Join our host, Georgia Lomas, for an insightful conversation with Dr. David Telford, Chief Scientific Officer at HVS, on transforming the heavy goods vehicle (HGV) sector with hydrogen fuel cell technology. Tune into Episode, “The Hydrogen Revolution in Heavy Haulage,” and discover how HVS is pioneering the UK’s first hydrogen-powered HGVs, propelling us towards a greener future.
Listen in as Dr. Telford shares his expert perspective on the journey to decarbonise one of the most challenging sectors and what it could mean for the logistics industry, the environment, and the economy.
[Podcast transcript]
Georgia Lomas:
You’re listening to the Journey to zero podcast hosted by Alltruck Zero. If you want to stay ahead of the game and find out more about the very latest green truck technology, or you’re looking for hints and tips on how to decarbonise your own fleet, then this is the place for you. In this podcast, we’ll be sitting down with the thought leaders who are guiding the way on the journey we’re all on as we work to decarbonise the transport industry.
Georgia Lomas:
We are welcoming Dr. David Telford from HVS to the podcast. Thanks for joining us David, could you please introduce yourself and your role at HVS?
Dr David Telford:
My name is David Telford. I’m the chief scientific officer, which sounds very grand, but actually I’m the only scientific officer in a company of engineers. So my background is I’m a physicist and I started off life working for the Atomic Energy Authority on the fast reactor or the Fast Breeder program. So I’ve been in and around fairly cutting-edge technology for most of my working life through a whole variety of things I won’t bore you with. I ended up working with HVS right as it was a startup, bringing some expertise in hydrogen infrastructure and hydrogen development. But my background also is in control systems. So I’m looking after both the hydrogen infrastructure and our hydrogen supply chain partners, and I’m also looking after the development of the control system for the vehicle.
Georgia Lomas:
Great, fantastic. So for those of our listeners who don’t know who HVS are, could you just give an update as to what HVS do?
Dr David Telford:
Yes. HVS are a new Glasgow based startup company. We’re actually now in the scale-up phase. We are looking to disrupt the hydrogen mobility market by the introduction of the UK’s first tractor, hydrogen powered HGV. We’ve started effectively from scratch. So when I started with a blank sheet of paper, and we’ve now got operational demonstrators running around the track at Myra test centre.
Georgia Lomas:
Great, So why is the move to alternative fuel so important for the commercial vehicle industry?
Dr David Telford:
Well, it’s not only important for the commercial vehicle industry, it’s important for the planet. Fundamentally, it’s all about decarbonising a very hard to decarbonise sector. So zero emission vehicles are really necessary. The transport industry in particular has found it very difficult to move to decarbonise. Demand for transport has actually gone up, so the carbon footprint of commercial vehicles as a whole has gone up, whereas every other sector is actually making progress. So it is absolutely important that we find zero-emission vehicle solutions for the transport sector.
Georgia Lomas:
So how much more sustainable is hydrogen fuel cell technology compared with petrol, diesel, or even hydrogen combustion technology?
Dr David Telford:
It’s a really interesting question. What the industry would really like is a drop in workhorse that does everything a diesel engine does, from small scale up to the heavy goods vehicles. Unfortunately, the technology, zero emission technology, is not like that. So there is a role for different technologies at different scales within the industry. We firmly believe that at the heaviest end, the long haul, high load carrying, high mileage, high regional delivery, then hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are by far the best technology from an efficiency point of view and from refueling point of view, load carrying point of view, and all that sort of thing. That’s not to say that battery electric vehicles don’t have the role within commercial vehicles. They certainly do in last mile deliveries. They certainly do in the shorter distances and the lighter loads.
Dr David Telford:
There’s probably a grey area in the middle where it’s not very clear at the moment whether battery technology will evolve to do the heavier end of the light goods vehicle, this medium commercial vehicle, or whether hydrogen technology will get cheap enough to go in there. Hydrogen combustion is an interesting one, and I think it’s really important that hydrogen combustion is developed alongside hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Hydrogen combustion is a relatively simple drop-in solution, but in the longer term, it’s not as attractive as a fuel cell vehicle because of the difference in the efficiencies in the heavy goods vehicle side. You’ll need twice as much hydrogen to run a combustion vehicle as you would to run a fuel cell vehicle.
Georgia Lomas:
Okay.
Dr David Telford:
But there will be some duties where the fuel cost is not the dominant factor, and in particular, where you have a lot of power takeoff if you need shaft power, for example. The JCBs are doing a great job on hydrogen combustion, but they need hydraulic pumps and all sorts of things to run. So where you’ve got a rotary need for that hydraulic, then a combustion engine makes total sense. Petrol and diesel, yes, fantastic workhorses will have a role, but even alternative zero or carbon neutral fuelling for them is actually a really big challenge. And ultimately, I think it’s last century’s technology.
Georgia Lomas:
So how do the costs and sustainability compare across the alternative fuel options?
Dr David Telford:
The costs at the moment, hydrogen fuel cells are incredibly expensive, but they are very much at the early stages. Hydrogen fuel cells are where batteries were about 15 to 20 years ago. They’ve been built one off by a bunch of guys in a lab type of thing. However, we are seeing the emergence of, effectively, the gigafactories for hydrogen fuel cells, and the cost projections are incredibly attractive. We’re at a very early stage and we’re into the rapid cost down. But obviously, to get to that stage, we need to be getting the vehicles in the roads now, and we need to actually. So there are a lot of early adopters who see that the advantage of the hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, particularly on the heavy goods side, where you have fast refilling heavy loads, and long distances in particular, long annual distances. So not necessarily just the long haul market, but the regional hall market where the vehicles have been used.
Dr David Telford:
Double triple shifting.
Dr David Telford:
The fuel cost effectively dominates, and we’re projecting parity with diesel somewhere around 2028 to 2029, just on the basis of the fall in price in the fuel cells and related hydrogen technology as the supply chain Europe, and also as green hydrogen supply comes on board. And prices of green hydrogen start to of, in terms of the overall costs, we’re kind of looking at parity in that particular sector. In terms of sustainability. I believe it is actually the most sustainable way of getting renewable energy to the wheels of an HGV. Yes, you can do it through battery systems, but the battery systems, HGVs, are so large and have so much materials in them, and also the charging time. And the other issue is that at the moment, you’re still charging principally off the grid. So to charge vehicles, you’ve got virtually no. Well, you have got some alternatives.
Dr David Telford:
You can actually do private wired, but mostly they’ve been charged at the end of the transmission distribution grid. So the electricity is not zero carbon, whereas we are looking at direct coupling hydrogen generation at the renewables and then transporting the hydrogen to the point of use. So if you look at the overall cost equation around that, it’s a much more cost effective way of getting renewable energy to wheels where you want it, when you want it. People say, well, batteries are much more efficient in terms of round trip efficiency of electricity, but I think you’ve got to look at the overall system from where the electricity has been generated. And in particular, hydrogen has got quite a big role to play in stabilising the grid as we build out more and more renewables. So in terms of the ultimate sustainability, I absolutely believe that hydrogen has a massive role to play in the commercial vehicle sector.
Georgia Lomas:
So, David, how much do you think it will cost to run these vehicles?
Dr David Telford:
The cost piece is really interesting, because traditionally, if you look at the cost of running an HGV, it splits into a third. It’s a third of the cost of the vehicle and capital repayments, a third the cost of driver, and a third the cost of fuel. So there’s other B bits and pieces in it, but pretty much the total tires and ad blue and all that stuff and training and whatever. But the fundamentally cost of vehicle is around the cost of vehicle, cost of the driver and cost of fuel. Now the cost of driver won’t change very much, so just take that out. So really in terms of the total cost of ownership piece, it’s the cost of the vehicle and the cost of the fuel. And the total cost then depends on the mileage. So if you buy a vehicle and you sit there not doing very much of it, then your total cost is the cost of the vehicle.
Dr David Telford:
If you run it heavily and you’re running. We are targeting the 180,000 kilometer per annum market. So 180,000 km plus. And at that level then the cost of the fuel starts to dominate. So the thing that really is important then is the relative cost of the fuel versus the cost of diesel. So over the life of the vehicle now, if I could predict the cost of diesel over the next ten years, I probably wouldn’t be making vehicles, I’d be speculating in the fuels market. So that’s a real unknown. And I think you were asking earlier about what could government do.
Dr David Telford:
I think probably some policies to stabilise the cost of hydrogen and also some commitment. If they’re thinking about phasing out diesel to some fuel-duty type escalator that is related to the environmental impact of carbon, it doesn’t have to be very much at all. When we had the Ukrainian crisis and diesel was up in price, then it would have been cheaper to run our vehicles than it would to run a diesel vehicle. Even with the very high capital cost, which is about three times the cost of a vehicle. So there’s not a lot of difference. And the other thing is the infrastructure that’s been developed at the moment is around getting the cost of hydrogen down again. Hydrogen is not a commodity at the moment like diesel is. You go into any garage and the price is pretty much the price.
Dr David Telford:
But hydrogen, depending how you want, what you want hydrogen. Now we haven’t talked about the so called colours of hydrogen or the sustainability of hydrogen as I’ve been talking. I’m assuming we’re talking about green hydrogen. And by green hydrogen, I mean hydrogen that comes from renewable sources. So that’s either through from a biogas conversion into hydrogen or it’s from renewable electricity, electrolyses to hydrogen. I’m not so interested in blue hydrogen, which is hydrogen converted from natural gas with carbon capture. So although it’s carbon neutral, it’s not sustainable because it’s still coming from fossil fuels. And grey hydrogen is just hydrogen from fossil fuels, where the carbon dioxide is released at the refinery and the hydrogen then goes off.
Dr David Telford:
And in terms of carbon, in terms of air quality, that’s fine, because it’s all about the local emissions at the tailpipe. But in terms of overall carbon impact, gray hydrogen doesn’t do it. You’d be as well putting diesel in the vehicle when running it.
Georgia Lomas:
Right? So why do you believe that hydrogen fuel is the best answer for HGVs?
Dr David Telford:
People are looking at, for shipping, for example, they’re looking at hygiene derivatives, they’re looking at green ammonia or ethanol. But to get to green ammonia and ethanol, you have to basically make hygiene first. So it’s useful in shipping because of the amount of energy you need to carry to take a ship across the oceans. But for HGVs, there’s not really any need to go down to that level. You can put enough hydrogen into the vehicle directly, so why convert it to something else? And the other thing is, from the point of view of motive power on the roads and mobility, the electric powertrain is relatively well developed. It’s been developed for Bevs. It allows you for regens the overall efficiency of using hydrogen fuel cell to produce electricity on board. To then run an electric drivetrain with where you have regenerative braking, you imagine a 40 ton truck down a two or 3% slope, you can recover all that energy.
Dr David Telford:
It’s basically working as a generator at that point. So the overall trip efficiency becomes much better with the electric powertrain and hydrogen fuel cells.
Georgia Lomas:
What benefits does hydrogen fuel cell technology have over BEVs in the market?
Dr David Telford:
I think so. I think one of the things that’s worth talking about is it’s often presented as a kind of VHS Betamax thing, that one technology is going to win out and it will do everything. And I think that’s absolute nonsense. There is a real role for BEVs, and bev technology will get better and better. There’s no doubt battery technology will improve. There’s a whole load of use cases where BEV are by far the best solution, certainly on the lighter vehicles and into the MCV plus, where BEV becomes a problem and we’re listening to end users on this is where they need the vehicles to have high availability, where they can’t really afford it to have the downtime. So some utility vehicles, emergency services vehicles. So though in principle you could do it with BEV hydrogen is by far much more attractive.
Dr David Telford:
So we did a project with scottish ambulance service looking at how BEV would work for them versus hydrogen, and they came to conclusion that hydrogen for the longer journeys, we are focusing very much on the high mileage, long haul market. And for there, I absolutely convinced that fuel cell electric is by far the best technology.
Georgia Lomas:
What challenges does the hydrogen refuelling infrastructure face?
Dr David Telford:
The hydrogen refuelling infrastructure has, I mean, it’s the well known chicken and egg problem, and it’s certainly what has inhibited the uptake of hydrogen cars and automobiles. The issue with that is nobody’s going to buy a car unless there’s the infrastructure, and nobody’s going to build the infrastructure unless there’s a car. So that is the chicken egg thing. The chicken egg thing doesn’t actually apply anything, like as much to the HGV market. First of all, as I said, we’re looking at the long haul and we’re looking at the high regional duty cycles, and they tend to be distribution to center to distribution center. So within the UK, we think we can service something like 96% of the journeys of the H UVs with about around seven filling stations.
Georgia Lomas:
Wow.
Dr David Telford:
Now, to get to seven filling stations, it’s actually relatively simple. We are working with the hydrogen supply chain partners, so we’ve got everything from mobile refillers, which are basically shipping container full of hydrogen with a dispenser on them that you just bring to site and put down. And they are good for around, up to around ten vehicles operating out of the one point. Mostly the journeys that we’re looking at that are early adopters are looking at all way the back to base anyway. So you actually only need that one fill point.
Georgia Lomas:
Yeah.
Dr David Telford:
So we’ve got 450 to 600 kilometer range, so that’s for a lot of the UK, from distribution hub to distribution hub, or from the import ports up to the distribution hub. It’s easily covered going backwards and forwards on that. Once we got about ten vehicles operating out of the one region, that is enough of a baseload because the trucks take a lot more hydrogen in the car, and that is enough of a baseload for an economically viable filling station. So our strategy, working with our investor, which is the ZG group, is to not put the fuel on the depot as a bunker fuel, but put it close to the depot, because there’s a bit of clustering around the distribution centers. Logistics centers tend to be regionally located, so we build out there and then we then repeat that around the country until we’ve got the network we need for the HGVs and then carry on building them. And at that point, in an awful lot of ways, the hydrogen supply into the HGV market breaks the chicken and egg problem for all vehicles or all hydrogen supply. So it’s a very attractive proposition, I think, for government to invest in and to go around that rollout of renewable fuel around the country.
Georgia Lomas:
So that does link with my next question, which is, what support can the government offer to help with the move to net zero in this market?
Dr David Telford:
There’s quite a lot they can do, because what people are really interested in is the comparative cost of HGVs running on hydrogen versus the traditional diesel HGV. And as I said, the vehicles themselves at the moment are extremely expensive. Got that? But with where we expect hydrogen fuel to be versus where we expect diesel to be, we get to TCO parity relatively soon. As I said, 2028 to 2029, the government can bring it forward if they wanted. All they need to do is increase this cost of diesel by a small fraction and subsidise the cost of hydrogen by a small fraction, and it just flips it and it then becomes, that’s one thing. So you could actually put carbon costs onto diesel and then use that money to go to subsidise hydrogen and or electricity for the initial vehicles, it would be really helpful. We don’t need direct support, but a lot of the end users, the issue was the people that are wanting to take our vehicles in the first instance are those that see the carbon benefits, and they’ve got maybe a net zero plan, or they’ve made a commitment to net zero. So they’re the ones who will pay a premium because they’re looking at alternative ways of reducing carbon.
Dr David Telford:
And actually, a vehicle fleet is a very cost effective way of doing that, but it’s still a premium. The problem for the logistics industry is it’s a low margin industry, so anything that increased costs is a problem for them. And that’s really where we need some government intervention around support for early adopters in the wider logistics industry.
Georgia Lomas:
So what do you think the future looks like for hydrogen vehicles?
Dr David Telford:
Well, I got involved with HVS, and I’m not promoting hydrogen vehicles because I work for HVs. I get involved with HVs because I believe in hydrogen vehicles. So I think the future for hydrogen vehicles is very good. There’s been a number of false dons about hydrogen, but the amount of activity now worldwide is incredible. As I said, the gigafactories are being built for fuel cells. The Far east is going very heavily into them. If you look at the overall efficiency versus any of the combustion technologies, combustion technology just looks so last century. They’re much cleaner, they’re electrically powered.
Dr David Telford:
There’s an awful lot of electronics within them. The control systems are absolutely fantastic. I look at them. I was involved previously in designing energy centers, and to me, these vehicles are almost like small energy centers on wheels. And then when you start looking at that, you start looking at what else you can do with them around. They’re effectively could be used as standby generators that generate power wherever you want them. They’ve got a huge role to play in actually promoting the hydrogen economy more widely. To me, the hydrogen is a way of getting renewable energy stored.
Dr David Telford:
So it’s a way of dealing with intermittent renewable energy. And as we build out more and more solar, more and more wind wave power, all that kind of stuff, then a method for storing and transporting energy around as a fuel is absolutely essential. And hydrogen is the simplest way to do that. Putting into mobility is by far the most attractive because of the problems of decarbonising SUVs. But I also think that hydrogen will be the hydrogen, and mobility will be the spearhead of hydrogen into a much wider range of applications, into industrial uses, where you have to displace fossil gas and you have to get high temperatures and all sorts of different things into industry. So I think there’s a very compelling reason that governments all over the world are investing in promotion of hydrogen technology for the heavy goods mobility sector.
Georgia Lomas:
What advice would you give to a business looking to transition over to hydrogen fuel cell technology?
Dr David Telford:
First of all, it is not a simple plug and play. You don’t just go rock up, buy a vehicle and go on with it, because it’s a big step change. Kind of fond of saying this is not an evolution, this is a revolution. And that means that you have to go relatively slowly. You have to understand what the impacts are. First of all, driver acceptability needs to be sorted out. There’s a whole lot of things that we are working on with partners to sort out. So we are not looking to be just people that supply vehicles.
Dr David Telford:
We’re bringing in partnership the hydrogen supply side. We’re actually looking at the operation and maintenance side. We’re bringing them onboard insurers who have no experience of the technology, they don’t understand what it is. We’re dealing with planning permissions, we’re dealing with how you fit out workshops for hydrogen. And actually the skill base is quite different as well, because these are high voltage, high pressure hydrogen systems, high voltage electricity, high voltage DC, quite complex electronics, power electronic systems, quite complex cooling systems, and they need investment in skills and the operation and maintenance and experience. So anybody that’s transitioning, it’s not like you say, well, I’ll just transition quarter of my fleet this year and quarter fleet next year and I’ll be there in four years. It’s not going to be like that. That’s why it’s important.
Dr David Telford:
It’s incredibly important that we get vehicles into the marketplace now. So the early adopters really understand and work with us on what are their challenges and therefore where are the opportunities and what are the best routes to put the vehicles into and all of that kind of thing. So we see ourselves not just as vehicle suppliers, but as partners in the transition to net zero for fleet managers.
Georgia Lomas:
So, David, if someone was interested in HVS vehicle, what should they do and how would they get in contact with you?
Dr David Telford:
Well, the first thing is get in contact with us through the website. It’s a very exciting time for us. We are running our test vehicles at the moment and we’re going through the process of trying to get my engineers to break them and fix them, break them quickly, fix them quickly, understand what can go wrong, how it goes wrong. So within the next re, while we are wanting to have end users involved in that process and whether that’s just on a test track, to get them familiar with the technology or the early vehicles or the pre production vehicles, and then into our early production vehicles. So we’re very interested in talking to people now and getting driver and fleet managers experience on the vehicles. That’s one thing. The other thing is, as I said, we are not interested in just selling people vehicles. We’re absolutely interested in taking them on the journey and wanting to be their partner in their transition to net zero.
Dr David Telford:
And we’re certainly not thinking that hydrogen is a be all and end all for an entire fleet. If people talk to us about how they’re using their vehicles, then we can say to them, look, hydrogen is going to work for you well in this situation, but Bev is going to be better for this here. So there’s lots of potential around the new technology and its ability to provide data and therefore different sales models and different purchasing models and some of those. If you’re related to the overall TCO parity and you’re concerned about the initial upfront cost, then there’s lots of ways around that. And we’re very interested in talking to people and then bringing in the finance necessary to make that work.
Georgia Lomas:
Great. Fantastic. Thank you. So anyone who is an early adopter in HVS wants to be an early adopter, please reach out to HVS. They are very interested to speak to people and we really appreciate your time. David, thank you for joining us today.
Dr David Telford:
Thank you.