Is Hyundai giving up on hydrogen mission in Switzerland?
According to media reviews, Hyundai is preventing its fuel cell truck venture in Switzerland. “Extremely fluctuating power prices” are seemingly the cause, however, Hyundai has denied that the initiative can be stopped.
To recapture, Hyundai desires to carry 1,600 FC Xcient vans to the Alpine kingdom via means of 2025. The Korean employer passed over the primary units at the end of 2020.
Beat Hirschi, CEO of Hyundai Switzerland, showed this to the Swiss exchange magazine trans aktuell (Euro Transport online). However, the CEO additionally instructed the booklet that the mission might be discontinued. Only the pay-per-use programme for the forty seven Hyundai Xcient already using Swiss roads will continue, he stated, in line with trans aktuell. Hints of an abrupt quit to the mission had formerly additionally come from amongst ready clients. Hyundai seemingly cancelled contracts for hydrogen vans that had been approximately to be brought. The purpose given to clients became the dearth of availability of inexperienced hydrogen.
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Today, Hyundai fast replied denying the cancellation of the programme, succinctly declaring on LinkedIn: “Neither Hyundai nor any accomplice concerned in the hydrogen atmosphere in Switzerland intend to prevent the present initiative”. Hyundai does admit that the contemporary transport scenario for inexperienced hydrogen isn’t always ideal, however, this doesn’t appear to be dampening their long-time period plans: “The unpredictable disruption in the power market influences the provision and fees of energy from sustainable power sources. This consists of the manufacturing fees of inexperienced hydrogen in the quick and medium time period. Nevertheless, all of the gamers in the Swiss hydrogen atmosphere are completely devoted to their dreams to in addition increase and broaden answers to conform the general gadget to the brand new scenario,” the employer states.
The South Korean employer expects that the hydrogen filling station and manufacturing problems will quickly be resolved, as “11 publicly on hand filling stations presently provide inexperienced hydrogen, and 3 extra places are approximately to begin operations”.
To put matters in perspective, Hyundai introduced in 2019 that it desired to set up its just-released H2 truck in Europe thru Switzerland. To this end, the producer based the joint project Hyundai Hydrogen Mobility (HHM) with the Swiss startup H2 Energy – a private-zone affiliation of influential businesses. The commercial enterprise version: clients need to rent the hydrogen vans from Hyundai Hydrogen Mobility on a pay-per-use foundation that calls for no preliminary investment. By 2025, 1,600 examples had been to roll onto Swiss roads on this way. The first examples had been passed over on the quit of 2020.
While HHM became based to coordinate the mission, a 2d joint project referred to as Hydrospider became created in the slipstream of the mission, wherein Alpiq, H2 Energy and Linde are worried and which became to control the manufacturing of inexperienced hydrogen, its garage and transport to filling stations. This is due to the fact the version for Switzerland envisaged using inexperienced hydrogen most effectively.
This is in which Hirschi seems worried: “With the extraordinarily fluctuating power prices, we can’t provide constant situations for 8 years.” Instead of being transported to Switzerland, the fuel cell vans are actually to be supplied on the market in Germany, in which they’re subsidised via way of means of the nation despite the fact that conventionally produced hydrogen is used. That Hyundai desires to push the export to Germany became introduced via the means of the producer in August. For the time being, seven German businesses will position 27 examples of the car into fleet service.
What becomes of the 2 joint ventures interwoven with the Swiss mission is unclear. According to the report, there can also be no extra income of the Xcient in Switzerland. The forty seven gadgets already brought in the route of the pay-per-use programme will hence stay amongst themselves. The media reviews that there’s additionally complaints of the hydrogen vans – for example, in regards to the variety and the most effective slowly developing filling station network.
According to Hyundai, the Xcient is customised to the necessities of fleet clients. The version is geared up with a 350-kW electric powered motor with a maximum torque of 2,237 Nm. In addition, a 180-kW hydrogen fuel cell device with 90-kW fuel cell stacks is installed. Seven hydrogen tanks – refuelling is stated to take around 8 to twenty minutes, relying at the ambient temperature – provide a mixed storage potential of around 31 kilograms of fuel. A 72-kWh battery serves as a supplementary power source. The employer specifies a variety of four hundred kilometres.
The version got here onto the market in 2020, having been introduced in 2019. In the middle of the year, Hyundai offered a revised version. The version is meant to be – in line with the Koreans’ August statement – “the world’s first industrially produced hydrogen-powered electric powered truck for heavy-obligation transport”. In addition to the forty seven units in Switzerland, there also are some units in use in the USA so far.
eurotransport.de (in German), linkedin.com (Hyundai Hydrogen Mobility AG statement)
sources by: Chris Randall / electrive.com
