by Cam Lucadou-Wells
An Australian-first hydrogen-fueled truck is being tested and refined by a design engineering team in Dandenong South.
Global axles and suspensions supplier Hendrickson – which is celebrating 50 years in Australia – is providing technological support and components for Pure Hydrogen’s vehicle.
Hendrickson international operations vice-president and Asia Pacific managing director Andrew Martin says it is “extremely exciting” to be providing the “best suspension and axle configuration” on the first hydrogen prime-mover in Australia.
“We were the conduit for how this vehicle would work in the Australian context,”
Hydrogen was the only “credible path forward” for zero-emissions trucks, Martin says.
“When you consider the speed in which they can refuel this hydrogen vehicle, it’s quite astounding.”
The other ‘clean’ alternative, electric-power, could not provide sufficient “energy density” to propel heavy freight vehicles over Australia’s vast distances.
“To have a battery system that can deal with that is highly optimistic.”
Pure Hydrogen sales manager Clint Butler says the company hopes to produce 5000 hydrogen trucks a year.
Though not cheap up-front, the trucks deliver “massive” savings in fuel costs, he says.
“We can fix the price of fuel for the next seven years. The other advantage is we’re not reliant on importing diesel.”
The Dandenong manufacturing heartland would be an ideal potential base for producing hydrogen through electrolysis and solar farms on factory roof-space, he said.
Butler often fields questions about the safety of hydrogen fuel, with people citing the Hindenburg airship disaster in the 1930’s.
But the technology had advanced greatly since then, he says.
“In the 1960s they put Man on the moon using hydrogen. They still use it to this day to get people to the International Space Station.”
In its trucks, the hydrogen would be housed in high-pressure cylinders that were the “strongest part of the truck”.
Even if the gas was to “vent off”, it would quickly escape upwards into the air rather than pooling under the truck like LPG or diesel.
Pure Hydrogen was fielding interest from waste-transport companies, whose rubbish trucks often catch fire due to batteries and other combustible materials in its waste load.
“You could vent the hydrogen out and there’s no fuel (to catch fire).”
The truck is scheduled to be delivered to PepsiCo and roll into service in Queensland by October.
