First Hydrogen Corp. announced that its two light commercial vehicles (LCVs) have been certified legal on United Kingdom (UK), excluding Northern Ireland, roads by the Vehicle Certification Authority. The vehicles will now be able to undertake customer trials on public roads commencing January 2023 for a period of 24 months during which the company expects to collect significant proprietary data from fleet owners and to capture high-level interest for future orders.
The vans will be trialed in real-world conditions with major fleet operators initially in the UK and enable the company to publicly showcase its leading design and accelerate the adoption by light commercial vehicle owners of fuel cell-powered vehicles to replace aging diesel fleets. A total of 13 UK fleet operators in various industries including telecoms, utilities, infrastructure, delivery, grocery and healthcare have signed up to participate in the trials.
These two demonstrator vehicles will showcase the advantages fuel cell electric vehicles have over battery electric vehicles in terms of range and refueling speed. First Hydrogen vehicles offer 400-600km of range on a single refueling, which takes a matter of minutes. The certification is a significant milestone for the company and will help with further approvals required as First Hydrogen scales up its vehicle demonstrator program to trial the vehicles in the European Union, U.S. and Canada. The global light commercial vehicle market is projected to reach $786.5 billion by 2030 (according to Allied Research) and First Hydrogen’s vehicles will help the sector meet zero emission targets.
First Hydrogen is also working in parallel to arrange green hyd- rogen generation and distribution under its “Hydrogen as a Service” or Haas program to provide a holistic solution to the market. First Hydrogen’s plans are underway in the UK, Europe, and North America to provide this solution.
Steve Gill, chief executive officer of Automotive for First Hydrogen said: “This is an important step which validates our engineering and technical expertise. The whole team has worked hard to deliver this certification and we can now move forward with the important customer trials commencing in early 2023.”
Published in the December 2022 Edition
