Commercial Vehicles with Ballard Power Fuel Cells Achieve More Than 30 Million Kilometres

Vancouver, Canada - The fuel cell company Ballard Power Systems announced that the Company’s proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell technology and products have now successfully powered Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles – or FCEVs – in commercial Heavy- and Medium-Duty Motive applications for a total of more than 30 million kilometers (18.5 million miles) on roads around the globe.

According to Ballard, the company’s fuel cell technology powers in excess of 570 Fuel Cell Electric Buses (FCEBs) and 2,000 commercial trucks currently deployed in Asia, Europe and North America. Some of the FCEBs that have been operating for over 8-years in the field have now exceeded 35,000 hours of revenue service with no major fuel cell maintenance requirements.

“We are grateful to our customers who continue to trust Ballard to deliver safe, durable, reliable and high-performing PEM fuel cell products and technology for commercial FCEVs,” said Ballard President and CEO Randy MacEwen. Commercial vehicles powered by Ballard technology have on road experience that totals more than 30 million kilometers, which is roughly equivalent to circling the globe 750 times. Our products have powered FCEBs and commercial trucks in 14 countries around the world, and delivered 97.3 percent availability in 2019, MacEwen adds.

As Ballard Power points out, the use cases for which Ballard products have been deployed in the field are strongly aligned with use cases examined in the Hydrogen Council’s “Path to Hydrogen Competitiveness: A cost perspective” report and the Deloitte China-Ballard “Fueling the Future of Mobility: Hydrogen and fuel cell solutions for transportation” white paper. Both were issued earlier in January 2020. These reports showed that certain use cases for hydrogen FCEVs can be competitive with other low-carbon alternatives and, in some cases, even conventional options by 2030.

Source: IWR Online, 28 Jan 2020