Battery electric or hydrogen? We’ll need both, and more, to decarbonize heavy transport

When it comes to delivering a more sustainable transport future, there is no silver bullet. The shift toward fossil free transport is underway in many parts of the world. Battery electric trucks are rolling onto public roads, and sales are starting to pick up. But there is a long way to go, and we need to speed up the pace of transformation. So how do we do this when the population is growing and demand for heavy duty transport is only likely to increase?

Battery electric trucks running on green electricity are not the only route to decarbonization we should be pursuing. A single solution response will not be sufficient to meet the huge demand for decarbonized transport systems. Instead, we need to invest in multiple solutions in parallel to cater to different customer and market demands, and to tackle the immense infrastructure challenge we face.

One size does not fit all

At Volvo Group, we believe, like many other industry observers, that most heavy-duty vehicles will be electric by 2040, but these will need to be a mix of battery electric and fuel cell electric. Battery electric vehicles are generally best suited to applications where the vehicle will return to base at the end of the day for recharging, such as city distribution, refuse collection and regional haulage, and electric vehicles for these purposes are available today.

Battery technology has improved by leaps and bounds — and the scale of innovation continues apace — so that today we see batteries with almost double the kilowatt-hours of first-generation electric vehicles. This means Volvo Group has been able to introduce series production of heavy-duty battery electric trucks so that we have a broad lineup to suit a variety of applications. This supports Volvo Group’s ambition to have at least 35 percent fully electric vehicles sales by 2030. Our premium global truck brand, Volvo Trucks, is targeting that at least half of the global new trucks sales will be electric by 2030.

Sustainable heavy transport is within our grasp, but to make it a commercial reality we must not put all our eggs in one basket.

But battery electric isn’t the right solution for all applications. We believe fuel cell electric vehicles powered by green hydrogen are the perfect complement and offer a promising solution for heavy duty applications and true long-haul transport.

Infrastructure and price will be key drivers

Access to charging infrastructure and the price of green electricity and green hydrogen will determine which technologies are adopted and where, and we are likely to see differences across the world. In some areas, grid capacity and stability will be issues, particularly when it comes to charging multiple trucks in a truck stop at the same time. The power requirements will be considerable, making it impractical in certain locations.

Investment in charging infrastructure is integral to the transformation. Volvo Group is playing its part, partnering with Pilot Company in North America and forming a joint venture, Milence, with Daimler Truck and the Traton Group in Europe to roll out public high-performing charging for medium and heavy-duty electric vehicles. But this is a drop in the ocean for what will be required. And that’s where hydrogen comes in.

Green hydrogen — produced through fossil-free resources such as solar and wind — has tremendous potential to meet the world’s future energy demands and investment in this area is growing. Development of fuel cell stacks at cellcentric, Volvo Group’s joint venture partnership with Daimler Truck, is progressing well. The company was set up to speed up development, and the first test vehicles are on the road, with fuel cell electric trucks ready for commercialization in the second half of this decade.

The internal combustion engine lives on

But it’s not time to bid farewell to the internal combustion engine. While most commercial vehicles will be battery