Europe’s second-largest commercial truck maker is going to build 200 hydrogen-powered semi trucks, but remains skeptical about the viability of hydrogen as a transport fuel.
It’s a strange announcement, as far as these things go. MAN even went so far as to reiterate its commitment to battery-electric vehicles for “most” applications, strange for an announcement about a hydrogen-fueled product that the company plans to try and actually sell to a select number of customers who carry extra-heavy loads like timber or parts for offshore wind turbines. Other hydrogen strangeness includes claims that “it will still be a few years before the technology is truly market-ready and competitive.”
Those claims don’t come from MAN Truck’s notoriously hydrogen-skeptical CEO, Alexander Vlaskamp, who told reporters that it was, “impossible for hydrogen to…