Here is a video which gives us an idea of what the experience will be like when the trucking industry is using hydrogen fuel cell trucks. However the local geography may be a little different for the Australian truckie.
The trucks featured in this video were part of a program where Daimler Truck sent two prototype variants of its Mercedes-Benz GenH2 Truck on tour in the Tyrol region of Austria. For several days, the trucks powered by liquid hydrogen covered a 70 km route between Innsbruck and the Brenner Pass, which is crossed by around 2.5 million trucks each year, and is one of the main arteries of European freight transport. The truck was loaded to a GCM of 40 tonnes for the journeys.
At the same time, another prototype of the GenH2 Truck, powered by gaseous hydrogen, covered a 40 km route between Innsbruck and the village Axamer Lizum located at an altitude of 1,560m above sea level. Here, the deployment of the fuel cell was demonstrated at various altitudes in a demanding topography.
The vehicle was refuelled at an in-house hydrogen refuelling station run by Austrian food company MPREIS. In its own electrolysis facility, MPREIS produces green hydrogen directly on site using renewable energies at the company headquarters in Völs and made it available to Daimler Truck for its test and demonstration runs.
Daimler has stated it prefers to use liquid hydrogen, because the energy carrier has a significantly higher energy density in relation to volume, when compared to gaseous hydrogen. As a result, more hydrogen can be carried, which significantly increases the range and enables comparable performance of the vehicle with that of a conventional diesel truck.
According to Daimler, the development objective of the GenH2 Truck is a range of up to 1,000km and more. This makes the truck suitable for particularly flexible and demanding applications, especially in the important segment of heavy-duty long-haul transport. The company says the start of series production for hydrogen-based trucks is planned for the second half of the decade.
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