Automotive Engineering - February 2023 - 21

COVER STORY
Medium-duty cargo van and
Class-8 semitractor illustrations
showing hydrogen tank fitments.
Note saddle-mounted fuel cell
modules (above).
dispensing to retail outlets, " Freese said, noting that transportation is
a significant chunk of hydrogen's cost. Lowering the cost of electrolyzers
" is lowering the cost of making the fuel from renewable electrical
sources, " emphasized Pratt.
Infrastructure
For hydrogen and the myriad of fuel-cell applications to be successful,
a robust infrastructure for hydrogen generation and distribution
is necessary. It's the same scenario with EVs (including billions
in government support), except they are entering the market
with a basic electrical grid already in place. By comparison, hydrogen
is starting from scratch.
The infrastructure build-out " cannot be done only by the government, "
McCormick said. " It must be able to produce an acceptable
and timely return on investment. "
Freese and Pratt agree that the key to a ubiquitous and accessible
hydrogen-supply network are the synergies being developed
from adjacent markets - intermodal rail, marine terminals, truck
terminals, airports.
" There is already an economic model for forklift fleets that favors
fuel cells, as GM now uses in some of our 3-shift plants, " Freese explained,
" with the same types of behaviors related to a big commercial
vehicle: fast refueling, uptime requirements, low maintenance
and the ability to generate power to do work. Once you have the hydrogen
in place, what else comes into a plant or warehouse? Trucks.
It's an intramodal-freight node that can share infrastructure. Then the
trucks go to the railyard, whose infrastructure can refuel both the
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
trucks and the locomotives. They also go to ports and
airports, where the same intramodal fuel sharing can
be done. It creates a tailwind for fuel-cell adoption
once you get to the critical mass out there. "
The nodal strategy to building out the hydrogen
infrastructure creates high-volume usage, which in
turn leads to investment worthiness, " McCormick
maintains. He points to investors already creating
funds and structuring a hydrogen-supply rollout on
major freight corridors. Personal fuel-cell-powered
vehicles would come last in this evolution because
until sufficient numbers of vehicles are on the road,
" the investment doesn't pay out in a timely manner. "
But the boom in hydrogen investment also is driving
other concepts for hydrogen distribution. A new
California-based company, Universal Hydrogen, proposes
shipping hydrogen like dry freight, using dedicated
road trailers, as company CEO and co-founder
Paul Eremenko detailed during a recent presentation.
" Unless you have a need for it, there is no reason
to build pipelines, " added Toyota's Pratt.
Going forward toward 2030, hydrogen and fuel-cell
technologies will be an increasingly critical piece of
global de-carbonization solutions. " We always worried
about whether hydrogen could be coming down to
where it's actually competitive with offsetting the petroleum-based
fuels, " commented GM's Freese. " There
are pathways to do that now. "
February 2023 21
FORVIA AND ZF-FREUDENBERG
Automotive Engineering - February 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive Engineering - February 2023
