MAN is clear that its future does not lie in hydrogen

The heavy transport industry may be on the verge of one of the biggest crossroads in history. Political demands to “clean up” transport clearly point to heavy transport as one of the main targets. If you want to leave diesel behind, electricity, hydrogen and synthetic fuels will compete for leadership.

The MAN says he has chosen.

Pollution. Europe wants to clean the air we breathe. And to achieve this goal, it has set an ambitious goal: by 2030, it wants to reduce air pollutant emissions by 55% compared to levels recorded in 1990.

Since then, road transport has been in the spotlight. According to European estimates, 25% of greenhouse gases in Europe are caused by the transport sector. Of this, 71% comes from emissions from passenger cars and commercial vehicles. Even higher than air transport (14.4%) and sea transport (13.5%).

According to the Commission, of road transport emissions, heavy vehicles such as trucks and short- and long-distance buses are responsible for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions and 6% of total emissions recorded in Europe.

One goal: clean the car park. All this led to two clear courses of action. One of these is the apparent intention to promote the train as a viable alternative to air, road and freight transport.

Another line of action is aimed directly at cleaning up the truck fleet. And the goals are especially ambitious. The European Commission proposed the following:

• reduce emissions by 45% from January 1, 2030 compared to 2019.
• reduce emissions by 65% ​​from 1 January 2035 compared to 2019.
• reduce emissions by 90% from 1 January 2040 compared to 2019.

Tools. Along the way, European institutions have set some concrete milestones to make these numbers a reality. For example, starting in 2030, all city buses are expected to be zero-emission. “Manufacturers will decide for themselves which technologies they will use to achieve these goals, for example electrification, hydrogen fuel cells or hydrogen in internal combustion vehicles,” the European Commission clarifies.

And in this direction, Euro 7 has a lot to say. In the absence of final approval, and once the European Parliament and the Council of Europe reach an agreement that must be ratified, the new emissions rules will allow passenger cars to continue to pollute the environment as they have so far.

This does not happen with heavy vehicles. Euro 7, which will apply from 2029 for this mode of transport, will require reductions in harmful emissions from these vehicles and includes tests to control nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, which was not included in Euro 6.

Do. All this leads heavy transport to an inevitable dilemma. The electric truck needs infrastructure and development. Structurally, it requires huge batteries that guarantee a range of many hundreds of kilometers. And the infrastructure that needs to be in development to charge these vehicles with massive power. If we add the weight of the batteries themselves and the weight the truck itself has to carry, electric technology looks like it has a lot to prove.

But the alternatives are also seriously questionable. The Euro 7 standard allowed that cars do not have to be “emission neutral”, and the wording was left as “carbon neutral vehicles” to make room for synthetic fuels. However, these “carbon-neutral” fuels remain very expensive, and it is unclear at what price they might reach the market in the future.

The last route is through hydrogen. The use of hydrogen in fuel cell technology is much more interesting than combustion in an internal combustion engine, but there are two problems associated with its price: it is very expensive to produce green hydrogen and it is very expensive to transport hydrogen to hydrogen plants.

MAN decides. With all this in mind, it was time to choose a path, and MAN decided that it would be the electric truck path. Its CEO Alexander Vlaskamp confirmed to such media as Extension A few days ago they will continue to develop the fuel cell, “but only to test our hypothesis.”

The hypothesis is that green hydrogen will be scarce and so expensive that we will inevitably have to opt for an electric truck. “It’s not a matter of believe it or not, it’s a matter of numbers. It’s impossible to compete with electric battery technology. The total cost of ownership will always be more favorable for electric vehicles,” he told reporters.

They estimate that 75% of the energy is used to produce electricity and use it to propel trucks, while only 25% is used to produce hydrogen and use it in transport to propel a vehicle.

It’s not just transport. Vlaskamp summed up the situation with numbers. “Hydrogen is not viable. It’s one thing to have the technology, but another thing for the technology to be viable. Green hydrogen is not available for transport and there is no point in switching from diesel to hydrogen unless the energy source is sustainable.”

According to MAN reports, “you can’t buy hydrogen for less than 13 or 14 euros and it is not environmentally friendly. And when we have green hydrogen, it will be needed for heavy industries making steel, cement or plastics.”

Vlaskamp noted that storing and transporting hydrogen is a challenge and that it is extremely expensive. So the problem is not only in producing it, but also in getting it to the cars. It should be added that Europe pays attention not only to transport. In the famous suitable55 Emissions generated by other industries, which will have to look for ways to “clean up” their production, are also taken into account.

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Photo | MAN