August 5, 2022: -Hyundai Motor Company is to ship almost 27 of its XCIENT Fuel Cell trucks to Germany, with the heavy-duty vehicles used by firms operating in retail, logistics, and manufacturing.

This week, the automotive company said seven companies would use funding from the German government to understand the vehicles on the country’s roads.

According to Hyundai, the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport of Germany has a nearly $1.63 billion budget for the investment of “commercial vehicles.” The funding is open until 2024.

The trucks deployed in Germany have a 180-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cell system and use seven hydrogen tanks. The additional power comes from three batteries. “The maximum driving range is 400 km for each charge,” Hyundai says.

The hydrogen-electric trucks that are sent to Germany will support the XCIENT Fuel Cell’s presence in Europe. A total of 47 is already sent to Switzerland, which clocks up more than 4 million kilometers on the road as of July this year.

In Sept. 2021, the Hyundai Motor Group said it planned to generate hydrogen fuel cell versions of all its commercial vehicle models by the year 2028 and to introduce a “following generation fuel-cell system” in 2023.

The South Korean business said its goal was to “achieve a fuel cell vehicle price point in comparison to a battery electric vehicle by 2030.”

With governments worldwide looking to reduce transportation’s environmental footprint, several trucking companies are exploring ways to grow low and zero-emission vehicles, which include ones that use hydrogen.

In June, Volvo Trucks said it had begun to test vehicles that use “fuel cells powered by hydrogen,” The Swedish firm said their range could extend to almost 1,000 kilometers or a little over 621 miles.

Gothenburg-headquartered Volvo Trucks said refueling of the vehicles would take under 15 minutes. Customer pilots are ready to start in the coming few years, with commercialization “planned for the latter part of this decade.”

The same month saw U.K.-based startup Tevva launch a hydrogen-electric heavy goods vehicle. The firm’s truck will run around 310 miles under 500 kilometers.

Tevva’s first hydrogen-electric truck will weigh 7.5 metric tons, with later versions planned to weigh 12 and 19 metric tons.