Renault and Plug Power to open a hydrogen plant – DRIVE

The Renault Group and the American company Plug Power signed a Memorandum of Understanding, according to which a joint venture (with 50/50 partner shares) will be created in France by mid-2021 to capture more than 30% of the market for light commercial vehicles on fuel cells (FC) in Europe … It will build facilities for the production of modern fuel cell systems and their integration into vehicles. The sphere of interests of the joint venture will include light commuter vehicles, taxis and hydrogen trucks. A pilot fleet of such machines will be deployed in the Old World this year.

Renault has already created cars with fuel cells – this is a pair Kangoo и Master Z.E. Hydrogen… They are charged from an outlet (since they have a large traction battery) and refueled from a hydrogen column. Their sale was supposed to start last year, but the epidemic has made adjustments.

Plug Power has 20 years of experience in the design and construction of fuel cells, as well as refueling infrastructure. To date, the company has built 40,000 fuel cell systems and 110 filling stations that pump over 40 tons of hydrogen daily. As part of the new joint venture, the partners will deploy not only production facilities, but also open an innovation center for the development of fuel cell technologies and machines on this basis.

Fuel cell systems from Plug Power and their refueling work not only in the automotive sector, but also in aerospace, in robotics, as stationary generators (emergency sources) and even as a power supply for factory vehicles.

The firstborn of the project should be hydrogen vans on the chassis Masters and Traffic… But in the future, the joint venture will design hydrogen versions of other vehicles on existing and future Renault platforms. At the same time, the joint venture must offer on the market a whole hydrogen ecosystem – cars, filling stations and even “carbon-free hydrogen” for them, that is, fuel obtained without greenhouse gas emissions.