Despite EV chargers being installed at a record pace, Toyota continues to bet part of its future on hydrogen fuel cells. In addition to continuing production of the Mirai, Toyota has joined Volvo and Daimler in their effort to replace diesels with fuel cell heavy trucks. According to a Daimler press release, Toyota will become a third equal partner in Cellcentric, a company that Daimler and Volvo founded to develop, produce, and commercialize fuel cell systems for heavy-duty commercial vehicles.
When Cellcentric was founded five years ago, it expected to begin production of fuel cell trucks by 2025, with hydrogen becoming more popular sometime between 2027 and 2030. That didn’t happen, and today, Cellcentric’s website gives a more reasonable target of 2050. The company has developed the NextGen fuel cell, making significant efficiency improvements over previous models and a continuous output of 500 horsepower.
While Cellcentric already knows how to build a fuel cell, adding Toyota’s expertise to the mix can only improve their work further. While Toyota may have oversold the real world usability of the Mirai enough to get sued for it, the car itself is quite good. Fuel cell cars make less sense as EV charging stations propagate like rabbits and charge faster than ever, but fuel cell trucks may beat diesel in efficiency, particularly as gas and diesel prices continue to climb due to our ill-advised activities in Iran. Prices in Europe, where Daimler and Volvo already own much of the heavy truck industry, are even higher, which would position them for success if not for one small issue.
The problem isn’t the fuel cell technology itself. It got us to the moon (at least, the first time — Artemis uses batteries and solar panels), and engineers have been improving it ever since, as Cellcentric’s progress so far shows. The problem is the hydrogen fuel it needs to combine with oxygen to produce electricity and water. While it’s the most common element in the universe, it’s hard to find in its pure form, and hard to keep it there because it’s such a reactive element.
Science may be able to solve these problems, but it takes more than science to create a refueling infrastructure. Tesla, love it or hate it, ending up building its own charging infrastructure to support its EVs because existing networks were so bad. No one’s rushing to build a network of hydrogen fueling stations, and 54 of them, mostly located in California, are not even a drop in the bucket of what’s needed to support our trucking industry.
One could make the argument that “if you build it, they will come.” That seems to be Cellcentric’s philosophy, and it looks like its fuel cell system would work well in a heavy-duty truck. But nobody wants a truck you can’t refuel along the way. It may not matter how much more powerful and efficient fuel cell trucks become unless someone wants to build an expensive infrastructure to keep them filled up with hydrogen.