Rhenus News

Emission-free future in freight transport: Rhenus to use hydrogen-powered trucks from 2024 onwards

As part of the ‘Bayernflotte’ (Bavarian fleet) research project, commercial vehicle manufacturer MAN Truck & Bus presented its first commercial vehicles equipped with a hydrogen drive in February. The State of Bavaria is providing a sum of 8.5 million euros for this future-oriented project. Along with four other companies, the Rhenus Group will test the hydrogen-powered fuel cell trucks in real-world operations for one year starting in 2024.

The Rhenus Group has been actively shaping the change towards alternative drives within the logistics industry for over 15 years. Today, Rhenus already owns one of the largest e-truck fleets and will also be on the road with hydrogen-powered trucks from 2024 as a field test partner of MAN Truck & Bus.

‘The main advantage of a hydrogen drive over the battery-powered electric truck is clearly the longer range,’ explains Sascha Hähnke, Managing Director of Rhenus Transport. ‘Furthermore, purely battery-electric drives cannot entirely replace diesel trucks simply because of the expected overloads of the power grids due to voltage peaks. In my opinion, we won’t have to opt for a single drive technology in the future but will continue to use several sustainable technologies in various deployment scenarios.’

For more background information from Sascha Hähnke on the opportunities and risks of alternative drives, listen to the Logistics People Talk podcast.

You can find the complete press release from MAN here.