2023-11-12 09:25:23
Among “zero emission” vehicles, 85% of new trucks sold in 2030 will be electric according to a study carried out by the German authorities.
Promising the decarbonization of road transport, hydrogen-powered heavy goods vehicles could well be confined to market niches in Europe, left behind by their electric competitors. Near Trondheim, in western Norway, since 2020, food wholesaler Asko has been testing four hydrogen fuel cell trucks supplied by the Swedish group Scania. With mixed results so far.
Integration difficulties, defective components, forced immobilization after the explosion of a charging station near Oslo… The vehicle availability rate fluctuates between 30 and 40%. “They are not on the road as much as we would have liked, to say the least,” says project manager Roger Saether. “But we are convinced that it will work in the end.”
When they are on the road, these trucks, with a range of up to 500 km, supply supermarkets scattered over a very large region, while, for shorter deliveries, the group uses electric battery vehicles, with a range today. now more reduced.
Reduce emissions by 90%
A distribution of roles long accepted as intangible among professionals due to the advantages and disadvantages inherent to each technology: hydrogen, the transport of heavy loads over long distances; to electric, that of lighter loads at short distances. But things have changed.
“What we see today is that, unlike a few years ago, electric trucks and buses play an ever more important role in decarbonization,” underlines Fedor Unterlohner, responsible for freight issues at of the NGO Transport & Environment.
Heavy road transport represents 6% of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. Brussels proposes to reduce emissions from the sector by 45% in 2030 compared to their 2019 level, and by 90% in 2040. According to a study carried out last year by the German authorities, manufacturers expect that 63 % of new trucks sold in Europe in 2030 will be “zero emissions”. Among them, electric should take the lion’s share (85%).
800 km per day
If the balance now tips in this direction, it is because the obstacles mentioned yesterday have faded, in particular because, unlike hydrogen, this technology benefits from the advances made for passenger cars. Autonomy? The vast majority of heavy goods vehicles in Europe travel less than 800 km per day, a distance soon to be within range of batteries, especially taking into account the regulatory breaks imposed on drivers, which can be used to recharge.
The payload limited by the weight of the batteries? The amount of energy they can store continues to improve, thereby reducing their number, to the point where the weight difference with a diesel truck is expected to become insignificant. Infrastructure? “Megawatt charging systems”, currently in development, should soon offer ten times more power than the currently fastest terminals.
Tiny margins
There remains the question of costs, crucial in the road transport sector where margins are tiny. There, the electric truck has advantages intended to make it ever more competitive: a purchase price benefiting from the economies of scale generated by the development of batteries for cars and modest operating costs (limited maintenance needs, electricity a priori significantly cheaper than green hydrogen…).
But, in certain cases, the use of hydrogen trucks seems more judicious. “For example, if you cross Europe with two drivers (which allows you to avoid regulatory breaks, Editor’s note) or if you are in very peripheral regions or on islands without connection to the electricity network,” explains Fedor Unterlohner . “Or if you are transporting an 80-ton wind turbine across Germany, which requires blocking the roads at night and therefore forcing you to drive non-stop,” he adds.
Even Scania has chosen to focus on electric heavy-duty trucks “due to their cost advantages”. However, “for certain geographies and activities, (…) we see that hydrogen fuel vehicles could be a viable technology”, explained Peter Forsberg, a senior manager of the Swedish manufacturer. “This is why we embarked on a few projects to discover what an ecosystem around hydrogen could look like.”
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