gordon Brown, I don’t think it is unreasonable to believe that good engineering and perhaps well-thought out tax changes could create an affordable route to decarbonise a large proportion of vehicles.
If I was still driving and lived away from dreaded ULEZs, then I would be keeping my reliable diesel Jaguar estate.
The Anonymous Widower 
I don’t know about hydrogen and cars but it’s looking more probable we’ll see more heavy duty vehicles using hydrogen for power.
I assume from what you’ve previously said about when you stopped driving that your Jag estate was the X type. This was based on the Ford platform that it shared with the second generation Mondeo. As for the engine, the Transit and Peugeot/ Citroen’s equivalent shared the same unit. With it’s Japanese automatic transmission, it’s no wonder the X type was a reliable vehicle.
I’d still prefer the V6 petrol version which is ULEZ compliant.
Comment by fammorris | May 16, 2023 |
I heard from the guy who bought it when I sold it eleven years ago, last year and he said it had well over 160000 miles on the clock. It was a diesel with a manual transmission.
I wouldn’t be surprised if around the world, there is a very large number of similar cars of various makes, that could be converted to hydrogen fuel.
There was quite a range of cars converted to LPG in the last century.
Comment by AnonW | May 16, 2023 |