Tech firm urges industry to back hydrogen for heavy freight

Systems developer Viritech has called on transport industry chiefs to take a strong leadership position in the debate over next-generation fuel technology.

The company claims that only a commitment to hydrogen offers the UK the prospect of leapfrogging other economies that are predominantly focused on battery technology.

In the wake of newly published research, it argued that the investment case for hydrogen is consistent with the ambitions of last November’s COP26 Summit in Glasgow and the government's newly published Transport Decarbonisation Plan.

With the potential to unlock an estimated £18bn in GVA and create up to 75,000 jobs in the UK by 2035, Viritech is now urging the government to prioritise investment in hydrogen technology.

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The call to action sets out the pathway for the UK to achieve what it called a 'first-mover advantage' in the burgeoning momentum behind the technology.

Viritech has recently demonstrated its own commitment to hydrogen with the development of number of vehicles including the Jovian HGV (pictured).

“Hydrogen is an essential piece of the zero emissions puzzle,” insisted automotive commentator Jay Nagley. “Batteries cannot do the whole job alone and there are a large number of use cases, especially in heavy freight applications such as heavy goods vehicles, where batteries alone are not the solution to replace fossil fuels. However, a dual-track approach of hydrogen and batteries provides a comprehensive set of solutions to achieve this goal. While batteries are the key growth industry of the early 2020s, hydrogen powertrains will be the key growth industry of the late 2020s.”

Added Viritech founder Timothy Lyons: “As a nation, we have done a respectable job of not just pioneering lithium-ion technology and advancing battery tech, but our gigafactory potential is way behind other European markets such as Germany and France in terms of both timing and quantum; hydrogen offers the UK the chance to take a lead in an environmentally and economically critical technology, leveraging our amazing domestic capacity for automotive engineering ingenuity. We’ve set out why this is important and how we can become world leaders in hydrogen technology in our call to action today.”