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MAN claims that the cost of producing and transporting green hydrogen is very high
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They assure that they will continue to develop the fuel cell system to “confirm their hypothesis”
The heavy-duty trucking industry is arguably facing one of the biggest crossroads in history. Political calls to “clean up” transport point directly to heavy transport as one of the main targets. If diesel is to be left aside, electricity, hydrogen and synthetic fuels are fighting to take the lead.
THE MAN says he has chosen.
Pollution. Europe wants to clean the air we breathe. And, to achieve this, it has set itself an ambitious goal: by 2030 it wants to reduce polluting emissions into the atmosphere by 55%, compared to the levels recorded in 1990.
Since then, road transport has been in the spotlight. According to European calculations, 25% of European greenhouse gases are caused by the transport sector. Of these, 71% correspond to emissions from cars and commercial vehicles. Even higher than that produced by air traffic (14.4%) and maritime traffic (13.5%).
According to the European Commission, among road transport emissions, heavy vehicles such as short- and long-distance trucks and buses are responsible for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions and 6% of total emissions recorded in Europe.
One goal: clean the fleet. All this led to two clear courses of action. One of these is the clear intention to promote the train as a valid alternative to air and road traffic, as well as for the transport of goods.
The other course of action aims directly at cleaning the freight fleet. And the objectives are particularly ambitious. Those proposed by the European Commission are the following:
- reduce emissions by 45% from 1 January 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.
The tools. Along the way, European institutions have set some specific milestones to make these numbers a reality. Starting from 2030, for example, all city buses should be zero-emission. “It will be up to manufacturers to decide which technologies to use to achieve these goals, for example electrification, hydrogen fuel cells or hydrogen in internal combustion vehicles,” specifies the European Commission.
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 have reached an agreement that needs to be ratified, the new emissions rules will allow cars to continue polluting as they have done so far.
The same does not happen with heavy transport. The Euro 7 standard, which will come into force from 2029 for this type of transport, will require the reduction of polluting emissions from these vehicles and provides tests to monitor nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, which was not foreseen in the Euro 6 standard.
Do. All this brings heavy transport to an inevitable dilemma. The electric truck needs infrastructure and development to be built. Structurally it requires huge batteries that guarantee runs of many hundreds of kilometers. And an infrastructure, which should be under development, to charge these vehicles to enormous power. If we add the weight of the batteries themselves and what the truck itself has to carry, the electric technology seems to have a lot to prove.
But the alternatives also raise serious doubts. With Euro 7 it was allowed that cars did not have to be “neutral in polluting emissions” and the term “zero carbon emission cars” was left to make room for synthetic fuels. However, these “zero-carbon” fuels remain very expensive and it is unclear what price they could achieve on the market in the future.
The final path goes through hydrogen. Used with fuel cell technology, hydrogen is much more attractive than burning it in a combustion engine, but there are two problems related to its price: it is very expensive to produce green hydrogen and it is very expensive to transport hydrogen to hydrogen plants.
MAN, you decide. With all this on the table it is time to take a path and MAN has decided that it will be that of the electric truck. Its CEO, Alexander Vlaskamp, confirmed to the media how Expansion A few days ago they will continue the development of 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 the electric truck. “It’s not a question of believing or not believing, it’s a question of numbers. It is impossible to compete with electric battery technology. The total cost of ownership will always be more favorable for electric vehicles,” he said in conversation with journalists.
According to their reports, to produce electricity and use it to move the trucks, 75% of the energy is used, while to produce hydrogen and use it in transportation, only 25% is used to move the vehicle.
It’s not just transportation. Vlaskamp summed it up with numbers. “Hydrogen is not feasible. It is one thing to have the technology and another thing for the technology to be feasible. Green hydrogen is not available for transport and it makes no sense to switch from diesel to hydrogen if the energy source It’s not sustainable.”
According to MAN’s report, “you cannot buy hydrogen for less than 13 or 14 euros, and it is not green. And when we have green hydrogen it will be necessary for the heavy steel, cement or plastic industry “.
Vlaskamp pointed out that storing and transporting hydrogen is a problem and is extraordinarily expensive. The problem, therefore, is not only its production, but also its transportation on vehicles. Added to this is that Europe is not just looking at transport. In the famous fit55 Emissions generated by the rest of the industries are also taken into consideration, as they will have to look for ways to “clean up” their production.
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Photo | MAN
2024-01-15 12:31:55
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