DETROIT — General Motors this year will supply the first medium-duty truck powered by hydrogen fuel cells to a utility company in Georgia as part of a federally funded demonstration project.
The pilot vehicle going to electric and gas utility Southern Co. will incorporate the body and frame of a 2024 Chevrolet Silverado 5500 medium-duty truck and GM’s Hydrotec fuel cell systems. The truck will have a GM-estimated range of more than 300 miles and a gross vehicle weight rating of 19,500 pounds.
The medium-duty truck will be capable of generating more than 300 kilowatts of power that can be used as off-board power on job sites or for electric vehicles when traditional charging is unavailable, GM says.
“Just to put this into perspective, 300 kilowatts is enough power to power up to 250 American homes,” Jacob Lozier, a GM program engineering manager working on the SuperTruck 3 program, said at the SAE World Congress here on Wednesday. A truck for freight applications also will be deployed later this year with an as-yet-undisclosed company partner, he said.
The five-year project, funded through the U.S. Department of Energy’s $65 million SuperTruck 3 program, will deploy hydrogen technology in a work vehicle and explore the creation of a microgrid that can support hydrogen fueling and storage. GM will work with Southern Co. to deploy the hydrogen-powered truck and with Southern Co. and Nel Hydrogen US on the microgrid project.
GM says it sees hydrogen fuel cells as a possible replacement for diesel engines, particularly in heavy-duty commercial vehicles that need to carry large payloads and refuel fast. The company is collaborating with Autocar Industries to place hydrogen fuel cells in such vehicles as concrete mixers and roll-off trucks starting in 2026, as well as with Japanese heavy-equipment manufacturer Komatsu on a hydrogen fuel cell mining vehicle prototype. GM and Nel also are working to advance industrial production of Nel’s proton exchange membrane electrolyzer, which uses water and electricity to produce hydrogen and oxygen.
GM and Honda also started production of hydrogen fuel cell systems in January at a joint-venture factory near Detroit.
“I’ve been working for GM for 25 years now, and this is by far the most exciting times and exciting transformation that I’ve been a part of,” Mark Dickens, the company’s vehicle chief engineer for future fuel cell products, said at the SAE conference. “The most exciting part today isn’t that we’re here to talk about fuel cells as a concept anymore. More importantly, we’re here to talk about the successful real-world applications.”