Toyota and Kenworth have developed the next generation of a fuel-cell truck with a range of 480 km. The truck will be tested for cargo handling at Californian ports from the end of 2019.
The fuel-cell truck is a Kenworth T680 Class 8 truck equipped with Toyota's alternative drive technology.
Toyota
Japanese car manufacturer Toyota and US truck specialist Kenworth have developed the next generation of a fuel-cell truck. The new edition is expected to travel more than 300 miles (482 km) on a single tank of fuel – that's twice the range that trucks of this class usually cover. Its loading capacity, packaging and performance have also been further improved.
As a part of "Project Porta", since April 2017, Toyota has been testing a hydrogen-powered fuel-cell drive especially designed for heavy trucks, which is intended to enable virtually silent and pollutant-free freight transport. Both the original "Alpha" and further developed "Beta" truck models have already completed more than 22,500 test kilometres of cargo handling in and around the Californian ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. The first new Fuel-Cell Electric Trucks (FCET) from Toyota and Kenworth are scheduled to start operating in the ports in the fourth quarter of 2019.
The fuel-cell truck is a combination of the Kenworth T680 Class 8 truck and Toyota's alternative drive technology, which is already used in their Mirai limousine. The FCET has been developed as part of the "Zero and Near-Zero Emissions Freight Facilities" project (ZANZEFF), which aims, among other things, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impacts.