Partnership For Battery And Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powertrains

Hydrogen and fuel cell system engineers Arcola Energy, AVID Technology Group and Eaton have announced plans to jointly participate in a government sponsored program to develop battery and hydrogen fuel cell powertrains for zero-emission commercial vehicles.

The team will jointly develop a range of zero-emission powertrain sub-systems that will be available separately or as optimized fully integrated powertrains for battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles. The full system will be integrated into a heavy goods vehicle as a zero-emission powertrain demonstrator.

Arcola Energy, a UK developer and Tier 1 supplier of hydrogen fuel cell powertrains, leads the project. Arcola Energy will collaborate with partners to further expand and productionize its powertrain platform for bus and truck applications from its new facility in the Liverpool borough of Knowsley.

AVID and Eaton will collaborate to pair AVID’s EVO-brand electric motor with Eaton’s four-speed medium-duty electrified vehicle transmission to create an integrated motor drive for electric commercial vehicles.

The collaboration is supported and partly funded by the Advanced Propulsion Centre.

Ben Todd, CEO at Arcola Energy, said: “This project brings together a powerful combination of hydrogen, fuel cell, battery, electric machine and drivetrain capabilities from recognized leaders in their respective fields. The outcome will be a compelling offer to vehicle manufacturers – fast, low-risk, high-quality, cost-effective approaches to electrifying their fleets, whatever their fueling preference – plug-in, hybrid or hydrogen.”

Ryan Maughan, Managing Director at AVID Technology Group, said: “It is a pleasure to be working with Arcola and Eaton on this program. We hope that by developing a much more efficient integrated electric drive unit using AVID’s cutting edge motor and electronics technology and Eaton’s multispeed transmission expertise, we can help to significantly increase market uptake and functionality of battery electric and fuel cell electric commercial vehicles; both of which have an important role to play if we