Daimler Truck announced that it has reached its next milestone on the road to sustainable transportation also with hydrogen-based drives.
The company has been intensively testing a Mercedes-Benz GenH2 Truck fuel-cell prototype since last year – both on the in-house test track and on public roads. It is now deploying another prototype into operation to test the use of liquid hydrogen.
A newly installed prototype filling station at the development and testing centre in Wörth enables the refuelling with liquid hydrogen. Recently the company celebrated the first successful liquid hydrogen (LH2) refuelling of the truck together with Air Liquide. During the refuelling process, cryogenic liquid hydrogen at minus 253 degrees Celsius is filled into two 40 kg tanks mounted on either side of the chassis. Thanks to the particularly good insulation of the vehicle tanks, the hydrogen can be kept at a temperature for a sufficiently long time without active cooling.
The truck maker 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 than gaseous hydrogen. As a result, more hydrogen can be carried, which significantly increases the range and enables the comparable performance of the vehicle with that of a conventional diesel truck. The development objective of the series-ready GenH2 Truck is a range of up to 1,000 kilometres and more. This makes the truck suitable for flexible and demanding applications, especially in the important segment of heavy-duty long-haul transport. The start of series production for hydrogen-based trucks is planned for the second half of the decade, the company stated.