Hydrogen vehicles could reach cost parity with diesel vehicles very shortly depending on geographical location, according to  to speakers at a PE Live event on the use of hydrogen in haulage.

As soon as cost parity is reached, the road transport sector could see a tipping point where investment flows suddenly start to move away from infrastructure and vehicles based on the internal combustion engine model.

In some parts of the world the tipping point is already within reach, according to Craig Knight, CEO of hydrogen vehicle manufacturer Hyzon Motors.

“Having the infrastructure build up becomes incredibly important for this to be a replacement for diesel” Wood, Cummins

“In Australia, we need hydrogen [prices] at about A$5-6/kg ($4-5/kg) and we are already in a pretty happy zone. In Europe, we need €4-6/kg ($5 7/kg). In most of the US, we need $4/kg or below,” he said.

“Frankly, we are already seeing prices on sustainable hydrogen supplied to us under $4/kg in multiple jurisdictions.”

Hyzon believes that, within two years, the firm will be able to show fleet-wide total cost-of-ownership figures that are cheaper than diesel total cost-of-ownership figures.

Parity point

There are 4,000 buses that need to be renewed nationwide in the UK every year, according to analysis by bus company Wrightbus. If they were all to be hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles then they would operate at cost parity with diesel ones, according to Buta Atwal, CEO of Ryse Hydrogen and Wrightbus.  “If we can get to those volumes, the price of hydrogen will be equivalent to diesel,” he said.

Bus operators in the UK already get a diesel subsidy known as the Bus Services Operators Grant (BSOG). Were that grant to be removed, the parity point with diesel would happen even faster, Butwal noted.

Reaching the point of parity is all about getting to scale, Jonathan Wood,lead in new power engineering with engine specialist Cummins, agreed.

“Having the infrastructure build-up becomes incredibly important for this to be a replacement for diesel,” he said. “It is about scale and production.”

Wood believes the end of the decade is a more likely point for hydrogen vehicles to reach a parity with diesel across most geographic regions.

“But it could be a little faster or a little slower than that depending on multiple factors,” he noted.

The PE Live debate, Is haulage a good use case for scarce hydrogen?, is now available to watch on demand.

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Author: Tom Young