Cummins Inc. has received two awards from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) totaling nearly $7 million.
The awards are for Cummins’ continued work on enhancing the economic viability of fuel cell powertrain solutions for heavy-duty applications including on-highway tractor-trailers and buses. Cummins is the project lead and is working with a number of public and private partners on these projects, which are part of DOE’s H2@Scale initiative to develop affordable hydrogen production, storage, distribution and use.
“Programs like H2@Scale are essential to gain the scale and investment needed that will lead to faster adoption of hydrogen fuel cell technologies,” says Amy Davis, president of New Power at Cummins Inc.
“The work we are doing with the DOE and our partners will help improve cost and operational performance of hydrogen fuel cell technologies to achieve greater parity with other available power solutions. We are looking forward to moving this technology forward and bringing additional hydrogen products to our customers,” she adds.
The first award for approximately $3.5 million is for the development of an integrated fuel cell electric powertrain for heavy-duty trucks and transit buses with operational performance and total cost of ownership that supports near-term, rapid and substantial penetration of the truck and bus market. This includes the development of a solution that is highly manufacturable and scalable with a proven range of 300 miles or more and improved fuel economy over current heavy-duty trucks and transit buses. Other objectives include achieving, meeting or exceeding conventional diesel powertrain performance requirements and reducing the upfront capital costs by 35% to make the adoption of zero-emission fuel cell technologies viable for commercial fleets.
