2023-04-19 06:45:11
HYVIA, a joint venture between Renault Groupe and PLUG founded in 2021, is one of the French companies selected to benefit from the European PIIEC, which aims to accelerate certain projects identified as promising for the development of a hydrogen sector at European level.
Mehdi Ferhan, Managing Director in charge of operations at HYVIA, explained to Techniques de l’Ingénieur the company’s strategy to become a leader on the hydrogen commercial vehicle market, in a context of Europe setting up bricks to develop a real European sector around hydrogen.
Engineering Techniques: What are the challenges today around the development of hydrogen mobility for Hyvia?
Mehdi Ferhan : Green hydrogen for mobility alone constitutes an ecosystem, with its value chain. This concerns vehicles, but also fuel cells, charging stations, and the production of hydrogen from electrolyzers. It is therefore a question of developing this ecosystem as a whole, and this is the raison d’être of HYVIA.
Today, HYVIA has a plant in Flins for the assembly of fuel cells and a partner site, PVI, located in Gretz-Armainvilliers, for the integration of fuel cells on the Renault Master H2-TECH. It is on this last site that the Renault Master H2-TECH are manufactured, including the “large van” Van version. has just been approved for the entire European market.
Hyvia has been selected to benefit from the European PIIEC on hydrogen. How will this accelerate the development of the company?
The hydrogen PIIEC is one of the mechanisms set up at European level to accelerate the development of the value chain around hydrogen technologies.
The ambition is to put in place at European level all the technological bricks that will constitute a sector in its own right, across the entire hydrogen value chain, in particular by developing new technologies.
In the case of HYVIA, which was notified of its selection last fall[1]the PIIEC will make it possible to set up the entire ecosystem necessary for the production of fuel cells, produced on the Flins site, where HYVIA has moreover just installed its first chlorinator delivered by PLUG. This consists initially in the assembly of fuel cell systems and then in the integration carried out in vehicles. This acceleration is therefore also a means of promoting the realization of industrial operations locally, in the territories.
In a second step, these developments will materialize through the construction of a gigafatory, which will be able to manufacture fuel cells on an industrial scale, for a light commercial vehicle market which should take off in the coming years.
What are the steps that will lead to the start-up of this gigafactory?
The establishment of this gigafactory is part of a step-by-step process. We started in March 2022, with the inauguration of our pilot plant in Flins: the first 3,500 square meters of industrial infrastructure allow us to assemble a first generation of “ProGEN” PEM fuel cell systems, delivering a power of 30 kW.
These batteries are destined to be integrated into hybrid propulsion systems. The architecture of the vehicles, which is called “dual power”, is made up of the fuel cell on one side, with cylinders storing hydrogen at 700 bars, and also a battery, which allows to benefit from different modes of propulsion and recharging. This is very important in order to offer vehicles whose use is not solely dependent on hydrogen. In fact, the hydrogen charging infrastructures are currently not sufficiently deployed on the territory, and this should not restrict the use of vehicles. The idea is therefore to be able to recharge with electricity when hydrogen recharge is not possible, while maintaining a zero-emission vehicle. All of this is the first step for HYVIA. Today, the Flins site has a production capacity of 1,000 fuel cell systems per year.
And in the longer term?
By 2030, the objective for the company is to be one of the European leaders in hydrogen utility vehicles, with a quantified ambition. We want to capture 30% of the hydrogen utility vehicle market by the end of the decade. In this, the Flins pilot plant is the first brick that should lead us, within 7 to 8 years, to the ambition that I have just mentioned. The second building block is the gigafactory, which will allow us to scale up production and locate the technologies needed to deploy the entire hydrogen ecosystem on the territory, at French and European levels.
How will the deployment of your fleet of hydrogen utility vehicles take place?
We will go through a deployment of our utility vehicles by the Renault network, initially. This network is made up of dealers with the PRO+ label with a range of services adapted to professionals. This network operates in France, but also in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, which are very active in terms of decarbonization by hydrogen. The next step will be to continue this European deployment via Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, the Scandinavian countries, Switzerland, Poland, and the Czech Republic… within two years, the objective will be therefore to deploy marketing capacities in a dozen European countries, but also to provide maintenance and all associated services: repair, provision of loan vehicles, spare parts, recharging via hydrogen stations… all while remaining competitive, of course.
What are the persistent obstacles to the development of hydrogen mobility?
One of the problems specific to our activity today is to create the market by providing all the bricks. We are at the beginning of the hydrogen vehicle adventure, so it is difficult to predict exactly how the demand for hydrogen mobility will evolve. At present, we have robust and proven technologies, in particular thanks to PLUG’s know-how on this molecule. Moreover, most of the solutions have already been industrialized in the field of logistics transport of goods. Nevertheless, to make them available to as many people as possible in the mobility sector, there are still a certain number of technological, economic and regulatory obstacles in particular. The deployment of the European sector is, for example, a major challenge: we need partners, suppliers with automotive expertise, in order to develop our technologies with well-known automotive standards for internal combustion engines. The objective is also to develop this sector locally, at European level, for the purposes of competitiveness, but also with a view to limiting our environmental footprint while strengthening our autonomy.
European ambition, through the major decarbonization programs, in particular Fit for 55, is very important. This is changing the automotive landscape, and makes hydrogen propulsion solutions such as those offered by HYVIA particularly attractive. At a more local level, regulations concerning, for example, low-emission zones (ZFE) which will gradually be implemented in the city centers of large cities, then in peri-urban areas, will require palliative solutions to thermal vehicles. Here too, we believe that HYVIA can establish itself as a leader, in particular on everything relating to the use cases of the delivery of equipment and parcels, in particular on the issue of the last mile.
Finally, what is your strategy in terms of training for new jobs related to hydrogen technologies?
At HYVIA, we are constantly questioning what will be the key skills we will need in the coming years to develop hydrogen mobility. Hydrogen is a gas that needs to be apprehended in a safe way, with all the means of control that are developed around its use. Creating the professions of tomorrow within this sector is therefore a huge challenge.
On the Flins site, it has been two years since workers, operators, or technicians, some of whom had worked for several years within the Renault plant, migrated to HYVIA to pursue their careers. We supported them in training courses to enable them to develop skills related to new hydrogen technologies. Some even had the opportunity to go to our other partner, PLUG, in the United States, to receive specific training in fuel cell assembly techniques.
All these actions allow us to develop training courses specific to hydrogen and which respect the standards related to the automobile, to prepare the resources which we will need in the coming years.
[1] 2022
Interview by Pierre Thouverez
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